2014
The following is from a Wall Street Journal article and relates an interview with Robert Shiller, a Yale University professor best known for his early, accurate prediction that U.S. house prices were a bubble just waiting to burst. He recently shared the Nobel in economics for insights into why prices of stocks and houses fluctuate as they do.
Read the first, second and third questions and answers on the page. Do you agree with this philosophy? That is, if wealthy people don’t voluntarily give their money away, the government just takes it.
His example uses multi-billionaires in the context of closing the inequality gap. It’s easy for people to relate to taking a billion from a Bill Gates type, but the reality is there are only 492 billionaires in the U.S. and about 1600 in the world. {for the record, I’m not among them} Most in the U.S. have less than two billion dollars. Yeah, I know shed a tear, but that’s not the point.
So, the idea of taking from the rich in Robin Hood fashion means that to gain any significant amount of money in terms of the U.S. economy, far more than the billionaires must be involved. Keep in mind with the average U.S. household income of around $50,000 anyone above that is fair game for higher taxes. In fact, recent tax law proposals target household incomes above $450,000, a tidy sum, but a far cry from a billion or even million dollars.
And then we have the ultimate question. When the government takes all that money what does it do with it that closes the income gap on an ongoing basis? And perhaps we should consider and question what past taxes and programs intended for this purpose have accomplished.
PLEASE COMMENT AND SHARE YOUR OPINION ON THIS IMPORTANT ISSUE
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Sorry, MY life and yours would have been so much less, if Bill Gates had stopped at $1B. In today’s dollar equivalent terms and legal environment, Tom Edison would have more money than all of them combined. How would we have fared if he had stopped with the stock calculator that made his first “million”.
The other challenge here is the lack of efficiency in government programs. Take a billion, and perhaps less than $200MM makes it’s way to those targeted for “relief” – after all the palms the money goes through.
I don’t think the government can tax enough for the promises it has already made … let alone taking on the issue of “income inequality” as an added burden.
Finally, look back at least three or four weeks to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. There was a great article titled “What Income Inequality Looks Like”. Should be required reading for the 535 + 1 idiots running the federal government.
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