Ask yourself how much you need to make in order to live comfortably, and feel "rich enough". Maybe $100,000/year would do it in most parts of the country? And probably a lot less.
Now suppose you had a million dollars (and just a million, ignoring these billionaires for the moment). That mean you could risk, without really blinking an eye, $900,000 on any investment; even if you lost every penny, you'd still be left with enough to live "well" and feel pretty "rich". At no point would you fear missing your next meal or losing the roof over your head, and you probably wouldn't care if you had a job. Of course, the odds of losing all $900,000 are slim; you'd probably see some payoff, and never really approach that unfortunate low.
Rich people will always have opportunities to make money that the poor will never have. Even if you tax a millionaire or billionaire at a very high rate, they'll have enough money left over to take many risks and very likely end up richer anyway. At the very least, they won't miss the money that went to taxes.
Now suppose you only make $15,000/year. Not only would it take years to reach the above "rich" $100,000 level, but you'd be insane to risk much of that low income on any investment: failure means you come out with zero and miss your next meal and lose your house. If they're lucky, these people may have a handful of investment opportunities and ways to become richer; if they screw up, most of those opportunities go away forever. Taxes at the bottom won't fix anything at all.
What I have always wondered: there has got to be a certain amount of money that by all normal standards HAS to be enough for a human being. If you are so rich, you can only have so many houses and cars and all sorts of other toys that you don't even need half of... then you want to leave something for your kids and their kids and generations to come, your relatives and family but still, that is considerably little. A few million go a LOOONG way.
So, after all the toys, investments and securing your offsprings, you are still left with a HUGE amount of money and assets which you will likely never make any use of anyway.
I know this goes against our ideals and system of capitalism but: if such a limit exists why not cut billionaires off above it and give the exceeding money directly to the government or charity?
You are trying to tell me that someone like Warren Buffet with a net worth of $50 billion can really actually make good use of all that money? I know, "there can never be enough" out of principle. But really, with 50bn I imagine you could not (sanely) possibly spend it fast enough in a way where you get something out of it or in return; it would grow back faster in interest than you can dish it out.
Well, assumed you were talking about sums < $1B. I can think of useful (starting businesses, research/engineering projects) things to do with up to $1B or so.
Now, suppose we wanted to cap individuals at say $2B. How would this actually work? That's not cash that's lying around. Almost all of Buffett's wealth is in equity of Berkshire Hathaway. He can't sell that without also losing ownership of BRK. Is BRK worth as much without Buffett and/or the people he's explicitly groomed?
Billionaires are billionaires not because of their income, but because of the assets that they control.
Now suppose you had a million dollars (and just a million, ignoring these billionaires for the moment). That mean you could risk, without really blinking an eye, $900,000 on any investment; even if you lost every penny, you'd still be left with enough to live "well" and feel pretty "rich". At no point would you fear missing your next meal or losing the roof over your head, and you probably wouldn't care if you had a job. Of course, the odds of losing all $900,000 are slim; you'd probably see some payoff, and never really approach that unfortunate low.
Rich people will always have opportunities to make money that the poor will never have. Even if you tax a millionaire or billionaire at a very high rate, they'll have enough money left over to take many risks and very likely end up richer anyway. At the very least, they won't miss the money that went to taxes.
Now suppose you only make $15,000/year. Not only would it take years to reach the above "rich" $100,000 level, but you'd be insane to risk much of that low income on any investment: failure means you come out with zero and miss your next meal and lose your house. If they're lucky, these people may have a handful of investment opportunities and ways to become richer; if they screw up, most of those opportunities go away forever. Taxes at the bottom won't fix anything at all.