(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Means Testing The Wealthy [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-23 I's been more than fourty years since my college economics classes Econ 101 and Econ 102. So forgive me if I can't quite remember in which class I learned the following, but what I do remember well was the fundamental tenet of the lesson. My professor at the time used an automotive theory to explain it in ways that seemed simple and accessible. Essentially what he said was that an economy is in some ways like an engine, and money is the oil that lubricates it. In an engine, if you remove too much oil, you decrease lubrication creating additional friction and thereby reducing overall engine efficiency. It requires more energy for the engine to run as it becomes more difficult for the gears and pistons to move around, eventually leading to a seizing of the engine if left unchecked. Well the same thing happens in an economy, if you take too much money out of circulation, the economy becomes less efficient, eventually leading to slowdown and possibly even recession. When vast amounts of money are essentially being hoarded by the disgustingly wealthy, it affects the economy for the rest of us in negative ways, making needed access to money difficult for too many. Money becomes a scarce resource that increasing numbers of people and organizations both public and private have limited access to. At a time when conservatives are crowing about means testing the poor before they are granted any assistance from the public largesse, it may be time to begin considering a sort of means testing of the wealthy before they are allowed to retain assets that could otherwise be added to the public coffers. Who really needs billions of dollars of liquid assets? We know that the poor and homeless somehow manage to eek out a survival (albeit a miserable one) on a number that is considered poverty level. What then can the be the excuse of those who have access to the princely sums of the uber rich? How can they with a straight face say that they "need" that much money when virtually all of the rest of America subsists on income a tiny fraction of theirs? Because the vast quantities of cash available to this class deeply affect the economy, they should have an obligation to be good stewards of such financial resources. I'm not saying that we automatically confiscate most of their wealth simply because they do have it. I'm just proposing that they be made to show what their wealth is doing for society at large, and if they can not show this, they be made either to use those resources for useful purposes or foreit them to the public trust. Magnates such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet use small but significant portions of their wealth for philanthropic purposes. Other actors such as Charles Koch cynically use their wealth to promote a political agenda. Still others, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk use some of their wealth to fund personal vanity projects which may or may not benefit society at large, while simply hoarding the rest of their wealth with no discernable benefit to anyone but themselves. In fact all of them, even Gates and Buffet continue to hoard the vast majority of their wealth. Their comparatively miniscule charitable works are little more than figleaves to make it appear as if they are doing something useful with their wealth. They are with a bit of it, but not with most of it. I don't pretend to have the macro-economic skills to define what the precise parameters of a means testing formula of this type should be, but that level of expertise is not required to see that some formula is required and should be applied, and what form it should take. For example as a starting point, an assessment should be made of the current liquid assets of the wealthiest Americans. Those who hold liquid assets above a certain threshold, could be given an opportunity to either designate a portion of them towards a societally useful purpose such as housing for the homeless, treatment for the mentally ill, or rehab for the addicted, or it would be foreit to the state where it would be applied to those same or similar areas. This assessment would take place annually. A next step would then be defining an annual income threshold above which, the same criteria as described above would be applied. This is in fact how income taxation worked in the 1950's and 60's, arguably Americas most prosperous and economically egalitarian era. With a maximum marginal tax rate in excess of 90%, few people elected to allow the government to simply confiscate their wealth and direct it to it's own purposes, so most would make investments of their liquid assets either in business or philanthropy. The result was that almost no one actually ever paid 90%. Even Rebublican leaders such as Dwight Eisenhauer recognized that the accumulation of personal wealth above a certain level was not beneficial to the economy or society in general. The 90 plus percent tax levels were an incentive, even an inducement, to get the wealthy to invest in society in ways that this class of people have become insensitive to in today's America. It is long past time to return to this common sense approach that was wildly successful when it was last exercised. Republicans often wax sentimental about the "good old days" of the 1950's. Great, let's give them what they are asking for. Ultimately it will benefit us all, even them. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/23/2165470/-Means-Testing-The-Wealthy Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/