billionaires
On the Line: The Osage Nation v. The Koch BrothersAn upcoming documentary details how Charles and David Koch made billions off of the Osage people's oil money.
No one becomes a billionaire without victims. Charles and David Koch were no... READ MORE
Should Billionaires Exist? Do billionaires have a right to...
Should Billionaires Exist?
Do billionaires have a right to exist?
America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.
Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism:
1. Exploit a Monopoly.
Jamie Dimon is worth $2 billion today… but not because he succeeded in the “free market.” In 2008, the government bailed out his bank JPMorgan and other giant Wall Street banks, keeping them off the endangered species list.
This government “insurance policy” scored these struggling Mom-and-Pop megabanks an estimated $34 billion a year.
But doesn’t entrepreneur Jeff Bezos deserve his billions for building Amazon?
No, because he also built a monopoly that’s been charged by the federal government and 17 states for inflating prices, overcharging sellers, and stifling competition like a predator in the wild.
With better anti-monopoly enforcement, Bezos would be worth closer to his fair-market value.
2. Exploit Inside Information
Steven A. Cohen, worth roughly $20 billion headed a hedge fund charged by the Justice Department with insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” Another innovator!
Taming insider trading would level the investing field between the C Suite and Main Street.
3. Buy Off Politicians
That’s a great way to become a billionaire! The Koch family and Koch Industries saved roughly $1 billion a year from the Trump tax cut they and allies spent $20 million lobbying for. What a return on investment!
If we had tougher lobbying laws, political corruption would go extinct.
4. Defraud Investors
Adam Neumann conned investors out of hundreds of millions for WeWork, an office-sharing startup. WeWork didn’t make a nickel of profit, but Neumann still funded his extravagant lifestyle, including a $60 million private jet. Not exactly “sharing.”
Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud for her blood-testing company, Theranos. So was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto-exchange FTX. Remember a supposed billionaire named Donald Trump? He was also found to have committed fraud.
Presumably, if we had tougher anti-fraud laws, more would be caught and there’d be fewer billionaires to preserve.
5. Get Money From Rich Relatives
About 60 percent of all wealth in America today is inherited.
That’s because loopholes in U.S. tax law —lobbied for by the wealthy — allow rich families to avoid taxes on assets they inherit. And the estate tax has been so defanged that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates have paid it in recent years.
Tax reform would disrupt the circle of life for the rich, stopping them from automatically becoming billionaires at their birth, or someone else’s death.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. But do today’s entrepreneurs really need billions of dollars? Couldn’t they survive on a measly hundred million?
Because they’re now using those billions to erode American institutions. They spent fortunes bringing Supreme Court justices with them into the wild.They treated news organizations and social media platforms like prey, and they turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.
This has created an America where fewer than ever can become millionaires (or even thousandaires) through hard work and actual innovation.
If capitalism were working properly, billionaires would have gone the way of the dodo.
Racist Labour uses Tory racism against Abbott (to whom they’re also racist) to raise money
Starmer’s repulsive party has no shame or morals and is taking members for fools
Keir Starmer’s Labour party – that gives impunity to just about every type of racism rampant among the Labour right – is using a Tory donor’s racism against Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, to try to milk cash from gullible members.
In an email to members, Starmer criticises the blue-Tory version of the anti-Abbott racism as an excuse to beg for donations:
Starmer’s letter was dishonest as well as shameless – his party fawns over billionaires for their donations
The email does not mention that Ms Abbott is suspended from the Labour party for fighting anti-Black racism, which Labour disregards under Starmer who, in today’s PMQs, brazenly tried to score political points against the Tories for their racism toward Abbott.
While Starmer and a string of white MPs discussed racism toward Diane Abbott, Starmer’s pet Speaker Lindsay Hoyle prevented Ms Abbott getting a word in, ensuring that she was unable to point out the abuse of Starmer’s front bench toward her or the foul racism exposed by the leaked Labour report and barrister Martin Forde’s inquiry into it, which Starmer continues to ignore despite commissioning it.
The red-Tory version of racism is a non-issue to Keir Starmer, who has presided over wholesale deselection of Black candidates, suspended and sacked Black and Brown MPs like it’s going out of fashion – and has driven yet more to resign in disgust:
Some of the Black and Brown MPs sacked or driven out by the Starmer regime
While Starmer’s party drones protect racist councillors and functionaries, Starmer himself welcomes racist MPs back into the party – including one with an extra side of sexual harassment – with impunity and promoted Wes Streeting, whose ‘disgusting’ and ‘disgraceful’ rant in Ms Abbott’s face left her ‘shell-shocked’.
And he and his Shadow Cabinet did not even bother to contact Abbott when the news of Tory donor Frank Hester’s disgusting racism and threatening words toward her broke – but that did not (of course) prevent him using the situation to try (not very competently) to score points.
Labour is a racist and opportunist cesspit under the rule of its hard-right faction.
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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth – review
In the face of soaring wealth inequality, Ingrid Robeyns‘ Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth calls for restrictions on individual fortunes. Robeyns puts forward a strong moral case for imposing wealth caps, though how to navigate the political and practical hurdles involved remains unclear, writes Stewart Lansley.
Watch a YouTube recording of an LSE event where Ingrid Robeyns spoke about the book.
Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Ingrid Robeyns. Allen Lane. 2023.
Ingrid Robeyns’ Limitarianism is the latest in a long line of critiques – such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Branko Milanovic’s Visions of Inequality – of the soaring wealth and income gaps of recent decades. Limitarianism focuses on personal wealth, which is much more unequally distributed than incomes, and is arguably the most urgent of these trends. It draws most closely on the United States, where, according to Forbes, nine of the world’s top 15 billionaires are citizens.
Robeyns argues that given the wider damage from the enrichment of the few, with its negative impact on economic strength and on wider life chances and social resilience, we must now impose a limit on individual wealth holdings. Thinkers have been making the case for this “limitarianism” and the capping of business rewards for centuries. The Classical Greek Philosopher, Plato, argued that political stability required the richest to own no more than four times that of the poorest. The Gilded Age financier, J. P. Morgan – one of the most powerful of American plutocrats of the nineteenth century – maintained that executives should earn no more than twenty times the pay of the lowest paid worker. In 1942, President Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent top tax rate, stating that “[n]o American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year (about $1m in today’s terms).” “The most forthright and effective way of enhancing equality within the firm would be to specify the maximum range between average and maximum compensation”, wrote the influential American economist J. K. Galbraith in 1973.
The Gilded Age financier, J. P. Morgan […] maintained that executives should earn no more than twenty times the pay of the lowest paid worker.
One of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis was to trigger a debate about the role played by excessive compensation packages in banking. Others have argued that the introduction of guaranteed minimum wages – which limits employer freedom over employees – should come with a maximum too. As wealth inequality has deepened in recent decades, there have been growing calls for measures to reduce this concentration, not least among some members of the global super-rich club. Yet there has been perilously little political action. Each year the world’s mega-rich, facing few constraints, carry on appropriating a larger share of national and global wealth pools.
Robeyns sets out a powerful moral case against today’s wealth divide and asks the all-important question: “how much is too much?”. She calls for setting limits to the size of individual fortunes that would vary across countries. In the case of the Netherlands, where she lives, “we should aim to create a society in which no one has more than €10m. There shouldn’t be any decamillionaires.” This, she argues should be politically imposed. She also adds a second aspirational goal, an appeal to a new voluntary moral code applied by individuals themselves: “I contend that … the ethical limit [on wealth] will be around 1 million pounds, dollars or euros per person.”
Although there are many critics who dismiss the philosophical concept as either unfeasible or undesirable, history suggests the idea is far from utopian. Limits operated pretty effectively among nations – including the UK and the US – in the post-war decades and became an important instrument in the move towards greater equality.
War has long proved a powerful equalising force, and the post-1945 decades brought peak egalitarianism.
War has long proved a powerful equalising force, and the post-1945 decades brought peak egalitarianism. States shifted from their pre-war pro-inequality role to become agents of equality. This brought (albeit temporary) upward pressure on the lowest incomes and downward pressure on the highest. These limits operated in two ways: through regulation and taxation, and changes in cultural norms. Nations imposed highly progressive tax systems, with especially high tax rates at the top – that were sustained in the UK until the 1980s – the expansion of protective welfare states, and a shift in bargaining power from the boardroom to the workforce.
These policies were also enabled by a significant pro-equality cultural shift. This brought a tighter check on top business rewards and the size of fortunes. Until the early 1980s, business behaviour became more restrained, and wealth gaps narrowed. The kind of business appropriation that has become so widespread today would, for the most part, have been unacceptable to public and political opinion then. Gone were the public displays of extravagance and the high living of the inter-war years. Up to the 1970s, and the return of what Edward Heath called the “unacceptable face of capitalism”, executive salaries in the UK were moderated by a kind of hidden “shame gene”, an unwritten social code – similar in some ways to Robeyns’ call for voluntary limits – which acted as a check on greed. It was a code that was largely adhered to, partly because of fear of public outrage towards excessive wealth.
Up to the 1970s, and the return of what Edward Heath called the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’, executive salaries in the UK were moderated by a kind of hidden ‘shame gene’
Robeyns is making a conceptual case. She doesn’t give much detail of how limitarianism might work in practice, and doesn’t draw lessons from the post-war experience (though this was the product of the particular circumstances of the time). She recognises the hurdles needed to make the politics of limitarianism a reality. There are plenty of questions of detail that would need to be settled. How, as a society, would we determine the appropriate “rich lines” above which is too much? Would the “undeserving rich” whose wealth is achieved by extraction that hurts wider society, be treated differently from the ‘deserving’ who through exceptional skill, effort and risk-taking, create new wealth in ways that benefit others as well as themselves?
The expectation that the tremors of the 2008 meltdown would trigger a shift towards a more progressive governing philosophy that embraced a more equal sharing of wealth has failed to materialise.
The greatest hurdle is political. The expectation that the tremors of the 2008 meltdown would trigger a shift towards a more progressive governing philosophy that embraced a more equal sharing of wealth has failed to materialise. The pro-market, anti-state politics of recent decades are now largely discredited. International Monetary Fund staff, for example, have called neoliberal politics “oversold”. There are widespread calls for the reset of capitalism, with as Robeyns puts it, “a more considerate, values-based economic system”. Although such a system may yet emerge, there are few signs of the kind of value-shift and new cultural norms that would be a pre-condition for a politics of restraint and limitarianism.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: dvlcom on Shutterstock.
Labour front bench takes £650k from health privateers – more than Tories
Starmer and co rake in cash from private health donors – twenty-five percent more than the Tories
Keir Starmer and his front bench MPs have taken almost £650,000 from private health companies, according to a compilation of their declarations of MPs’ interests.
The totals accepted by MPs in Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet between 2020 and 2023 are:
- Keir Starmer £157,500
- Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting £193,225
- Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper £231,817
- Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves £14,840
- Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner £50,000
- Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy £1,640
- Total £649,022
Figures compiled by David Powell
The total accepted by Labour beats similar donations to the Tories by around twenty-five percent. Starmer and his health spokesman Streeting have vowed to extend the use of private companies for NHS services if Labour gets into government, while promising further austerity and refusing to say they will increase NHS funding to meet need, or increase wages for NHS staff, instead saying – just like Tories – that the NHS must ‘reform’ to be ‘sustainable’.
Both are also fully committed to the ‘Integrated Care’ programme of health rationing and incentivised cuts through withholding care – a direct import from disastrous US healthcare – that is wrecking the NHS even more thoroughly that previous Tory ‘reforms’.
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Parliament to reconvene to approve UK airstrikes on Yemen
As world unites in horror at Israel’s genocide, UK Establishment reaction is to protect Israel and billionaires by attacking country taking action for Palestinians
UDPATE: The UK is bombing Yemen tonight, without bothering to have Parliament approve it – and will recall MPs tomorrow to rubber stamp it. The UK is not at war with Yemen but is acting as a rogue state to protect Israel from the economic impact of the shipping interceptions.
The government is reconvening Parliament to push through a vote to approve airstrikes against Yemen, because of Yemen’s success in intercepting Israel-bound shipping to put pressure on Israel to end its genocide. The disruption to seaborne trade is said to be having a significant impact on the Israeli economy.
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has been taken to a Whitehall briefing tonight and is expected to recall MPs from their usual Friday activities away from Westminster to vote through the attacks – of course, ‘opposition’ leader and ‘Zionist without qualification’ Keir Starmer is fully expected to vote with the Tories.
With most of the world united in horror at the ICJ evidence of Israel’s genocide and war crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the UK Establishment reaction, always ready to side with the oppressor against the oppressed, is to protect Israel and billionaires by attacking a country to help Palestinians, regardless of the likely consequences of igniting a regional war.
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Cartoon: Billionaire buttinsky on campus
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Top Posts of 2023
Well, another year of blogging is over.
For me, it was a year of research themes. I spent the first half of 2023 debunking interest-rate orthodoxy. Then I spent the second half of the year studying the world’s billionaires. Here were the top 5 posts:
- Do High Interest Rates Reduce Inflation? A Test of Monetary Faith
- How Interest Rates Redistribute Income
- Interest Rates and Inflation: Knives Out
- Mapping the Ownership Network of Canada’s Billionaire Families
- Interest Rates and Unemployment: An Underwhelming Relation
A big thanks to my blog patrons, who’ve made it possible for me to do economic research outside of academia. If you’d like to support my work, you can do so here:
Thanks for reading,
Blair
The post Top Posts of 2023 appeared first on Economics from the Top Down.
What Charles Koch Paid to Elude 70 Years in Prison
In 1996, I filmed an investigation that never saw the light of day. It was about the richest guys you’d never heard of, Charles and David Koch—and their theft of a mind-blowing $2 billion in oil from... READ MORE
The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World – review
In The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World, Tim Marshall analyses the geopolitical dynamics and consequences of space exploration. According to Gary Wilson, the book is an illuminating insight into the political geography of space and the dynamics between world powers as they continue to expand the space frontier.
The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World. Tim Marshall. Elliott & Thompson. 2023.
Find this book: 
While Tim Marshall’s previous works have firmly established him as a prominent authority on the politics of geography, in this new book he enters uncharted territory: an appraisal of the geopolitical dynamics and consequences of space exploration. In a series of earlier books Marshall considered the impact of geography on the possibilities and limitations of the projection of national power in some of the world’s political hotspots. The Future of Geography breaks new ground by probing how major world powers’ activities in space may come to shape the future of world politics in (until recently) ways which could not have been envisaged.
The Future of Geography begins with the premise that space is rapidly becoming an extension of earth, representing the latest arena for intense human competition. Although the book explores the space activities and objectives of a wide spectrum of states and other actors, Marshall makes clear from the outset that there are three main players to be aware of: China, the US and Russia.
Space is rapidly becoming an extension of earth, representing the latest arena for intense human competition.
The book is structured into three parts. The first of these is relatively brief and consists of two chapters which serve to provide useful context for the more substantive treatment of space activity found in part two. In chapter one Marshall traces interest in space back to the earliest recorded historical periods, noting that there is a long history of “studying stars,” stone circles and similar (phenomena perceived as otherworldly or mysterious). Beginning with the Babylonians, he charts astronomical advances through Greek and Roman times into the twentieth century, referencing the scientific contributions of the likes of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton along the way. In the second chapter, Marshall identifies the origins of modern space exploration in Germany’s wartime rocket development programme, before proceeding to explain the importance of the Cold War in generating further advances in space as part of the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. A string of Soviet “firsts” in the 1950s and early 1960s, culminated in Yuri Gagarin being the first man in space, which lead to huge surges in American space budgets as they raced to put the first man on the moon.
A string of Soviet “firsts” in the 1950s and early 1960s, culminated in Yuri Gagarin being the first man in space, which lead to huge surges in American space budgets as they raced to put the first man on the moon.
Part Two of the book represents its substantive core. In its six chapters, Marshall first explores some of the general difficulties and tensions generated by modern space exploration, before appraising the space policies of the world’s major players in this arena. The geography of space cannot be understood in earthly terms and scales, but in chapter three Marshall presents a series of numerical markers which permit the reader to gain some sense of the enormity of distances in space. Although NASA regards space as beginning at 80 km, the International Space Station is located 400km into space, while medium and higher earth orbit extend the area for potential exploration yet further. Noting that over 80 countries have satellites in space, Marshall posits that “the idea that space is a global common is disappearing.”
Most existing international space treaties are regarded as outdated, products of the Cold War that fail to account for technological advances and the expansion of states with space-related aspirations.
This leads into chapter four’s consideration of efforts to regulate space by legal mechanisms. Most existing international space treaties are regarded as outdated, products of the Cold War that fail to account for technological advances and the expansion of states with space-related aspirations. At best, current space activity is governed by a series of non-binding, ad hoc agreements. Marshall lays out the various sources of potential scope for conflict or disagreement, including questions raised by the activities of private bodies in space and increased space debris from the deployment and destruction of satellites. While the need for new legal regimes to regulate and foster cooperation in space activity is accepted, such developments are hindered by the fact that the major three space powers agree on little.
China’s space programme is more militarised than the others and, despite being a slower starter in space exploration, now seeks to rival the International Space Station.
The following three chapters consider in turn the space policies of the three big space powers. China’s space programme is more militarised than the others and, despite being a slower starter in space exploration, now seeks to rival the International Space Station. It is the only country operating its own space station and is working with Russia on the creation of moon base. China established various “firsts” in space during the first decades of the twenty-first century, is home to over a hundred private space companies and has developed plans for the years ahead, including launching over 1,000 satellites within a decade. Within the US, space investment has fluctuated over time in accordance with its relative popularity. However, in 2019 the US launched a 16,000 strong Space Force and has invested heavily in early-warning satellites and laser weapons. While planning a lunar gateway space station, the US has collaborated increasingly with private firms such as Space X, the first company into space and which was contracted to build a lunar landing module. In contrast to initiatives taking place in China and the US, Marshall suggests that Russia’s “best days in cosmology look to be behind it.” However, Putin has sought to reinvigorate Russia’s space programme as tensions have increased between Russia and the West in recent years. Its efforts depend heavily on its cooperation with China, with Russia regarded as the junior partner in the alliance to undermine US superiority.
Putin has sought to reinvigorate Russia’s space programme as tensions have increased between Russia and the West in recent years. Its efforts depend heavily on its cooperation with China.
The emphasis on the big three powers should not overlook the fact that an increasing number of states have invested to some extent in space activity. A brief survey of some of these takes place in chapter eight, which considers the move towards regional space blocs, such as the US allied European Space Agency, within which Italy, Germany and France have all been major players. While states as varied as Japan and India, Israel and the UAE are all referenced in this overview, Marshall notes that nobody comes close to challenging the big three.
In the book’s final part Marshall ponders some of the possibilities for the future of space exploration. The penultimate chapter sees him present some hypothetical scenarios, which illustrate some of the potential sources of future conflict. He highlights the danger of pre-emptive strikes in space and potential for escalation of conflict in such a scenario, while the biggest threat is considered most likely to arise from competition between the US and China. The book concludes by acknowledging the commercial opportunities which exist in space, while observing the various practical difficulties which may limit the extent to which they represent realistic propositions.
The Future of Geography makes an important contribution to understanding the political geography of space exploration and its impact on relationships between the world’s major powers.
The Future of Geography makes an important contribution to understanding the political geography of space exploration and its impact on relationships between the world’s major powers. It is not always easy to engage with some of the space jargon deployed, which presumes a certain amount of knowledge of space terminology and factual knowledge. There is also scope for the impact of space activity on international relations to be drawn out in more specific terms on occasion, to more effectively illustrate the possible real-world effects it may come to have. However, in a challenging and problematic arena of international political activity, the book offers insights which further the appreciation of the political geography of space exploration and provide illuminating food for thought as to what the future of space may hold.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
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