Who wants to be a billionaire? If your metaphorical hand shot up, you are part of the problem, pardner, not the solution.
Bad billionaires are front and center in today's news, including America's First Family of Avarice, the Waltons. Billionaires have a magazine, called Forbes, which maintains a list that keeps track of who the billionaires are and how they are doing financially.
The top ten listed help illustrate America's Bad Billionaire problem. In descending order, they are: Bill Gates, Carlos Slim Helu, Warren Buffett, Armancio Ortega, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, David Koch, the Walton Family, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Arnault. Mssrs. Gates, Buffett and Ellison have signed the Giving Pledge, "to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy."
While signing that pledge might help make a bad billionaire into a not quite so bad billionaire, it doesn't automatically make a bad billionaire into a good billionaire. Perhaps the least bad of them, Warren Buffett, nevertheless owes his fortune to insightful exploitation of the existing status quo in business, commerce and finance. No one has a larger personal interest in maintaining that status quo. Bill Gates is a monopolist with a billionaire hobbyist's interest in charter schools. Larry Ellison sprays wealth around frivolously chasing narcissistic dreams of celebrity. There are lots of reasons to keep these people out of the, so far, vacant and lonely Good Billionaires Clubhouse.
Even clearer reasons keep the others on the list out of the GBC. Mr. Adeleson, the Koch brothers and the Walton's affirmatively use their billions to control and dominate governments and undermine democracy. Mr. Ortega lurks in secrecy, hoarding his fortune in some lonely hideaway. Mr Helu has made and lost fortunes extracting precious metals from the Third World and keeps his remaining money invested in real estate and blue chip assets. He used some of it to gain monopoly power over Mexican telecommunications. Mr. Arnauld sees himself as put on this Earth to help the World's richest people pretend they live in pre-Revolutionary France, in 18th Century palaces. I did not make that up. "I see myself as an ambassador of French heritage and French culture," he once told Forbes. "What we create is emblematic. It's linked to Versailles, to Marie Antoinette." BTW, the quality of billionaires doesn't get better if you move down the Forbes billionaires list. The next five include three more Waltons and a cosmetics diva.
Bad billionaires.
Bad billionaires cause trouble. Even when they aren't actively trying to cause trouble, they still remain part of the problem and beholden to a bad system of low taxes, poor public services and high deference to wealth.
As a matter of public policy, the propagation and misconduct of billionaires should be regulated because they are bad for the country. Go out into the tall grass for more on this.
First, no one should become a billionaire by inheritance. Mssrs. Gates, Buffett, Ellison, Adelson and Helu are regarded as self-made. But society needn't allow them to pass their billions along to their heirs, the way Sam Walton did. Not permitting some people to begin with billions apparently does not deter some from taking advantage of luck and opportunity, nevertheless, to become so wealthy. Have you become well acquainted with someone who had inherited great wealth, or stood to do so? I've known a few and the experience suggests that the money tends to ruin them as decent human beings. A confiscatory death tax would be very humane legislation.
But that isn't all. The Supreme Court decision in Citizen United uniquely enabled bad billionaires in the arena of political speech. Still, the First Amendment has always permitted the government to impose content neutral restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech, to protect legitimate public interests.
When money becomes speech, the volume of speech is generally directly proportional to the volume of money. One million dollars speaks much louder than than one dollar. If one dollar speaks, one hundred thousand dollars shout and one million dollars yell with a stentorian bellow.
No matter the message, shouting it dangerously or disruptively, as in too loud, or in the wrong place, or at the wrong time of day, or too often, has always been subject to regulation. The pubic, through government, has a legitimate and strong interest in maintaining a more even playing ground in the soccer field of ideas that is supposed to be public discourse in America. Although many perceive that Citizen's United can be fought only with a Constitutional amendment, that may not be true.
What if support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United combined with a regulatory backlash, with Congress, the FCC, State legislatures and city councils passing laws, regulations and ordinances to tone down the public policy shouting of bad billionaires, so that other voices can be heard, too. Justify the moves as reasonable time, place and manner restrictions. Fight in the courts. These content neutral regulations would fall with equal force on the stentorian bellows of both progressive and conservative billionaires.
This kind of rear guard, non-frontal, legislation/litigation has been the tactic of the enemies of Roe v. Wade for more than a generation, and those bastards have known many successes. unfortunately for American women. Progressives could tear a page out of their playbook and put it to better use fighting bad billionaires.