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The wealthy in a society are the people who do two things:
The first is that they provide capital for new investments, new inventions and new products. So if you look, for example, at the computer, the first computers cost a lot of money, likewise the first cell phones. The wealthy at the time bought the computers for $7,000 and the cell phones for $2,500, which subsidized the research that then allowed Apple and other companies to now sell the cell phone for $49.95. So the prices of things come down, from cars to computers to cell phones because the rich are the initial purchasers, and that money then goes towards making this new technology more widely available and cheaper.}
Another function of the wealthy in an economy is that they are the people who hire the rest of us, so that most people who have a job are being employed by a wealthy guy or a wealthy group of guys under the name of a corporation.
The bottom line is that if you penalize the wealthy and have confiscatory taxation on them, you’re going to dry up or diminish both the capital that goes into the creation of newer and cheaper products and their ability to hire more people.
Ultimately, in my mind, the question is not about, for example, looking at Bill Gates who has something like $55 billion, deciding that he only needs $1 billion, and asking why we shouldn’t take the remaining $54 billion away. Rather the real question is if that $54 billion were to be taken away , who would be better to spend it? 535 guys in congress who didn’t do anything to earn that money, or Bill Gates himself? Who is more likely to be careful in spending the money and making sure that if it’s going to used philanthropically that it does a lot of good?
So then, it’s not simply a matter of whether it’s right to take the money, but it’s also a question of who’s money it is and who should have the say in deciding how that money is to benefit society.
Author, Commentator and President of The King's College, Dinesh D'Souza
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