# How wealthy would the wealthiest person be in your ideal society? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 12, 2023, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503 "2023-12-12T19:17:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2023, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/21 "2023-12-13T13:49:50Z")
If I can reach the highest possible level of wealth by working at 20% of my ability, why would I work any harder? ---
**Author:** ![Airbeck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/airbeck/32/6574_2.png) [@Airbeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airbeck)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2023, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/22 "2023-12-13T16:55:17Z")
Pride? Boredom? If I could make as much money as possible by working at 20% capacity, then I would find other things I enjoy to fill the other 80%. Sounds fine to me. Maybe working as hard as we possibly can until we are almost 70 isn’t the ideal way to live life? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2023, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/23 "2023-12-13T20:29:09Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I’d also add in more anti-trust enforcement. Yes, that is a good idea also. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I wouldn’t have a wealth cap in my ideal society. That said, it would be significantly more difficult to become a billionaire in that society because I would eliminate the tax policies that favor the accumulation of wealth. I’m in broad agreement with DrDeth’s proposals. Thanks, and it makes more sense and its the American way. > [@Velocity](#): > > Problem is, that money could still do a lot of good put to some other use. Which is why you tax it. First 6.20% (with matching employer) on all earned income- no limit, same with medicare. Then a marginal tax rate of 75% or so- which would mean about 60% at the highest end. So some rich dudes earns 100 million- after taxes he gets to keep about $30Million, That is a nice chunk of change and you can live high on the hog for that. But then the government gets the rest- social security trust fund is massively recharged, and plenty left over for social services… or tanks or whatever. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I think that is what was lost as the wealthy moved away from marginal rates of 70-90%. > > When your marginal rate is so high it is probably better to invest that money in something. Start a new business. Good points. > [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](#): > > In this world, I agree largely with DrDeth. > > When I ruminate on this in the shower, my magical ideal society would have a giant pot into which all goods go and from which we each take what we need. But this ideal society would have no greed or corruption. I guess that’s where the magical part comes from. Yeah, we can imagine a wonderful magical world, but IRL we can just tax the bastards- which is totally fair and legal. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2023, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/24 "2023-12-13T20:32:30Z")
Beat me to it. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2023, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/25 "2023-12-13T21:02:46Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > > [@wolfpup](#): > > > > If everyone has access to all the essentials and reasonable comforts of life I couldn’t care less how obscenely rich some people are. > > Problem is, that money could still do a lot of good put to some other use. Even if everyone has access to essentials and reasonable comforts of life, if you have one super-rich guy with $1 trillion, that’s a lot of wasted money. > > The government could put $990 billion of it to all kinds of other things like energy, environment, education, military, infrastructure, etc. and not affect that guy’s living standards in the least (what’s a thousand mansions when you’ve got a hundred?) No, this is the pitfall of unlimited greed which individuals and the businesses they control are always driven by. No amount of money is ever enough. But governments, which represent the public interest, are responsible for ensuring a healthy balance between capitalist incentives and reasonable wealth distribution, and should never be driven by greed. To reiterate my previous statement, “The important point is not the regulation of maximum wealth, but the assurance of minimum standards of living for all members of society.” Those minimum standards of living should be commensurate with the overall wealth of the nation, and should be assured by measures like appropriate levels of taxation on the wealthy, minimum wage standards, protection of union rights, standards for employment security (protections against unjustified firings, etc), promoting competition and preventing monopolies, and other government-enforced standards that prevent the super-rich from exploiting everyone else. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/26 "2023-12-14T03:50:37Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > I don’t think anyone needs or deserves more than that and even if I did I still think anything beyond that would be detrimental to society as a whole. Yeah, that’s the scary bit for me. The wealth disparity we’re experiencing right now flows from this exact attitude - a group of people deciding what other people “deserve.” That never works out. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/27 "2023-12-14T04:12:41Z")
You’d have to ask Elon, who’s currently got FIVE full-time jobs. If he’s busy, you can ask Warren Buffett while he’s still working at age 94. It’s a sort of ironic socialist fallacy. Rich people’s biggest argument against a Universal Basic Income is that people that are just given the bare necessities will stop working - ignoring the fact that **they’re** swimming in money and leave their mansions for work at 6 a.m. ---
**Author:** ![Mnemnosyne](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mnemnosyne/32/3347_2.png) [@Mnemnosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mnemnosyne)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/28 "2023-12-14T05:44:05Z")
Yeah, something like this. Regardless of how wealth is measured, a certain multiple of the least wealthy person being the cap works well, it automatically adjusts, works with any form of wealth measurement, and means that all of society can be uplifted to higher and higher minimums and maximums over time. My initial thought was simply: 1000 times more wealthy than the least wealthy person. That would keep it simple and there’d be a pretty large gap between rich and poor, but not insanely large. In order for anyone to have a billion dollars, the least wealthy person in society would have to have a million. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/29 "2023-12-14T08:09:30Z")
The reason I want a wealth cap and not just progressive taxes is because in my ideal (well, as ideal as a monetary economy can be) world, I would want the behaviours that lead to vast accumulations of wealth to be strongly discouraged, more than mere taxation would do. > [@DrDeth](#): > > its the American way. This might shock you, but “the American way” isn’t universally considered something good to emulate. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/30 "2023-12-14T08:39:16Z")
Yeah, I think it’s also probably worth adjusting the multiplier so that it provides an incentive for people who are at the top, and desire to go higher, to expressly work on uplifting the bottom ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/31 "2023-12-14T11:39:52Z")
For me, a million dollars would mean I never have to work again and my kids would have a trust fund so they would never need to work. Nor their kids. My ex-wife sure would be angry but she chose to accept the divorce settlement. A billion dollars is beyond comprehension. I live in the third world, if I had Elon Musk’s net worth I could probably just buy my home country and set my deputy president up as benevolent dictator - I’m not going to do that job. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/32 "2023-12-14T11:52:30Z")
There would be no such concept as ‘wealth’ in my ideal society, which would be based on anarcho-syndicalism. Everyone would be provided with food, health care, shelter, and meaningful work. Normal governing units would be very small – a thousand people at maximum. In my ideal society, the human population would be an ecologically sustainable number (pre-industrial levels), and would be integrated into the rest of the planetary web of life, not destroying it. Ha ha ha. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/33 "2023-12-14T13:25:02Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > An arbitrary limit on wealth is the wrong approach. Income should just be taxed on a progressive scale and more tax avoidance loopholes should be closed. The important point is not the regulation of maximum wealth, but the assurance of minimum standards of living for all members of society. If everyone has access to all the essentials and reasonable comforts of life I couldn’t care less how obscenely rich some people are. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/34 "2023-12-14T15:38:10Z")
I think defining “wealth” is probably one of the most salient things for this thread. Everyone seems to be approaching it as if it means that a billionaire has some sort of Scrooge McDuck or Richie Rich vault of gold coins that he can swim around in. In fact, a great many are “paper wealthy” in the sense that their actual income isn’t necessarily in the billions, but the perceived value of their ownership stakes in businesses is. To use a more close to home example, a lot of people in my part of town had their net worth go up by quite a bit recently because the housing market has more than doubled the value of our homes over the past 5 years or so. And over a longer period of 15 years or so, it’s nearly tripled. It’s not like we can spend that though; it’s tied up in our homes. How does this ideal society treat someone who really does create the best mousetrap, and the value of his company skyrockets, even if his income doesn’t follow the same curve? None of that is actual liquid assets- it’s just corporate stock that increased in value very fast. ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/35 "2023-12-14T15:55:24Z")
Gov. Huey Long’s [Share Our Wealth](https://www.hueylong.com/programs/share-our-wealth.php) plan originally suggested capping wealth at $600 million (in today’s dollars) and later revised it down to around $80 million. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/36 "2023-12-14T15:55:49Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I would want the behaviours that lead to vast accumulations of wealth to be strongly discouraged I very much disagree. I want those behaviors, the endless drive to accumulate wealth, to be strongly encouraged, but far less effective. I want business owners, investors, CEOs and the like to vigorously pursue increased profits via expansion, efficiency, processes, etc. while operating within a social structure that ensures large chunks of those “advances” are distributed to society at large. Whether it’s via higher wages, broad social programs, UBI, let the business people work their business as hard as possible, in order to fund these programs. They get their piece, that’s for sure, but it won’t be as big as it is today, because they will be funding social programs along the way. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/37 "2023-12-14T17:03:51Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > I want those behaviors, the endless drive to accumulate wealth, to be strongly encouraged “The behaviours” I meant isn’t merely the drive to accumulate wealth. It’s things like - treating people as things, privileging output over well-being, believing growth is inherently superior to steady-state, and ignoring externalities that aren’t immediately codified as monetary value. Things like that. ---
**Author:** ![Cmyers1980](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyers1980/32/11814_2.png) [@Cmyers1980](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cmyers1980)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/38 "2023-12-14T20:07:18Z")
You’re right which is why I don’t believe in private ownership of the means of production or the extraction of surplus labor value as profit for the owning class. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2023, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/39 "2023-12-14T21:38:15Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > This might shock you, but “the American way” isn’t universally considered something good to emulate. Neither is the South African way, but this is an American board. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > I very much disagree. I want those behaviors, the endless drive to accumulate wealth, to be strongly encouraged, but far less effective. Just taxed highly and fairly. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2023, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503/40 "2023-12-15T06:52:53Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Neither is the South African way You don’t see me trumpeting “the South African way” as an ideal, here. You never will, either, absent some complete change in how this country does things so radical as to be SciFi. > [@DrDeth](#): > > this is an American board All that means is that most posters are American and the board is legally American, it doesn’t mean American Exceptionalism is the Law of the Land for ideas. Especially for ideas on how to structure a _better_ society. For most aspects of society, and that very much includes how to deal with wealth inequality, “Learn what America does - then do the opposite” is a very good heuristic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wealthy-would-the-wealthiest-person-be-in-your-ideal-society/994503.md?page=3)