Wealth Caps?

(This is another of those
"deep" ideas I get while
taking a shower.) 

I consider myself conservative. 

I consider myself to respect the concept of natural stewardship. I understand how artificial restraints on wages can strangle creativity.

But there comes a point -- or two or three -- where ... 

If you've already amassed enough personal wealth to retire comfortably ten times over, it's time to do so, to move over and let someone fresh join the fight. No, those who have gotten wealthy shouldn't just go on vacation, there are plenty of service projects that have no way of generating monetary value that a person can get involved in, to keep a person competitive, sharp, and alive.  

And, really, service itself should be considered a higher value than money. 

Having enough money to retire a hundred times over gives an individual the sort of personal power that minor nobility have in nobility systems of government, and if the national government is involving itself in taxing personal income, if it fails to set some boundaries on that kind of wealth, it is effectively setting up a modern version of nobility.  

In the US, that should be a Constitutional issue -- and should be held up as evidence that the national income tax itself, amendment notwithstanding, is a breach of the Constitution.  

Somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times the amount of money that enables a comfortable retirement, there's a point where the government should have a right to step in and say that that much wealth is on the face of it evidence of business malpractice, and force early retirement. I mean, if the government can force retirement at 65 or 70, under whatever untested assumptions, surely the government can force retirement at, say, 650 MUSD or so, to borrow an arbitrary number.  

[JMR202411200736 note:] 

(I should emphasize that I am speaking strictly in the loose theoretical -- I haven't thought this through to the consequences, and I am confident that, like all other good ideas, there will likely be negative effects and more loopholes for the lawyers and the rich who can afford lawyers.)

[JMR202411200736 note end.] 

I'm sure that finding indirect holdings would become a problem for the regulatory agencies. I could guess that some of the very rich would find tricks like paying people to hold holdings for them -- but even that would require them to dilute the power they can exercise. 

Getting the national government out of the income tax business would definitely help reduce the special interest involvement at national level, and spread them out at the state level enough to dilute their power -- assuming that states would completely take over the individual income tax function.  

I suspect that simply pushing the income tax function down to the state level would pretty much force most national corporations to split up on state lines, and significantly limit monopolies and the insane levels of personal wealth.

What Is Causing the Riots?

I don't mean who, and I don't mean to raise the question of paid anti-whatever protestors allegedly coming in from out-of-town, nor of apparently whatever-supremacist police officers who allegedly disguise themselves to do what the real protesters wouldn't in pushing the violence forward.

Yes, that stuff is happening, and it shouldn't surprise anyone. If you haven't learned the lessons of history, nature abhors a vacuum, etc. There is no magic that will keep the USA safe for a free people if the people won't support their own freedom.

This is not a question of left versus right.

What is it to support your own freedom?

<> Is it carrying guns?

Well, sometimes, but I think that is not the most important thing. Definitely not now.

<> Is it voicing your opinions in spite of all the people who mock or threaten?

Of course. But that is also not exactly the most important thing.

<> Is it listening to people who need a listening ear?

Now there is very important thing, even though it can be hard to distinguish one needy listening ear that you can't help from another that you can. It does work out if you try.

<> Is it volunteering to help at the local library?

How about taking time off your $100+/hour job to do it?

How much do you make an hour? According to my sources, current average USA household income is $60,000 a year. That would be $5000 a month. If it meant a 40 hour workweek for a household with only one wage earner, that wage earner would be making about $30/hour.

That's not easy to live on, but more than half of the households in the US are making less than that, with all adults working. (That's what average household income means.)

If you are making more than $200,000 a year, are you willing to scrape a bit off of that to volunteer at the library, or do some other social service that nobody wants to pay for?

Are you willing to tell your boss that his plans for world domination need to take a back seat to the needs of the people around you?

If you are the boss with the plans for world domination, do you have a net worth more than USD 4,000,000 at, say, age forty? That's enough to retire comfortably. Are you willing to forego those plans for world domination -- to retire and let someone else take your place and earn a living?

Actually, if you have that much, you could move aside and let three people make average wages.

You say it's not that simple?

Steve Jobs did it for several years to bring Apple back.

Yeah, he was working, but he forewent his wages so others could also work.

Bringing the country back is not a better purpose?

I've said it elsewhere, and I'm not the first.

Protecting your freedom means giving. Not just food, not just money, not just advice on how to make more money. 

It also means giving way, and getting out of the way, so that others can have their turn, so they can earn their place.

That's how you keep the paid protesters from having no other work than paid protest.

And that's how you keep the white supremacists from feeling like white supremacy is the only thing that will protect their right to work.

Give up those plans for world domination. (World domination never works out the way you think it will, anyway.)

Move over.

Let others have a turn working.