Bill Gates on a Wealth Tax

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

14. I don't know how much she "deserves."

But I don't believe it's a billion dollars. Nor do many others.

Abolish Billionaires
A radical idea is gaining adherents on the left. It’s the perfect way to blunt tech-driven inequality.

I like to use this column to explore maximalist policy visions — positions we might aspire to over time rather than push through tomorrow. Abolishing billionaires might not sound like a practical idea, but if you think about it as a long-term goal in light of today’s deepest economic ills, it feels anything but radical. Instead, banishing billionaires — seeking to cut their economic power, working to reduce their political power and attempting to question their social status — is a pithy, perfectly encapsulated vision for surviving the digital future.

We’re already seeing these effects now. A few superstar corporations, many in tech, account for the bulk of American corporate profits, while most of the share of economic growth since the 1970s has gone to a small number of the country’s richest people.

But the problem is poised to get worse. Artificial intelligence is creating prosperous new industries that don’t employ very many workers; left unchecked, technology is creating a world where a few billionaires control an unprecedented share of global wealth.

But abolishment does not involve only economic policy. It might also take the form of social and political opprobrium. For at least 20 years, we’ve been in a devastating national love affair with billionaires — a dalliance that the tech industry has championed more than any other.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/opinion/abolish-billionaires-tax.html