Small point, but I feel pretty uncomfortable with this statement, which I’ve heard before a bunch of times (in various forms):
Billionaires don’t hoard wealth, but they invest it in companies and lend it to governments.
I very much know that billionaires don’t keep their wealth as literal cash.
But I feel like it’s generally fairly clear that: 1. These Billionaires are doing this just because it’s in their best interest. Investing and lending is not done altruistically, it’s done for profit. If these actions wound up producing zero or partially-negative global impact, I suspect Billionaires would still take them. (Related, I expect that at least several of these companies they invest in are net-negative) 2. It would be dramatically better if these people would donate this money to decent causes instead.
I wouldn’t value “$1 that a Billionaire is investing in the stock market” as literally having zero value, but I think most of us would place it quite low.
I assume that as with many annoying debates, this is an issue of semantics. What does “hoarding” mean, or how would it be interpreted? I think it’s fair to classify a situation such as, “I’m going to keep a bunch of money for myself and try to do the conventional thing of maximizing it, which now means putting it in the stock market” as “hoarding”, but I realize others might prefer other terminology.
I think a main argument related to that perspective is that you shouldn’t tax wealth but you should tax consumption (holding billions in stocks and bonds has positive externalities, buying a yacht fleet has negative externalities)
I obviously don’t agree with it, so I’m likely not presenting the strongest version of the arguments, but you can see an example of people holding this view in the twitter screenshot above, and I think it’s not uncommon
It sounds like we largely agree on a lot of this.
Small point, but I feel pretty uncomfortable with this statement, which I’ve heard before a bunch of times (in various forms):
I very much know that billionaires don’t keep their wealth as literal cash.
But I feel like it’s generally fairly clear that:
1. These Billionaires are doing this just because it’s in their best interest. Investing and lending is not done altruistically, it’s done for profit. If these actions wound up producing zero or partially-negative global impact, I suspect Billionaires would still take them. (Related, I expect that at least several of these companies they invest in are net-negative)
2. It would be dramatically better if these people would donate this money to decent causes instead.
I wouldn’t value “$1 that a Billionaire is investing in the stock market” as literally having zero value, but I think most of us would place it quite low.
I assume that as with many annoying debates, this is an issue of semantics. What does “hoarding” mean, or how would it be interpreted? I think it’s fair to classify a situation such as, “I’m going to keep a bunch of money for myself and try to do the conventional thing of maximizing it, which now means putting it in the stock market” as “hoarding”, but I realize others might prefer other terminology.
Yeah I don’t quite understand that line of argument. Naively, it seems like a bait-and-switch, not unlike “journalists don’t write their own terrible headlines.”
I think a main argument related to that perspective is that you shouldn’t tax wealth but you should tax consumption (holding billions in stocks and bonds has positive externalities, buying a yacht fleet has negative externalities)
I obviously don’t agree with it, so I’m likely not presenting the strongest version of the arguments, but you can see an example of people holding this view in the twitter screenshot above, and I think it’s not uncommon