From: jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele)
Subject: Re: Tax the rich!
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Distribution: pnw
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 00:12:31 GMT

bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:

>According to Prof. Walter Williams on the National Business Report, the
>aggregate income of all Americans earning over $200,000 per year is
>$209 billion. Therefore, if you simply confiscated *all* the income of
>the rich, we would not eliminate the deficit, which some projections
>estimate at $400 billion next year.

In his book, _Capitalist Fools_, Nicholas Hoffman talks of the
difficulty that the people at "Forbes" magazine had in compiling a list
of the wealthy.  There are two ways to measure "rich": how much someone
is taking in, or how much someone has.  Hoffman says the wealthy have
devoted much time and money in erecting barriers precisely to keep people
from knowing how much they have.

A lot of this wealth is purposely undervalued to avoid higher taxes on 
it.  It's similar to Tektronix carrying a big chunk of Beaverton on their
corporate books at 20-year-old values, which is what I've heard they've 
done.  Might explain some of the interest in Tek --- close it down and 
turn it into a condo park.  :-)

Given the complexity of the tax code, I would not be at all surprised to
hear of people with millions of dollars in real estate or other wealth
who have relatively little taxable income.  In fact, I'd be much
surprised to hear the opposite.

Regardless of what you think of Philip Knight and Nike, Bill Gates and
Microsoft, or Sam Walton and Wal-Mart, to varying degrees they've changed 
the country.  I don't have much problem with a tax system that lets them
keep most of what they earn, particularly they're encouraged to keep 
re-investing in their business.  I do have a problem with a tax system 
where you can get a billion dollars on your birthday simply for having 
the right parent ... but then I'm not much on monarchies, either.

The United States had been moving pretty steadily to a relatively
classless society.  I would point to the '50s and '60s as a high point
for lots of groups: class structure was breaking, racial barriers were
cracking.  Why?  Because it looked like there was enough for everybody
to have a place at the table.  Prosperity looked inevitable.  We would
have the "Great Society".

In the '70s and '80s, the economy slowed down and people started looking
out for themselves first and foremost.  We're seeing the results of
this selfishness in our streets and schools now, and nobody can be certain
that the future will work out as we hope.  People who enter many public
school systems are behind for life, no matter how talented they are and
no matter what they might contribute to society.

To bring rambling back to the subject at hand: I'd argue that the two 
kinds of rich are self-made and inherited.  While Sam Walton was
entitled to everything he made, the billions his children received would
pay for an awful lot of Head Start classes, classes that might keep
children in school and out of prison.  At some point, I hope that the
"divine right of the rich" goes the way of the "divine right of kings".

"But the rich have always given all their property to their heirs" can
be answered by "My ancestors always owned your ancestors", assuming, of 
course, that your ancestors were serfs in the right part of Russia.
Things change ...

N.B.: _Capitalist Fools_ started out as a biography of Malcom Forbes,
but Hoffman decided that Forbes really wasn't worth writing a book
about.  Instead he talks about the "Robber Barons" and what they did as
opposed to most of today's Fortune 500 CEOs.  As you might expect, Roger
Smith of GM shows up more than once.  Good read.

--
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