POLITICS
How Could We Limit Wealth?
I don’t think we can, but…
You want to try taking away this guy’s money? I think you’d have quite a fight on your horizon, but there are people who are pushing for limits on individual wealth.
The Atlantic ran an article this month on this very subject, insisting that nobody but nobody should be able to accumulate an excessive pile of money. What’s excessive? Maybe anything over $20 million.
The article was run on April 1st, but I don’t think the author was joking. I agree with her, but I think this would be very hard to do. First, you’d need tremendous pressure from voters, which I’m not sure we could get right now, and the lower the cap figure, the harder it would be. Second, that pressure would need to be sustained, year after year, before Congress members would feel any need to do anything toward it.
Then there’s that cap. I’ve known people with that kind of wealth. They did not see themselves as unusually wealthy.
Shocked? Well, they could be right. If most of your wealth is in stocks, that can shrink very quickly — ask Elon Musk about that!
But hey, stuff happens, right? Most of my wealth — such as it is — is tied up in stocks and our house. The cash I keep on hand wouldn’t last a year, and that’s if…
