Pity the Poor Billionaires

 

One of the more grotesque of the peculiarities of these sad times is the sympathy being shown for the enormously rich we like to call "Billionaires" to avoid the need to specify. It's claimed they're inappropriately being criticized for not paying enough taxes. It's claimed that they're hated, unfairly because their vast wealth has generated jobs and lowered the cost of various products.

If we make them pay more taxes or otherwise annoy them or belittle them, we're told, bad things will happen.  They'll go away. We'll no longer benefit from their accumulation and possession of more money and assets than they or anyone else coild possibly need.

Personally, I doubt that Billionaires constantly provide jobs and lower costs.  Assuming they do, I suspect this takes place while they make their billions.  After they make them, my guess is that they spend them and in spending don't do so pro bono publico. 

So I don't think it can be maintained that we should have Billionaires or should cater to them or love them because they do so much for us.  Nor do I think we should admire or favor them because they are Billionaires.

I have no doubt that many people envy Billionaires. But I believe that it's reasonable to dislike them and have no respect for them for a simple and sensible reason: in a time of limited and diminishing resources, where many even in better off nations are having difficulties making ends meet or live in poverty, those who obtain, consume, or possess more resources than they or any reasonable person will ever need, when most struggle to live, are not admirable, moral or virtuous people. In fact, they're unworthy.

That's why I've compared them more than once to gluttons and hoarders in this blog. It makes no more sense to claim they deserve to be Billionaires or should be Billionaires than it does to claim that any person deserves to be or should be a glutton or a hoarder.

Should a glutton have the right to consume huge quantities food neither he nor any one else could possibly need where food is scarce and others are starving?  In a time of limited resources, should a hoarder have the right to possess more assets or resources than he or anyone else could possibly use where others need resources to survive?

I think these are questions which should be addressed in considering whether Billionaires should pay more taxes or contribute more to society.  The libertarian view that a person should be able to do and have anything provided no harm results to others takes on an untraditional meaning as resources grow scarce