Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and the other millionaires and billionaires of Microsoft are brilliant, hardworking, entrepreneurial and justly wealthy. But only the first 5 percent of their wealth can be justified as an economic incentive to encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise. The next 95 percent would create much more happiness and opportunity if it were divided evenly among U.S. citizens or others than if they were to consume any portion of it
Many of the commenters on Marginal Revolution appear to think that Brad is advocating extreme wealth redistribution. The article actually talks about the importance of education in narrowing inequality and I think the relevance of the passage above is that it may be seen as an argument for some sort of progressive taxation, or education funding policy (which would of course imply a redistribution of some sort, not at the personal level that the passage above suggests)
no comments