‘It Is Utterly Impossible to Be Rich without Committing Injustice'

[Kenny]

In his Homily on 1 Timothy 12:3–4,71 the early church father St. John Chrysostom (died 407 CE) made the bold statement that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without committing injustice" (οὐκ ἔστιν οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ἀδικοῦντα πλουτεῖν) and moreover said that wealth is tantamount to theft, for ‘its origin must have come from an injustice against someone’, an ἀδικία (Timothy 1, 3, v.3, v. 8; 6, v.10; John Chrysostom in Schaff, 1886, Vol. 13, p.447). He then posed a rhetorical question: ‘Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?’, finally concluding: "Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs" (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5).

Arguably, if you earned $5,000 a day every day, beginning in 1492 when Columbus discovered America, you would probably still have less money than Jeff Bezos. The richest 26 people in the world have as much wealth as the 50% most economically disadvantaged of the global population - all 3.5 billion of the planet's poorest. Jeff Bezos has personal income equivalent to the GDP of a number of sovereign countries, such as New Zealand.

Surely an economic system that enables such gross income disparities to not only exist but widen with every passing year, often to the detriment of the environment to boot, is an inherently 'unjust' one?

The counter-argument, from libertarian free-marketeers, is that the financially well-endowed are specially-talented wealth creators. Jeff Bezos created a service that billions of human beings wanted and so he reaps the dividends.

But the question of acquiring wealth and the question of keeping it are distinct. 'To be rich' is not just about acquisition but retention. Whereas Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $130 billion, George Soros has "only" $8 billion because he has donated more than $32 billion to philanthropic causes.

It’s one thing to claim you ascended the ranks of the 0.01% through talent, thrift and graft. It’s quite another to justify using that wealth for one's own private luxury, with plush houses and greco-roman sculptures of oneself rather than giving aid to people living hand-to-mouth in an effort to pay their exorbitant rents or dying without medical coverage from untreated malaria.

Is there a “maximum moral income” beyond which it’s inexcusable not to give away your superfluous money?

There is so much that could be discussed here.

One could be listed as poor and be so tight fisted that there is no compassion in him/her.
One could give 32 Billion away and give it away to those organizations that aren't for the betterment of a community.
One could have 28 Billion and have given away 50% of his income and one could have 10 Billion and not give a penny.
One could have given 50% away and got his income from sell drugs or from hard work.
One could live hand-to-mouth and spend every penny on alcohol.
One could live hand-to mouth and be there (needing help) because of a disaster.
One could die without medical coverage because he spent his surplus on gambling
One could die without medical coverage because he didn't want to work
One could die without medical coverage because he needed a helping hand

Rich isn't the problem, its the heart.

Judging is just as wrong.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 King James Version (KJV)
17 Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;
18 That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate;
19 Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

(amount wasn't listed - just do)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Note: had to trim the quote to get under the character limit.

I think your quite correct to home in upon so-called "rentier capitalism" as, perhaps, the main culprit here - those taking income from unproductive assets, such as real estate, or reaping surfeit profits from their monopoly over property or infrastructure (*cough* Donald Trump and his dad *cough*):


Billionaires haven’t earned all they have

The very wealthy do produce some value, but most of them are rentiers, piggybacking on the work of others

By proposing to tax large incomes at a higher rate and to tax the wealth of the very rich, progressive politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are forcing a long-overdue re-examination of what billionaires actually contribute.

Are billionaires and other “people of means” (billionaire Howard Schultz’s preferred phrase) the main engines of social progress and economic growth, as many on the right say? Or, are they “vampire squids” sucking the lifeblood of the economy, as a few on the left believe?

Are billionaires the greatest makers in the economy, or the greatest takers?

My own view is that most billionaires do create some value, but they generally take more than their share of money and power. Their wealth far exceeds their economic contributions. Plutocrats don’t deserve the guillotine, but neither do they deserve billions of dollars.

Plutocrats are, above all, rentiers.​

Most wealth is created, maintained and sustained by extracting unearned rents from the rest of us. The wealthy take advantage of monopolies, asymmetric information, network effects, regulatory capture, artificial scarcities created by patents, licenses or trademarks, bailouts, subsidies, protectionism, financialization, and globalization.

More recently, economists on both the right and left have championed the theory of “rent-seeking” behavior (or cronyism) by those who want to profit from patents, subsidies, licenses, bailouts, protections, or just having the authorities look the other way.

It’s not just wealth that they take, but political power as well. Do you think that Donald Trump, or Howard Schultz, or the Koch brothers, or Mike Bloomberg, or Warren Buffett, or George Soros, or Kanye West could get anyone to pay any attention to their political views if they weren’t already rich and connected?

What upsets the ruling class most about Warren, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and others isn’t the threat to their wealth — they would barely notice the level of taxes now being proposed. Rather, it’s the threat to their political superpowers. Don’t these mortals know better than to challenge the gods?

They also capture a lot of rents, which means they really haven’t earned everything they have. Nor do they deserve the political power they use to protect and expand their rent-seeking behavior.

The problem we have with billionaires isn’t that they have wealth, it’s how they got it. An economy based on collecting rents is inefficient and unfair.
​

Yes, that's part of it, but there's also economic rent in things that people might not necessarily see as "leeching," like patents, copyright, and professional licensing.

Something stuck with me from the ethics class I took before getting licensed as a professional engineer. When talking about the engineer's role in society, our instructor pointed out that licensing the engineering profession has created a scarcity that engineers benefit from: if just anybody could call themselves an engineer and offer services to the public, this free competition would bring down the fees that engineers could charge. The government has stopped that competition, which means we can charge higher fees because of it.

In return for this benefit, though, engineers are expected to provide social benefit and safeguard the public to a higher degree than we would have had to if we weren't licensed.

... which goes back to what I said before: when someone receives economic rent - and EVERY licensed professional receives economic rent - this is something that needs to be justified, either through an important social purpose or by the social good that the person receiving the rent provides.

This informs why I get mad about billionaires, but it also informs why I get mad about "conscience" exemptions for medical professionals: in my mind, they're violating the normal terms of the social contract between the profession and society, and in the process, they're receiving economic rent without the reciprocal social benefit to justify why they should be receiving that rent.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

@Sunstone In furtherance of my last post:

Today, America’s top 1% makes its income primarily from capital, not labour:

I wonder about that graph, though.

At least in the US (and Canada), tax is much lower on capital gains than it is on employment income. A business owner has a strong incentive to call as much of their income as possible "shareholder dividends" instead of "salary," even if they're doing real labour that produces real value.

(Even medium- to high-level managers have incentive to do this by taking some of their compensation in the form of shares or stock options)

I think that graph may be more about two facts:

- getting incorporated costs money (and creates ongoing costs), so it only makes sense once the money you would save in tax is greater than the money you would pay in costs associated with incorporating.

- public sector employees (including military, which in the US is absolutely huge) don't have the option to call their income anything other than salary, and they tend to be at the left end of that graph.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

If someone becomes rich, because some buy freely his products, I think there is nothing wrong in that. It is not stealing. But if someone who is able to help person who he sees needs help, but doesn’t help, that can be seen as a problem, in Biblical point of view. But giving money freely is not necessary always a good idea and not really helpful.

This.

Also, let's smash apart the OP's mentality.

Suppose there are no income taxes or sales taxes or property taxes, and no inflation. Now suppose a decent house costs $100k and even a shabby one costs between $2.5k and $10k with an average costing $50k. Now suppose, that I earn enough to buy a $100k house. How many people can buy a house?

You say one? Not so! You can buy a house. So can your realtor (no taxes, remember), so can his realtor, and so on. Just one person, but when nobody cuts their wealth down, that original realtor from money going around with people able to buy houses (nvm that we haven't introduced any other customers, which is likely the case). Say a realtor gets 10 customers, and now has 10x what they needed to buy their house. Depending on how they shop, suddenly a lot of poor merchants now have money. Thet buy their business out from the bank, then they buy a shabby to average house. When the money isn't taxed, it isn't hoarded, when it isn't hoarded, it doesn't get inflated. When it doesn't get inflated, everyone who works hard can fulfill their needs.

Compare this to even 10% of earnings, in turn cut by 10% of 10% each time the money changes hands. Sooner or later, our mayor has that money instead, and ppl who work 9-5 are unable to afford even an apartment.

The source of poverty is our guilt, and the government's greed. They, not business owners (who pay twice in taxes as they are employees and employers) are the 1%.

 

[Sunstone]

@Sunstone

Thank you for your challenging critique of St. Chrysostom's 'thesis'. I can always count upon you to deliver the "money note" (pun intended!), which is to say, a notably insightful contribution to my thread.

In response, I would firstly direct you to my prior conversation with Penguin, where I concurred with his very precise (Adam Smith-influenced) identification of the superfluous wealth of the 'unjust' rich (in my OP phraseology) as consisting largely of the rental income of so-called "rentier capitalists", who unfortunately dominate the highest echelons of our present day global economic system (much to the detriment of the rest of us, from whom they exact their unearned rental income - hence the "theft" of the public wealth/good aspect of this).

Well, I was speaking off the cuff and -- as it turned out -- without factoring in rents to my analysis. Rents do not "change everything" I said, but they certain "qualify everything" I said. HEAVILY qualify what I said. I think you and Penguin make exceptionally good points.

In the broadest sense, however, I would not lump all rents into a single moral category, regardless of whether that category is "just" or "unjust". I'm not sure if that is your position too. Could you elaborate for me on that? As for myself, I agree with Penguin (and perhaps you) that income from rents can sometimes be justified.

A real life example was a relative of mine. A doctor, he invented a medicine that became almost universally used in heart surgery. At first, he had a monopoly on it due to patenting it. Later, after the patent expired, he was left with a monopoly on it for economic reasons. That is, no one wanted to compete with him because competing would have been a lose/lose game. It would have driven down the cost of the medicine without expanding the market for it (marginally reducing the overall cost of heart surgery would not have increased demand for it). Because of his monopoly, he was able to price his medicine way above costs.

Now, his medicine obviously added value to heart surgery since it dramatically improved the odds that patients would survive. But at the same time, his income from it was in large part due to price inflation rather than due to added value. I think his example shows how complex in would be in practice to calculate what portion of his wealth was just and what portion was unjust.

As a person, he was a good, decent man. A generous philanthropist, a caring father, loving husband, yadda, yadda, yadda. I never heard anyone describe him as less than a kind, generous person (to say nothing of a brilliant researcher, etc). Which to my mind illustrates an important point here. Saying that the system is good or bad does not mean the people in the system are good or bad. People like to personalize things ("The poor are lazy and deserve to be poor". "The rich are rapacious and evil.") to such an extent that they become distracted from the structural roots that are the source of both the good and the bad of capitalism. But as Confucius remarked, "The superior person works on the roots."

 

[Sunstone]

Gods, I just love how people reduce complex issues to the level of kindergarten crayon porn. Hilarious.

 

[Vouthon]

n the broadest sense, however, I would not lump all rents into a single moral category, regardless of whether that category is "just" or "unjust". I'm not sure if that is your position too. Could you elaborate for me on that? As for myself, I agree with Penguin (and perhaps you) that income from rents can sometimes be justified.

I agree with Penguin that it can be justified if there is a demonstrable social dividend flowing back to society, to recompense the rest of us for the rentiers' "contrived scarcity" (and in particular, to the “precariat” blighted by by labour flexibility, technological dislocation of their trades and economic uncertainty).

George Soros is a good example, with his exceptional philanthropy and lobbying of governments to pass fairer legislation. Your very sage argument here is well-taken: "Saying that the system is good or bad does not mean the people in the system are good or bad. People like to personalize things ("The poor are lazy and deserve to be poor". "The rich are rapacious and evil.") to such an extent that they become distracted from the structural roots that are the source of both the good and the bad of capitalism."

That's very true and I am actually identifying the roots of the problem as systemic in nature. Successful entrepreneurs - starting out as 'productive' risk-takers - always tend towards rentierism as their wealth expands. Many blame the 'rich', simply as an amorphous and de-humanizing mass of the guilty, because they can't quite bring themselves to admit that the root cause is primarily structural and only secondarily moral - a structural sin more than a personal one (although the structure breeds greed).

St. John Chrysostom did too. His harsh rhetoric was designed to prick the conscience of the rentier class of his day, many of whom would have been liable to respond along the lines you have outlined: "But I'm a good guy, I'm charitable and give back to society". While I would never compare rentier capitalism, unjust and inequitable as the system is, with the immeasurably greater evil of antebellum slavery - there is much truth to the old adage that the 'benevolent', paternal slave-owner (in spite of his good intentions) arguably did more than the 'inhumane' one to entrench and prolong the existence of the 'peculiar institution', because he helped defenders pass the evils off as just the behaviour of individual slave-owners and thus hide the fact that there was something intrinsically evil about the system of owning other human beings as property itself.

In the absence of this kind of reciprocal interchange back to society, I do view rental income as leeching and likely come down on it harder than Penguin, because I deem it to be akin to an act of 'theft' upon the public good, ‘extracting’ wealth from those of us who have actually created it without giving any restitution. Rentier capitalism means that the vast majority of productive labourers aren't reaping the profits of their collective value, with a good number actually needing to borrow money to survive from those who hold the financial capital. As the social scientist Guy Standing has noted:


The Corruption of Capitalism by Guy Standing: review by Brian Davey – Feasta

What Guy Standing describes across several chapters is a relationship between governments in the thrall of neo-liberalist ideology whose politicians have essentially developed a crony and client relationship to the big corporations and care little for the expendable mass of ordinary people. He describes a parasitical overgrowth as rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. This includes those things commonly associated with the word “rent” – land, property and mineral exploitation. However Standing also has chapters on “intellectual property” (patents, copyrights, brands and trademarks); on income from state subsidies to companies and rich individuals based on crony relationships and spurious arguments; on interest derived from “odious debts” to a financial sector where those deemed too big to fail get bailed out while an increasing proportion of the population like students and the poor are enmeshed and trapped in debt to fund their studies or to survive to the end of the week with pay day loans at astronomic interest rates.

Of particular importance to his argument, and his view of the likely economy of the future, is that a major part of the workforce have a substantial part of their already low incomes creamed off by organisations acting as brokers and intermediaries for a variety of short term and insecure kinds of work and service roles.

Taken together the rentier parasitism has generated a flood of wealth and income for people and companies who do little or nothing at all to earn their riches – while at the same time upending and rendering insecure the economic conditions for millions of people who are pushed into the ranks of what Standing calls a new class – the “precariat”.

I hasten to write here that Standing does address several aspects of the degradation of the “spatial and natural commons” in his call for revolt. What he calls a “plunder of the commons” is integral to his analysis of the enrichment of the elite. He writes, for example, about a theft of collective resources that takes away from ordinary people a host of use values crucial to “social income” – for example parks and street trees which are important to mental health and the quality of life. But for me there is a much bigger environmental threat
​

And the problem is that most of the billionaire rentiers we're discussing not only don't inject an equivalent social benefit back, which is roughly equal to the far greater share they extract from the economy, they actively use the tax loopholes and economic leverage their rent-seeking behaviour affords them to create even more opportunities for yet more unearned rent-seeking, often by bullying elected governments and parliaments, which makes it doubly heinous in my eyes than would their merely being 'passive' accumulators of this unearned income.

That's not how free competition is supposed to work. Our economy is rewarding people, en masse, who receive profit from bases other than their own productive activity, the inversion of the "American Dream". As Adam Smith himself noted in his 18th century The Wealth of Nations in an agricultural context: “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.” The same phenomenon is now happening today on the global stock market rather than on old-fashioned landed estates, only (arguably) in some ways worse because we're talking here about artificial, man-made 'scarcity' rather than natural scarcity.

This state of affairs disproportionately favours the ultra-wealthy, accentuates inequality over generations (inter-generational social injustice) and given that rental income is often linked to control of natural resources is arguably helping to make the climate crisis worse and speeding the human race towards cretaceous level warming within a hundred or so years. So the evils just keeping piling up.

Another graph:

Piketty argues that inheritance is a significant driver of a resurgence of this Roman and 18th century landed-gentry-style “patrimonial capitalism” and the UK research bears that out as well.

 

[Audie]

Gods, I just love how people reduce complex issues to the level of kindergarten crayon porn. Hilarious.

?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I agree with Penguin that it can be justified if there is a demonstrable social dividend flowing back to society, to recompense the rest of us for the rentiers' "contrived scarcity" (and in particular, to the “precariat” blighted by by labour flexibility, technological dislocation of their trades and economic uncertainty).

George Soros is a good example, with his exceptional philanthropy and lobbying of governments to pass fairer legislation. Your very sage argument here is well-taken: "Saying that the system is good or bad does not mean the people in the system are good or bad. People like to personalize things ("The poor are lazy and deserve to be poor". "The rich are rapacious and evil.") to such an extent that they become distracted from the structural roots that are the source of both the good and the bad of capitalism."

That's very true and I am actually identifying the roots of the problem as systemic in nature. Successful entrepreneurs - starting out as 'productive' risk-takers - always tend towards rentierism as their wealth expands. Many blame the 'rich', simply as an amorphous and de-humanizing mass of the guilty, because they can't quite bring themselves to admit that the root cause is primarily structural and only secondarily moral - a structural sin more than a personal one (although the structure breeds greed).

St. John Chrysostom did too. His harsh rhetoric was designed to prick the conscience of the rentier class of his day, many of whom would have been liable to respond along the lines you have outlined: "But I'm a good guy, I'm charitable and give back to society". While I would never compare rentier capitalism, unjust and inequitable as the system is, with the immeasurably greater evil of antebellum slavery - there is much truth to the old adage that the 'benevolent', paternal slave-owner (in spite of his good intentions) arguably did more than the 'inhumane' one to entrench and prolong the existence of the 'peculiar institution', because he helped defenders pass the evils off as just the behaviour of individual slave-owners and thus hide the fact that there was something intrinsically evil about the system of owning other human beings as property itself.

In the absence of this kind of reciprocal interchange back to society, I do view rental income as leeching and likely come down on it harder than Penguin, because I deem it to be akin to an act of 'theft' upon the public good, ‘extracting’ wealth from those of us who have actually created it without giving any restitution. Rentier capitalism means that the vast majority of productive labourers aren't reaping the profits of their collective value, with a good number actually needing to borrow money to survive from those who hold the financial capital. As the social scientist Guy Standing has noted:


The Corruption of Capitalism by Guy Standing: review by Brian Davey – Feasta

What Guy Standing describes across several chapters is a relationship between governments in the thrall of neo-liberalist ideology whose politicians have essentially developed a crony and client relationship to the big corporations and care little for the expendable mass of ordinary people. He describes a parasitical overgrowth as rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. This includes those things commonly associated with the word “rent” – land, property and mineral exploitation. However Standing also has chapters on “intellectual property” (patents, copyrights, brands and trademarks); on income from state subsidies to companies and rich individuals based on crony relationships and spurious arguments; on interest derived from “odious debts” to a financial sector where those deemed too big to fail get bailed out while an increasing proportion of the population like students and the poor are enmeshed and trapped in debt to fund their studies or to survive to the end of the week with pay day loans at astronomic interest rates.

Of particular importance to his argument, and his view of the likely economy of the future, is that a major part of the workforce have a substantial part of their already low incomes creamed off by organisations acting as brokers and intermediaries for a variety of short term and insecure kinds of work and service roles.

Taken together the rentier parasitism has generated a flood of wealth and income for people and companies who do little or nothing at all to earn their riches – while at the same time upending and rendering insecure the economic conditions for millions of people who are pushed into the ranks of what Standing calls a new class – the “precariat”.

I hasten to write here that Standing does address several aspects of the degradation of the “spatial and natural commons” in his call for revolt. What he calls a “plunder of the commons” is integral to his analysis of the enrichment of the elite. He writes, for example, about a theft of collective resources that takes away from ordinary people a host of use values crucial to “social income” – for example parks and street trees which are important to mental health and the quality of life. But for me there is a much bigger environmental threat
​

And the problem is that most of the billionaire rentiers we're discussing not only don't inject an equivalent social benefit back, which is roughly equal to the far greater share they extract from the economy, they actively use the tax loopholes and economic leverage their rent-seeking behaviour affords them to create even more opportunities for yet more unearned rent-seeking, often by bullying elected governments and parliaments, which makes it doubly heinous in my eyes than would their merely being 'passive' accumulators of this unearned income.

That's not how free competition is supposed to work. Our economy is rewarding people, en masse, who receive profit from bases other than their own productive activity, the inversion of the "American Dream". As Adam Smith himself noted in his 18th century The Wealth of Nations in an agricultural context: “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.” The same phenomenon is now happening today on the global stock market rather than on old-fashioned landed estates, only (arguably) in some ways worse because we're talking here about artificial, man-made 'scarcity' rather than natural scarcity.

This state of affairs disproportionately favours the ultra-wealthy, accentuates inequality over generations (inter-generational social injustice) and given that rental income is often linked to control of natural resources is arguably helping to make the climate crisis worse and speeding the human race towards cretaceous level warming within a hundred or so years. So the evils just keeping piling up.

Another graph:

Piketty argues that inheritance is a significant driver of this resurgence of this Roman and 18th century landed-gentry-style “patrimonial capitalism” and the UK research bears that out as well.

I find it interesting that while American Christianity is very large and diverse in many ways, there are very few voices speaking out against the accumulation of great wealth.

I mean, Biblical literalism is pretty popular. I would have expected that Biblical literalism would have led to the idea that there's no such thing as "personal property," only God's property that we're temporary stewards of. But we don't really see this; we just get Young Earth Creationism, not variations on communism... even though the history of Christian movements that reject wealth or the idea of personal property stretches back about as far as Christianity itself.

 

[Sunstone]

?

[SARCASM] Some of the posts in this thread -- not all, but some -- seem to be predicated on the apparently profound and trenchant insight that "money = bad" or that "money = good"; "rich people = bad, poor people = good"; vice versa, etc. It just astounds me the depths to which the human mind can probe. My faith in the superior intelligence of our species has been restored. [/SARCASM]

*My sarcasm is by no means directed at you personally. I don't see you doing what I am criticizing.

 

[Vouthon]

I find it interesting that while American Christianity is very large and diverse in many ways, there are very few voices speaking out against the accumulation of great wealth.

It has long mystified me as well.

If one reads the gospels, it's striking that social justice and economic inequality are far more prevalent scriptural themes than anything one tends to associate with "political Christianity" in the modern United States (the country with the world's largest "Christian" population and hence the most important 'case' study, so to speak). Abortion doesn't feature at all in the New Testament, while Jesus himself had nothing to say about homosexuality in his recorded sayings and even though he advocated for the welfare of children, he was utterly hostile to family values.

What you do find, of course, is a primitive pre-Marxian communism: "neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common" (Acts 4:32).

So, its arguable that 'bible bashers' aren't deriving much of their framework of values from the text that is supposedly for them the literal Word of God but are in fact singing from an altogether different hymn sheet.

Your statement in the above, "there's no such thing as "personal property," only God's property that we're temporary stewards of" evidences a far better grasp of theology than any of the conservative American biblical literalists I can think of. It's actually a very accurate summary of the worldview of the early Christians in the Roman Empire.

The early church father Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325), an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and a tutor to his son Crispus, basically said exactly that in his appeal for social equality grounded in the universal dominium of God and his corresponding critique of the Roman state for its laws that inhibited this:


CHURCH FATHERS: Divine Institutes, Book V (Lactantius)

For God, who produces and gives breath to men, willed that all should be equal, that is, equally matched. He has imposed on all the same condition of living; He has produced all to wisdom; He has promised immortality to all; no one is cut off from His heavenly benefits. For as He distributes to all alike His one light, sends forth His fountains to all, supplies food, and gives the most pleasant rest of sleep; so He bestows on all equity and virtue. In His sight no one is a slave, no one a master; for if all have the same Father, by an equal right we are all children [...]

Therefore neither the Romans nor the Greeks could possess justice, because they had men differing from one another by many degrees, from the poor to the rich, from the humble to the powerful; in short, from private persons to the highest authorities of kings. For where all are not equally matched, there is not equity; and inequality of itself excludes justice, the whole force of which consists in this, that it makes those equal who have by an equal lot arrived at the condition of this life.​

Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VII/Lactantius/The Divine Institutes/Book V/Chap. VI - Wikisource, the free online library

For not only did they who had a superfluity fail to bestow a share upon others, but they even seized the property of others, drawing everything to their private gain; and the things which formerly even individuals laboured to obtain for the common use of men, were now conveyed to the houses of a few. For, that they might subdue others by slavery, they began especially to withdraw and collect together the necessaries of life, and to keep them firmly shut up, that they might make the bounties of heaven their own; not on account of kindness, a feeling which had no existence in them, but that they might sweep together all the instruments of lust and avarice.

They also, under the name of justice, passed most unequal and unjust laws, by which they might defend their plunder and avarice against the force of the multitude. They prevailed, therefore, as much by authority as by strength, or resources, or malice. And since there was in them no trace of justice, the offices of which are humanity, equity, pity, they now began to rejoice in a proud and swollen inequality, and made themselves higher than other men, by a retinue of attendants, and by the sword, and by the brilliancy of their garments. For this reason they invented for themselves honours, and purple robes, and fasces, that, being supported by the terror produced by axes and swords, they might, as it were by the right of masters, rule them, stricken with fear, and alarmed.

But the change of the age and the expulsion of justice is to be deemed nothing else, as I have said, than the laying aside of divine religion, which alone effects that man should esteem man dear, and should know that he is bound to him by the tie of brotherhood, since God is alike a Father to all, so as to share the bounties of the common God and Father with those who do not possess them; to injure no one, to oppress no one...​

I doubt he'd be a Republican if you reincarnated him, personally.

(continued...)

 

[Vouthon]

The church father St. Justin Martyr (in Schaff, 1994, Vol 1, 167) wrote before in the second century of the community of converts, that "we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to every one in need". Or as Pope St. Gregory the Great put it as late as the sixth century CE: "For when we administer necessaries of any kind to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy .. for it is surely just that whosoever receive what is given by a common lord should use it in common" (Gregory the Great, in Schaff, 1890, Vol. 12, 47b).

Bizarrely enough, while this is lost on many contemporary American Christians, actual Marxists have long recognised and studied the proto-communism of the early church as a historical precursor to their own movement. Rosa Luxembourg - the Polish Communist who died in the 1919 German revolution as a leader of the 'Spartacist Uprising' - for instance, wrote extensively on the topic:


Rosa Luxemburg: Socialism and the Churches (1905)

The Social-Democrats propose to put an end to the exploitation of the toiling people by the rich. You would have that the servants of the Church would have been the first to make this task easier for the Social-Democrats. Did Jesus Christ (whose servants the priests are) teach that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven”?[2] The Social-Democrats try to bring about in all countries social regimes based on the equality, liberty and fraternity of all the citizens [...]

First of all, it is striking to notice that the priests of today who fight against “Communism” condemn in reality first Christian Apostles. For these latter were nothing else than ardent communists.

The Christian religion developed, as is well known, in ancient Rome, in the period of the decline of the Empire, which was formerly rich and powerful, comprising the countries which today are Italy and Spain, part of France, part of Turkey, Palestine and other territories. The state of Rome at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ much resembled that of Czarist Russia [...]

The Christian religion appeared to these unhappy beings as a life-belt, a consolation and an encouragement, and became, right from the beginning, the religion of the Roman proletarians. In conformity with the material position of the men belonging to this class, the first Christians put forward the demand for property in common - communism. What could be more natural? The people lacked means of subsistence and were dying of poverty. A religion which defended the people demanded that the rich should share with the poor the riches which ought to belong to all and not to a handful of privileged people; a religion which preached the equality of all men would have great success [...] It was indeed in this way that the first Christian communities were organized [...]

Thus the Christians of the First and Second Centuries were fervent supporters of communism [...]

Saint Basil, in the fourth century after Christ, preached thus against the rich:

“Wretches, how will you justify yourselves before the Heavenly Judge? You say to me, ‘What is our fault, when we keep what belongs to us?’ I ask you, ‘How did you get that which you called your property? How do the possessors become rich, if not by taking possession of things belong to all? If everyone took only what he strictly needed leaving the rest to others, there would be neither rich nor poor’.”

​

It was St. John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople, (born at Antioch in 347, died in exile in Armenia in 407), who preached most ardently to the Christians the return to the first communism of the Apostles. This celebrated preacher, in his 11th Homily on the Acts of the Apostles, said:

“And there was a great charity among them (the Apostles): none was poor among them. None considered as being his what belonged to him, all their riches were in common ... a great charity was in all of them. This charity consisted in that there were no poor among them, so much did those who had possessions hasten to strip themselves of them. They not divide their fortunes into two parts, giving one and keeping the other back: they gave what they had. So there was no inequality between them; they all lived in great abundance. Everything was done with the greatest reverence. What they gave was not passed from the hand of the giver to that of the recipient; their gifts were without ostentation; they brought their goods to the feet of the apostles who became the controllers and masters of them and who used them from then on as the goods of the community and no longer as the property of individuals. By that means they cut short any attempt to get vain glory. Ah! Why have these traditions been lost? Rich and poor, we should all profit from these pious usages and we should both feel the same pleasure from conforming to them. The rich would not impoverish themselves when laying down their possessions, and the poor would be enriched…But let us try to give an exact idea of what should be done ...

“Now, let us suppose – and neither rich nor poor need be alarmed, for I am just supposing – let us suppose that we sell all that belongs to us to put the proceeds into a common pool. What sums of gold would be piled up! I cannot say exactly how much that would make: but if all among us, without distinction between the sexes were to bring here their treasures, if they were to sell their fields, their properties, their houses – I do not speak of slaves for there were none in the Christian community, and those who were there became free – perhaps, I say if everyone did the same, we would reach hundreds of thousands of pounds of gold, millions, enormous values.

“Well! How many people do you think there are living in this city? How many Christians? Would you agree that there are a hundred thousand? The rest being made up of Jews and Gentiles. How many should we not unite together? Now, if you count up the poor, what do you find? Fifty thousand needy people at the most. What would be needed to feed them each day? I estimate that the expense would not be excessive, if the supply and the eating of the food were organized in common.

“You will say, perhaps, ‘But what will become of us when these goods are used up?’ So what! Would that ever happen? Would not the grace of God be a thousand times abundant? Would we not be making a heaven on earth?”

If formerly this community of goods existed among three to five thousand faithful and had such good results and did away with poverty amidst them, what would not result in such a great multitude as this? And among the pagans themselves who would not hasten to increase the common treasure? Wealth which is owned by a number of people is much more easily and quickly spent; the diffusion of ownership is the cause of poverty. Let us take as an example a household composed of a husband, a wife and ten children, the wife being occupied in weaving wool, the husband in bringing in the wages of his work outside; tell me in which case this family would spend more; if they live together in common, or lived separately. Obviously, if they lived separately. Ten houses, ten tables, ten servants, and ten special allowances would be needed for the children if they were separated. What do you do, indeed if you have many slaves? Is it not true, that, in order to keep expenses down, you feed them at a common table? The division is a cause of impoverishment; concord and the unity of wills is a cause of riches.

In the monasteries, they still live as in the early Church. And who dies of hunger there? Who has not found enough to eat there? Yet the men of our times fear living that way more than they fear falling into the sea! Why have we not tried it? We would fear it less. What a good act that would be! If a few of the faithful, hardly eight thousand dared in the face of a whole world, where they have nothing but enemies, to make a courageous attempt to live in common, without any outside help, how much more could we do it today, now that there are Christians throughout the whole world? Would there remain one single Gentile? Not one. I believe. We would attract them all and win them to us.”[8]

​

These ardent sermons of St. John Chrysostom were in vain. Men no longer tried to establish communism either at Constantinople or anywhere else.

Again, in the 6th Century, Pope Gregory the Great said:

“It is by no means enough not to steal the property of others; you are in error if you keep to yourself the wealth which God has created for all. He who does not give to others what he possesses is a murderer, a killer; when he keeps for his own use what would provide for the poor, one can say that he is slaying all those who could have lived from his plenty; when we share with those who are suffering, we do not give what belongs to us, but what belongs to them. This is not an act of pity, but the payment of a debt.”

​

These appeals remained fruitless. But the fault was by no means with the Christians of those days, who were indeed, more responsive to the words of the Fathers of the Church than are the Christians of today. This was not the first time in the history of humanity that economic conditions have shown themselves to be stronger than fine speeches."

​

You thus have the mind-bending situation where an atheist-Marxist like Luxembourg is practically catechising believing Christians on the theological implications of their own teachings and in the process exhibits a far more advanced understanding of the Patristics than most of them put together, who likely wouldn't know their Chrysostom from their Augustine, whereas she's able to quote them in turn like a pro.

 

[sayak83]

In his Homily on 1 Timothy 12:3–4,71 the early church father St. John Chrysostom (died 407 CE) made the bold statement that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without committing injustice" (οὐκ ἔστιν οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ἀδικοῦντα πλουτεῖν) and moreover said that wealth is tantamount to theft, for ‘its origin must have come from an injustice against someone’, an ἀδικία (Timothy 1, 3, v.3, v. 8; 6, v.10; John Chrysostom in Schaff, 1886, Vol. 13, p.447). He then posed a rhetorical question: ‘Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?’, finally concluding: "Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs" (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5).

Arguably, if you earned $5,000 a day every day, beginning in 1492 when Columbus discovered America, you would probably still have less money than Jeff Bezos. The richest 26 people in the world have as much wealth as the 50% most economically disadvantaged of the global population - all 3.5 billion of the planet's poorest. Jeff Bezos has personal income equivalent to the GDP of a number of sovereign countries, such as New Zealand.

Surely an economic system that enables such gross income disparities to not only exist but widen with every passing year, often to the detriment of the environment to boot, is an inherently 'unjust' one?

The counter-argument, from libertarian free-marketeers, is that the financially well-endowed are specially-talented wealth creators. Jeff Bezos created a service that billions of human beings wanted and so he reaps the dividends.

But the question of acquiring wealth and the question of keeping it are distinct. 'To be rich' is not just about acquisition but retention. Whereas Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $130 billion, George Soros has "only" $8 billion because he has donated more than $32 billion to philanthropic causes.

It’s one thing to claim you ascended the ranks of the 0.01% through talent, thrift and graft. It’s quite another to justify using that wealth for one's own private luxury, with plush houses and greco-roman sculptures of oneself rather than giving aid to people living hand-to-mouth in an effort to pay their exorbitant rents or dying without medical coverage from untreated malaria.

Is there a “maximum moral income” beyond which it’s inexcusable not to give away your superfluous money?

Hinduism believes it's a great virtue to give and an even greater virtue to renounce possessions all together. But a rich man who gains possession lawfully should not be forced to give over and above his societal duties if he does not want to. Wealth not freely given creates dark effects both on the giver and the taker as coercion is involved. It creates anger, hatred, ill feeling between the giver and the receiver which is a poison that ultimately spoils all fruits that the people and society could have obtained from that wealth.

 

[Vouthon]

Some of the posts in this thread -- not all, but some -- seem to be predicated on the apparently profound and trenchant insight that "money = bad" or that "money = good" etc. It just astounds me the depths the human mind can probe.

Money itself is ethically neutral.

How you acquire and retain it, however, can be "bad" or "good".

And that, of course, is contingent not only upon personal morality but environmental factors.

 

[Sunstone]

Money itself is ethically neutral.

How you acquire and retain it, however, can be "bad" or "good".

And that, of course, is contingent not only upon personal morality but environmental factors.

No argument. I agree with each of your points. However, I would elaborate on your "environmental factors" to somewhat more explicitly state that economic systems can be seen as in various ways and degrees encouraging or discouraging what is morally good or bad. That is, the system itself is often a major factor in determining the morality of its participants.

I trust no one -- not even I myself -- am fool enough to argue with me about that.

 

[Milton Platt]

Well, I'll use income as our metric here for simplicity's sake.

In St. John Chrysostom's time he would likely have had in mind the latifundia, the great landed-estate owners and the senatorial class who could boast on average between 400,000 sestertii and 1,000,000 sestertii. Also, the slightly less well-off equestrian class.

I'm not sure what this would be, adjusting for inflation, in today's terms but certainly in the millions, half a billion and billions of dollars-type territory.

Our mega-millionaires and billionaires are the super-rich, the 0.01%.

Although, to be among the top 1 % of U.S. earners, a family needs an income of at minimum $421,926.

But the simple principle Chrysostom enunciates is that whatever a person has in superabundance or superfluity, beyond what they need to satisfy their needs and live comfortably, belongs to the needy in his mind. If we hoard it and don't spread it out either through our taxes or philanthropy, then we're literally denying the indignant what belongs to them and committing theft on the poor.

The extent of this would, naturally, vary greatly between someone earning over £400,000 and someone earning £26 million and then again billions like Bezos.

As for the word "injustice": the very fact of extreme disparity in income, of massively uneven distribution of wealth, was itself proof of abuse for Chrysostom and he believed the law merely legitimated a profoundly unjust situation. If I may quote the scholar Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd:

"Chrysostom conceived the nature of ownership essentially as that of a dynamic function of sharing the world's wealth to meet he requirements of a life of dignity for all.

According to Chrysostom, human welfare depends upon an abundance of goods, the general peace and a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth. If these three conditions are satisfied, then one can commence the quest for an approximation of a welfare state (vol. 58, Homilies on the Psalms, 341B).

Chrysostom in his Homilies on the Priesthood stressed that love and friendship among men increase when there are no extreme inequalities in the distribution of possessions...

The Fathers, and especially Chrysostom, believed that the role of taxation was mainly the redistribution of income and wealth. He was in favour of progressive taxation, condemning the equal fiscal treatment of rich and poor"

(Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice (2000), p.195)
​

His contemporary, St. Augustine of Hippo dreamt of a future in which the landless poor would be maintained by social welfare distributed by the government via progressive taxation:


CHURCH FATHERS: City of God, Book V (St. Augustine)

....the admission of all to the rights of Roman citizens who belonged to the Roman empire, and if that had been made the privilege of all which was formerly the privilege of a few, with this one condition, that the humbler class who had no lands of their own should live at the public expense — an alimentary impost, which would have been paid with a much better grace by them into the hands of good administrators of the republic.​

Chrysostom argued that the equal right of all to the use of the wealth of the earth was akin to their right to breathe the air:


CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 12 on First Timothy (Chrysostom)

Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?

Mark the wise dispensation of God. That He might put mankind to shame, He hath made certain things common, as the sun, air, earth, and water, the heaven, the sea, the light, the stars; whose benefits are dispensed equally to all as brethren.

We are all formed with the same eyes, the same body, the same soul, the same structure in all respects, all things from the earth, all men from one man, and all in the same habitation. Other things ... He hath made common, as baths, cities, market-places, walks.

(Schaff, 1886, 13, p.448).​

So a person making $421,925 doesn't have extreme wealth, but a person who has $421,926 does. Hmmmm
Why that particular dividing line?

Who, precisely should decide when I have enough to satisfy my needs? After all, a person only "needs" food, shelter, and clothing. No autos, air conditioning, pleasure boats, Adidas tennis shoes......

There was a country in which the government did decide what it's citizen's "needs" were. It existed behind what was called the Iron Curtain.

So if a person starts a business by risking his own capital and spending the effort required to spin up the company from -0- profits (sometimes for several years) and employed dozens or maybe hundreds or thousands of people, and the income from the company pushes his income over this arbitrary line, do you think the government should raid his bank account and take his money?

How many businesses do you think would be started in the U.S. if that were the case?

I follow you that there is extreme wealth inequality. I agree with you that those who are on the bottom end of the spectrum need to be accounted for.
I am not sure how that should happen. Perhaps mandatory education Through at least High School level and perhaps through 4 years of college would help.
And then there is also a sizable group of individuals who simply refuse to work. What do we do with those?

By the way, quotes from religious texts or religious figures are of no value. Quotes from top tier economists would be.

 

[Vouthon]

By the way, quotes from religious texts or religious figures are of no value. Quotes from top tier economists would be.

I would note that I actually have been referencing a number of economists and their studies, ranging from Piketty to Martin Wolf, consistently in this thread. Graphs have been provided in my posts alongside the various stats I've been citing.

The religious references may not always be of the same technical value as the other ones, granted, however given that this is both a moral and structural issue I wouldn't say they are without value either. Also, the papal encyclicals referenced - such as Pius XI in 1931 - were written on the basis of advice from Catholic economists of the time, including to the Pesch school of Solidarism:


Heinrich Pesch - Wikipedia

Heinrich Pesch, S.J. (17 September 1854 – 1 April 1926) was a German Roman Catholic ethicist and economist of the Solidarist school.[1][2][3][4] His major work, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie,[5] is generally regarded as a source for Pope Pius XI's social encyclical Quadragesimo anno.[6][7][8]
​

So, you are at once reading both religious and economic texts when you read Catholic social encyclicals, because Catholic Social Doctrine (uniquely among Christian sects) extends into the economic sphere.

I would also note that many of the Church Fathers were also influential political figures in the late Roman Empire who were directly involved in making decisions about it's economy. So they were as close, in many respects, as ancient Roman society could get to social commentary and economic theory from a social justice perspective, in the absence of an actual field of economic social science (which did not exist as a distinct branch of enquiry in the ancient world).

There was no strict division of religion and politics at this time, or in the middle ages, such that religious texts are often also economic treatises and political ones as well.

Consider the role played by the Spanish scholastic theologians of the School of Salamanca, which economists like Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek and Murray N. Rothbard hailed as the real foundation stone of modern economics. As Rothbard has noted:

"it was the sixteenth-century Spanish Scholastics of the Catholic Church who developed the purely subjective and pro free-market theory of value." (Rothbard, 1976: 37)
​

Over 600 years before Donald Trump's infamous (and largely ghost-written) Art of the Deal came out, Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) wrote On Contracts and Usury, history's first manual for budding entrepreneurs:


Bernardino of Siena - Wikipedia

Bernardino was the first theologian after Pierre de Jean Olivi to write an entire work systematically devoted to Scholastic economics. His greatest contribution to economics was a discussion and defense of the entrepreneur. His book, On Contracts and Usury, written during the years 1431–1433, dealt with the justification of private property, the ethics of trade, the determination of value and price, and the usury question.[16]

One of his contributions was a discussion on the functions of the business entrepreneur, who Bernardino saw as performing the useful social function of transporting, distributing, or manufacturing goods. According to Murray Rothbard, Bernardino's insight in determining just value prefigured "...the Jevons/Austrian analysis of supply and cost over five centuries later."[17]

​

From the libertarian economist and economic historian Murray Rothbard:


The Worldly Ascetic: San Bernardino of Siena | Murray N. Rothbard

In his justification of trade, San Bernardino finally managed to rehabilitate the lowly retailer, who had been scorned ever since ancient Greece. Importers and wholesalers, Bernardino pointed out, buy in large quantities and then break bulk by selling by the bale or load to retailers, who in turn sell in minute quantities to consumers.

Realistically, Bernardino did not condemn profits; on the contrary, profits were a legitimate return to the entrepreneur for his labor, expenses and the risks that he undertakes.

San Bernardino then goes into his trenchant analysis of the functions of the entrepreneur. Managerial ability, he realized, is a rare combination of competence and efficiency, and therefore commands a large return. San Bernardino lists four necessary qualifications for the successful entrepreneur: efficiency or diligence (industria), responsibility (solicitudo), labor (labores), and assumption of risks (pericula).

Efficiency for Bernardino meant being well-informed about prices, costs, and qualities of the product, and being "subtle" in assessing risks and profit opportunities, which, Bernardino shrewdly observed, "indeed very few are capable of doing." Responsibility meant being attentive to detail and also keeping good accounts, a necessary item in business. Trouble, toil, and even personal hardships are also often essential. For all these reasons, and for the risk incurred, the businessman properly earns enough on successful investments to keep him in business and compensate him for all his hardships.

​

These Catholic texts, such as Saint Bernardino's manual on entrepreneurship, are both religious and economic. And economic historians and modern day economists regard them as being of great significance still for their field.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

In his Homily on 1 Timothy 12:3–4,71 the early church father St. John Chrysostom (died 407 CE) made the bold statement that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without committing injustice" (οὐκ ἔστιν οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ἀδικοῦντα πλουτεῖν) and moreover said that wealth is tantamount to theft, for ‘its origin must have come from an injustice against someone’, an ἀδικία (Timothy 1, 3, v.3, v. 8; 6, v.10; John Chrysostom in Schaff, 1886, Vol. 13, p.447). He then posed a rhetorical question: ‘Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?’, finally concluding: "Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs" (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5).

Arguably, if you earned $5,000 a day every day, beginning in 1492 when Columbus discovered America, you would probably still have less money than Jeff Bezos. The richest 26 people in the world have as much wealth as the 50% most economically disadvantaged of the global population - all 3.5 billion of the planet's poorest. Jeff Bezos has personal income equivalent to the GDP of a number of sovereign countries, such as New Zealand.

Surely an economic system that enables such gross income disparities to not only exist but widen with every passing year, often to the detriment of the environment to boot, is an inherently 'unjust' one?

The counter-argument, from libertarian free-marketeers, is that the financially well-endowed are specially-talented wealth creators. Jeff Bezos created a service that billions of human beings wanted and so he reaps the dividends.

But the question of acquiring wealth and the question of keeping it are distinct. 'To be rich' is not just about acquisition but retention. Whereas Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $130 billion, George Soros has "only" $8 billion because he has donated more than $32 billion to philanthropic causes.

It’s one thing to claim you ascended the ranks of the 0.01% through talent, thrift and graft. It’s quite another to justify using that wealth for one's own private luxury, with plush houses and greco-roman sculptures of oneself rather than giving aid to people living hand-to-mouth in an effort to pay their exorbitant rents or dying without medical coverage from untreated malaria.

Is there a “maximum moral income” beyond which it’s inexcusable not to give away your superfluous money?

First of all, I kind of object to the overall generalized statement that "rich = committing injustice".

I object to it in terms of becoming rich especially, and staying rich to an extent.
While surely many have build their wealth by unethical means like using cheap labour like kids in sweatshops in china or by unfair competition or dirty business practices or whatever... Many also have not and just became very wealthy because their honest hard work paid off big time. I see nothing wrong with the latter.

As for "staying rich", this doesn't necessarily mean that one is greedy and stockpiling all the cash.
Take people like Bill Gates for example, who made a sport of donating billion upon billions and who's enormous fortune will be donated for 99%. This guy indeed has been in the top 5 of richest people on earth for decades. He's also in the top of biggest donators. Not that I think he gathered his wealth through fully ethical means though LOL!

At the same time, I'm also a guy who's always said things like "what can you do with 50 billion that you can't to with 1 billion?" in terms of private wealth.

So at the same time, I also would not at all be opposed to the idea of a "maximum wealth" for individuals. It's a tiny bit crazy to think that some people have like 100 billion dollars in the bank... But how do you enforce such a thing? And are we talking cash money or are we talking wealth / property in general?

Because, to take bill gates as an example again, let's suppose he gives away all his cash till he is left with literally only empty bank accounts. He still has his msft shares portfolio, worth many billions. So does that count as well for this "max wealth"? Then it turns problematic. Because at that point, one becomes forced to sell one's company when it reaches a certain size. And the same would go for all shareholders off course... Meaning that no one person would be able to have more then ... what.... 0.1% of the company?


While I certainly get the "need", or a better word is perhaps "concept", for a "max wealth per individual"... I think that in practical terms it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to enforce such a thing and make it bulletproof without at the same time also not raping constitutional rights and freedoms.

I don't think it's a good idea to force people to give their money away "because they have too much of it".
If however they have gathered those funds through questionable means... by all means, sue them to hell and back and force them to make things right one way or another. But lacking that.... how could it ever be justified? I think it can't.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

In a fair world, high intelligence would be considered a gift to be used in the service of others rather than an achievement to be rewarded.

The combination of high intelligence and greed has plagued our species for as long as we can recall in our history. It surely is immoral to take so much more that you need.

While I agree with your overall point, I think your use of the word "take" isn't justified.
To "take" somehow implies, in my ears, that it's been taken and not earned.

It's not like Jeff Bozos is standing next to you holding a gun and forcing you to use amazon services...

He earned his money, he didn't take it.
And by "earn" I don't mean (necessarily) that he deserves it. Just that he earned it in terms of hims creating a company that sells products and services, and in return he received an enormous amount of money from paying customers that bought those products and services - freely, by their own choice.

When you have a succesfull business, then you make lots of money.
Even if you yourself haven't lifted a finger and instead hired a bunch of people to do all the work for you.

 

[Audie]

So a person making $421,925 doesn't have extreme wealth, but a person who has $421,926 does. Hmmmm
Why that particular dividing line?

Who, precisely should decide when I have enough to satisfy my needs? After all, a person only "needs" food, shelter, and clothing. No autos, air conditioning, pleasure boats, Adidas tennis shoes......

There was a country in which the government did decide what it's citizen's "needs" were. It existed behind what was called the Iron Curtain.

So if a person starts a business by risking his own capital and spending the effort required to spin up the company from -0- profits (sometimes for several years) and employed dozens or maybe hundreds or thousands of people, and the income from the company pushes his income over this arbitrary line, do you think the government should raid his bank account and take his money?

How many businesses do you think would be started in the U.S. if that were the case?

I follow you that there is extreme wealth inequality. I agree with you that those who are on the bottom end of the spectrum need to be accounted for.
I am not sure how that should happen. Perhaps mandatory education Through at least High School level and perhaps through 4 years of college would help.
And then there is also a sizable group of individuals who simply refuse to work. What do we do with those?

By the way, quotes from religious texts or religious figures are of no value. Quotes from top tier economists would be.

Economics is said to be the dismal science.

Economics seen thro' a religious filter is garbage.