What would be wrong with windfall taxing Bill Gates and giving the poorest million people 50,000 dollars each?
Answer:
Why take money from Bill Gates that seems like discrimination. Bill gate already pays millions of dollars in taxes each year. Additionally redistribution of wealth has never worked, so why would you expect it to be any different now. Why would you give it to 1,000,000 people, and how would you determine who those million are? What about the 1,000,001 person who may be $1 poorer does he just go cry, hire a lawyer, and claim he is also entitled to some of Bill Gates money. Then the next guy will do the same, and the next, and the next, and so on. Then some organization will take up the cause and everyone who has more money then someone else will have to give it away. Seems like a bad idea to me because in a very short time the rich will be rich again, and the poor will be poor again. Help the poor, but do not redistribute money.
Smart move. We could all go buy new computers and all the bells and whistles and he would make it all back in a week or so.
Firstly: wrong, because I am not among the poorest,
Secondly: wrong: It may be a worthwhile effort or not, But who are we to decide? He with the funds makes the decision. I feel the truthiness of the matter is that Bill and Melinda have turned out to be philanthropic.
Thirdly: undecided. Define "windfall"
Why just put on Bill Gates? There are other billionaires who could spare some "change", too. And its not a bad idea as long as those who recieve it would then never be allowed to be on welfare again...
It would be wrong to take something from somebody and to give to to someone that doesn't deserve it. For example, let's say I take someone's Cadillac Escalade, sell it, and give the money to my friends because they need it. That would be wrong, obviously because it's stealing.
Well we all know stealing is bad, so let's have another example that isn't so clear. Let's say I gather up 50 poor, homeless families and I put them in front of John Edwards' mansion and I bring all of the major news stations and major newspapers from around the country to see. And I guilt John Edwards into giving up his house because if he didn't he'd look bad in front of the nation.
That would be bad because I'd be forcing him to give something to somebody that does not rightfully deserve.
Really, if people want to give to the poor they should do so because they want to. The government shouldn't force me to be charitable. If they didn't take so much from me already, I'd have more to give freely to the poor.
The poorest people I know are lazy no good. Why not give the 50K to honest working people.
Bums with money -- that will really work
It is wrong to take any amount of anyone's money to give to another. To do so violates the spirit of liberty.
Becuase then Bill Gates would close down the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and the people recieving the money from that would be out of luck.
It's capitalism at its finest. Why is it fair for someone to make millions and give away what they worked so hard for. True, it may be spare change to him, but at the same time, he earned it. I don't make much money at all, but i'll be damned if I am giving my hard earned money to someone else to even things out. Besides, you reap what you sow, if someone truly wants riches, they have to take the appropriate steps, and make the proper sacrifices. If you want someone, you go out and do it, no questions asked.
Bill's gonna lost his fortune very soon once hyperinflation strikes the USA.
Well, for starters taking what is belongs to someone else is stealing and we know that is wrong. Are we going to stop at Bill Gates. So we wipe out Bill Gates this year and a million people get $50,000 each. Hardly a life changing amount. The smart one's won't have to work for a year. The stupid will be back down to zero in about a month with a couple of new cars and no money to buy gas for them.
Now at year two we've still got the same 1 million broke people and a couple million more that quit working so they could qualify for the next big handout. And Bill Gates is wiped out. So now we've got 3 million people looking at you to come up with a $50,000 hand out. How long can you sustain this until you have no one willing to work and all the rich people have left the country to get out of your reach. At which point the millions of handout seekers will be after your head.
I guess I don't see what good could come of this.
This is a social experiment that has already been tried - and it failed. It's called "redistribution of the wealth". The Soviet Union and its satellites tried for decades to make it work. Rather than using capitalism to increase the standard of living for everyone, those in charge acted as if wealth were fixed and should be evenly split among everyone. Large companies were "repatriated" and taken over by the government.
But human nature requires that people have incentive to work harder. If no one is allowed to gain wealth, no one has a reason to work hard, invest, and grow businesses. The standard of living goes way down, and everyone ends up suffering.
By creating Microsoft, Bill Gates not only helped revolutionize the way people worked, played, and generally accessed information, he also created many rich people along the way - just ask any of the people who have worked for Microsoft for a long time and have owned shares since the 1980's. Millions of others have been positively influenced as well.
It's much more meaningful to give people the means to earn their own money instead of just giving them a wad. The saying is, "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day - teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime".
It does not work because the poorest people in the world are poor because of mismanagement of money. That money would be gone in minutes.
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