The more society and the economy are controlled by hereditary wealth the less social mobility there will be.

Gates, Buffet, Soros are self made. The Kochs simply won the sperm lottery.

plcow: Multi-millionaires do not hide their cash under the matress or even in a bank account. They invest it in businesses. And when they invest it, they make damned sure they are making good decisions about how their money is being used.

One type of businesses they invest in, are "think tanks" that promote ideas favorable to the mulit-millionaire's profit making ability. Those ideas are not necessarily favorable to society as a whole.

During MS's heyday when Bill was at the helm, he was legendary for having one of the
lowest rates of philanthropic giving.

I am very glad to see that he has completely reversed this trend since he has gotten
married and largely retired from running his company.

But, that doesn't mean that multimillionaires and billionaires shouldn't pay higher taxes.

OnlyM3: And if everyone who sit on their couch all day leaching off the productive was even one tenth as ambitious, industrious and forward thinking with their educational options there would be no need to have governments take at gunpoint that which they did not earn to give it to those to lazy to provide for themselves.

If you're gonna rob me at least be man enough to pick up the gun and stick it in my face yourself.

I'm over 40 years old. I have been employed and paid taxes since I was 17 years old. I've never been on unemployment or welfare. I've worked both public sector jobs and private sector jobs and I've worked my ass off to make a small nest egg and care for my family. I have a degree that isn't liberal arts. I've given to charity. I don't have any personal issue with people that have come up with an idea and turned it into something that made them rich. Good for them, I wish I'd been the one to think of it first. And I've been luckier than some friends who have lost jobs, not because they were lazy, but because the market changed faster than they could adjust. They're not lazy either.

Your little internet screed is both pompous and incorrect. Many people who are millionaires have earned it through a good idea and a lot of hard work. But that presumes that everybody everywhere can be a millionaire simply through hard work. That's not true, there are elements of luck, and timing, and vision, not to mention the fortune of having access to the right people. Your post is dangerously ignorant, and I hope for your sake that the good fortune that has given you comfort enough to write ignorant things holds out. But I wouldn't count on it.

OnlyM3: And if everyone who sit on their couch all day leaching off the productive was even one tenth as ambitious, industrious and forward thinking with their educational options there would be no need to have governments take at gunpoint that which they did not earn to give it to those to lazy to provide for themselves.

You sound poor.

MugzyBrown: A lot more will be accomplished by the varous foundations Gates has given money to for science education than would ever be accomplished by taxing Gates at 50%.

But the question is, would they give less to charity if we took an additional 10% of their income? Note that it would be their income, not their wealth. Big difference.

Bill Gates III is the 0.0001%.

One of my favourite sites for calculating how rich you are compared to other people in the world:

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

It is an eye-opener indeed.

OnlyM3: Barricaded Gunman
MugzyBrown: A lot more will be accomplished by the varous foundations Gates has given money to for science education than would ever be accomplished by taxing Gates at 50%

And if everyone in Gates' tax bracket chose to be so generous, thoughtful and forward-thinking with their vast fortunes, that might be enough. But they aren't.
And if everyone who sit on their couch all day leaching off the productive was even one tenth as ambitious, industrious and forward thinking with their educational options there would be no need to have governments take at gunpoint that which they did not earn to give it to those to lazy to provide for themselves.

If you're gonna rob me at least be man enough to pick up the gun and stick it in my face yourself.

I like what you wrote. Don't listen to these other people. They sound like whiney hippies that have a sit-in to get to in 26 minutes.

According to the Global Rich List, any person with an income of $47,500 is at the edge of the Global 1%. There are about 60,000,000 people (less than the population of the UK) richer than you are.

There seems to be a glitch with very low figures. I entered $1 Canadian and got "You are the richest person in the world."

God only has $1 in wealth? No wonder he doesn't pay any taxes.

Bill Gates remains in the top 0.0001% even if you use figures much lower than his gross income. There's a really enormous range of numbers at the very top.

I like the wealth structure of the world to an onion plant, with a large bulb of "normal" people at the bottom and long green leaves (the rich and super-rich) rising above this bulb. The destitute are the tiny onion roots, while the super-rich is the onion flower at the top of the flower stalk.

This is a much more flexible model than the pyramid usually used but it retains the Egyptian theme. Since the onion has rings, it's easy to model the class structure and the socio-economic status (wealth, income) together. If your society is sharply divided by caste or race or religion, you can use a garlic plant instead of an onion and place people in the garlic cloves instead of layers.

North Americans often confuse wealth and income with class. In Europe and the UK, where it is possible to be of ancient family and noble title but as poor as dirt, this is more common in the lower or lower middle classes. Mind you, it's more common in the lower or lower middle classes here, because people perceive good pay and wealth as determining your status more than birth, education, professional status, etc.

This has little to do with social rising or falling, however. Lose your wealth, even the most noble and ancient scion of the upper classes may become déclassé. In the UK you can be enobled, become wealthy and powerful, join the establishment that runs things despite a lack of breeding, birth and education. Just look at Rupert Murdoch. His father was a rich Australian but he might as well have been a sheep-sheering son of a gun.

In the US there is less social mobility than there is socio-economic mobility. About one third of sons are slightly better off than their fathers, one third about the same and one third worse off. There is plenty of social rising and falling, but it is most modest and slow. On the other hand, it is fairly democratic, except that ditchdiggers become the fathers of doctors far more often than doctors become the fathers of ditch-diggers. It's easier to rise than fall because let's face it: the upper classes suck. There's an innate conservatism built into the system. It's hard to piss away a really big pile of advantages. It is easier to acquire a little money and become comfortably well-off than it is to sink despite the advantages of birth, breeding, education (formal and familial), the right clubs, the right marriages, the right religion, race, social class, influence, power, etc.

To fall out of the upper classes you really have to work at it. Being an alcoholic, a drug addict, a homosexual, a ne'er-do-well, a hippy, etc., is just not going to have that much effect on a well-managed trust fund. Your servants are just not going to let you have your money if you insist on risking their jobs and cushy lives.

For "like", read "liken" in my above post.