But he struck a decidedly more populist note on the topic of wealth inequality — which he brought up when the Times asked him about waning trust in CEOs and his responsibility in dispelling it. Here’s his full answer:
“Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we need to address that,” he said. “We should have a national wealth tax — it won’t work by state because people will just move. And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100% at some level. I would pay them.”
Tag: Inequality
Charlie Munger and Major Barbara – Life Imitates Art
‘I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody’: Charlie Munger shrugs off controversy over $200M donation for nearly windowless dorm
News of McFadden’s resignation sparked the latest round of criticism of elite philanthropists and their sway over public projects. “It’s one thing to put your name on a building, [and] it’s another level of egomania to condition a gift on accepting the donor’s architectural plan entirely without modification,” wrote Stanford political scientist Rob Reich, author of “Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better,” on Twitter.
Munger shrugged off charges that billionaires are too influential. “You’ve got to get used to the fact that billionaires aren’t the most popular people in our society,” he told MarketWatch. “I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.”
Marketwatch
Leslie Albrecht
SHIRLEY [angrily] Who made your millions for you? Me and my like. What’s kep us poor? Keepin you rich. I wouldn’t have your conscience, not for all your income.
UNDERSHAFT. I wouldn’t have your income, not for all your conscience, Mr Shirley.
Major Barbara
George Bernard Shaw
Major Barbara is a three-act English play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in 1907. The story concerns an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major in the Salvation Army in London. For many years, Barbara and her siblings have been estranged from their father, Andrew Undershaft, who now reappears as a rich and successful munitions maker. Undershaft, the father, gives money to the Salvation Army, offending Major Barbara, who does not want to be connected to his “tainted” wealth. However, the father argues that poverty is a worse problem than munitions, and claims that he is doing more to help society by giving his workers jobs and a steady income than Major Barbara is doing to help them by giving them bread and soup.
The 1%
Net worth of top 1%: $41.52 trillion
Net worth of bottom 50%: $2.62 trillionThe problem is not that 50% of Americans are “too lazy”. It’s that the system has enabled 1% of Americans to hoard wealth.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 22, 2021
Couple Numbers Pertaining to Inequality
By the start of 2021, the richest 1% of Americans held 32% of the nation’s wealth, its highest level since these records began in 1989.
The bottom 50%, meanwhile, held just 2% of the nation’s wealth.
Only the Rich Could Love This Economic Recovery
Karen Petrou
CEO Pay over the Years
When I graduated college in 1968, the typical corporate CEO got 20 times the pay of the average worker.
When I became labor secretary in 1993, the ratio was 61-to-1.
Today, the ratio is 320-to-1.
Capitalism is off the rails.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 25, 2021
The Cost of Inequality: $42,000 per Median US Worker – Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/the-cost-of-inequality-42000-per-median-us-worker/
… the question that Eric Levitz poses in New York Magazine is provocative. And the data, certainly, illustrate the severity of the income shift that has taken place over the past 45 years.
Specifically, Levitz examines a study by Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards from the Rand Corporation. And, yes, that is the same Rand Corporation of Pentagon Papers fame, so it’s fair to call it an establishment-based source. Anyhow, Price and Edwards in their study, which was conducted in partnership with the Fair Work Center, ask the following question: If the share of worker income to total income were the same in 2018 as in 1975, and growth was the same, how much would the median worker earn in 2018?
The answer: $92,000. That’s a full $42,000 greater than the actual 2018 median worker income, which was $50,000.
Steve Dubb
The Cost of Inequality: $42,000 per Median US Worker
NONPROFIT QUARTERLY
What’s classy if you’re rich but trashy if you’re poor? AskReddit
What’s classy if you’re rich but trashy if you’re poor? from AskReddit
chowderneck
The most expensive thing you own is a really old car.
splonkFlooper
Having a lawyer’s business card in your wallet.
Spoonhorse
Being called Duke. Or Earl.
Itskevin91
Living at a hotel
audguy
Getting money from the government.
waleed2198
Showing up to a formal occasion in t-shirt and jeans.
Cocobean4
Substance abuse. Rich people are ‘troubled’ whereas poor people are just junkies.
CadetCovfefe
Also mental disorders. Howard Hughes locks himself in his room, doesn’t shower and starts pissing in bottles and he’s an eccentric genius that gets a movie made about him by Martin Scorsese. Dude down the block does it and he’s just a nut.
My take – Moving around. If you’re rich it means you travel and are jet set. If you’re poor it means your transient and rootless.
Inequality – Some Suggestions on How to Address – New York Times
A fair chance for children
- Create a federal savings account for every newborn child.
- Eliminate single-family zoning, as Minneapolis did in 2018.
- Provide universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds.
- Spend more on the education of lower-income children.
- Get rid of lead water pipes. All of them.
Workers’ compensation
- Instruct the Federal Reserve to minimize Black unemployment
- Increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour
- Also, double the earned-income tax credit.
- Require employers to pay for family and medical leave.
- Extend federal labor protections to domestic workers.
A stronger safety net
- Provide housing vouchers to all eligible families.
- Reward cities that allow more housing construction.
- Expand the program to end homelessness among veterans to all Americans.
- Restore federal funding for public health agencies.
The will of the people
- Make it easier for Americans to vote.
- Provide public funding for congressional candidates.
Two Janitors – Their Prospects and Compensation, 35 Years Ago Vs. Now
The $16.60 per hour Ms. Ramos earns as a janitor at Apple works out to about the same in inflation-adjusted terms as what Ms. Evans earned 35 years ago. But that’s where the similarities end.
Ms. Evans was a full-time employee of Kodak. She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March. When the facility she cleaned was shut down, the company found another job for her: cutting film.
Ms. Ramos is an employee of a contractor that Apple uses to keep its facilities clean. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years, because she can’t afford the lost wages. Going back to school is similarly out of reach. There are certainly no bonuses, nor even a remote possibility of being transferred to some other role at Apple.
Yet the biggest difference between their two experiences is in the opportunities they created. A manager learned that Ms. Evans was taking computer classes while she was working as a janitor and asked her to teach some other employees how to use spreadsheet software to track inventory. When she eventually finished her college degree in 1987, she was promoted to a professional-track job in information technology.
To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now
Neil Irwin
NYTIMES
Wes Moore Interview, Fresh Air
Moore says the deaths of Freddie Gray and George Floyd highlight injustices that go beyond police brutality.
“The justice that’s also being sought must be an economic justice. It must be health justice. It must be housing justice,” Moore says. “If we permit these tragedies to recede from our memory, we will risk the opportunity to change the systems that are ultimately responsible for all of these injustices.”
Inequality, some numbers – The New York Times
Overall, the richest 0.1 percent of American households own 19.6 percent of the nation’s total wealth, up from 15.9 percent in 2005 and 7.4 percent in 1980. The richest 0.1 percent now have the same combined net worth as the bottom 85 percent.
The wealth trends have been especially hard on younger Americans. The median net worth of Americans under age 35 — who started off substantially poorer on average than older Americans — is 40 percent lower than the net worth of Americans under 35 was in 2004. The net worth of Americans over age 65, by contrast, has risen 9 percent over the same period. The Boomers, in short, are richer than their predecessors, and Millennials and Generation X are poorer than their predecessors.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/opinion/coronavirus-us-economy-inequality.html