Hey, I've been trying to explain this to myself for decades, to no avail.
> ... Gates is not the only one who can easily buy teams and
> paintings. The latest Forbes list of America's
> wealthiest individuals showed that last year's highest
> nine earners, whose ranks include New York City's
> mayor, Michael Bloomberg, managed to increase their
> wealth by $5-9bn last year. Yes, that is just the
> annual increase in their wealth. Collectively, their
> $55bn in earnings outstripped the entire national
> income of more than 100 countries. ...
Astonishing. There is no way to cure anomalies like this through superficial measures like fiddle-farting around with the tax code. I have come to the Balzac-ian conclusion that "behind every great fortune there is a crime." (Note to lbo-list nitpickers: Balzac never made this exact remark, but it's usually associated with him so I will maintain the customary citation.)
Since every great fortune is a capital offense, I believe it deserves capital punishment -- preferably death by spectacular and lingering means. This would address the current main problem with wealth-distribution reforms -- i.e., that there are no *serious* disincentives for amassing great wealth.
Even heavy taxation is a joke if you steal enough money. Enormous wealth can buy anything, including a good reputation. Large-scale philanthropy -- whether practiced by Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller or Bill Gates -- has been the most successful money-laundering scheme of all time. It allows monopolists and human exploiters of arch-evil proportions to: (a) don the mantle of social benefactor and venerable role model, and (b) still maintain tyrannical exercise of power and unchecked indulgence of personal whims.
Anyone (which includes all of us) who has been forced to do business with Microsoft knows deep down that Bill Gates' "business model" is the habitual practice of felonious chicanery. But because Gates is willing to give away a few oodles of the countless zillions of ill-begotten dollars he has acquired, he is hailed as humankind's greatest hero while *still* living a life of outrageous self-indulgence that would make King Farouk look like Mother Teresa.
The lesson this provides the world's youth is appalling, i.e.: If you are guileful and unscrupulous enough to steal yourself a vast fortune, you will -- through flashy displays of philanthropy -- become the cynosure of every simpleton in the world and praised endlessly for your selfless sanctity, while still retaining wealth and power enough to satisfy your grossest, cruelest, most selfish appetites.
That's why, instead of twiddling around with the tax code, I favor more direct -- some might say brutal -- disincentives to over-accumulation of wealth. I call this the "Countdown to Civility."
The remedy is simplicity itself: Every year, the top 10 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list should be publicly put death by drawing and quartering. Simply doing charitable "good works" would offer no of mega-plutocrat any protection from the spectacular humiliation and unimaginable agony of such a demise.
I think this would do wonders in reducing the allure of wealth and improving the prospects for socialism. Even the most severe critics of this proposal would have to concede that it is a quite an original "thought experiment" and a more potent alternative to the typical proposals for redistibuting wealth by dicking around with tax code.
Carl