People who do not contribute to society are what we call parasites. Just because your father or grand-grand-father did something useful to the world doesn't justify that you have to live like a king. Modern society destroyed the old feudal order exactly to avoid this kind of social injustice.
You don't even need to get all this righteous anger involved; the rich benefit more from the stable functioning of society than the poor precisely because they are rich. If the structures that support that wealth were to collapse they'd have a lot more to lose than the guy drowning in debt. It's not only reasonable to expect them to invest more proportionally in the continued functioning of society: it's in their best interest if they're smart enough to look past their balance sheet at the end of the year.
That's a clearly defective model from a game theoretical point of view. A certain rich person can do very little to preserve the stability of the society, so their actions would be concentrated on things that give them direct benefits, that may or may not help society. It's essentially an externality problem, everybody is marginally hurt by say pollution, but some have local gains that far outweigh the costs, motivating them to pollute, bribe politicians and regulators, skirt taxes and so on, leaving other rich or poor people to support the welfare of the society. When the scales tip in favor of the freeriders, you have a failed state that no rich profiteer could have prevented, working individually.
Working individually, yes. But realistically this is more of an iterative prisoner's dilemma than a straight prisoner's dilemma. If the rich don't hold up their part of the social contract, the poor tend to eat them (eventually). So the rich are only incentivized to screw the system if they can get away with it. The problems start happening when we let them get away with it.
Who says they're smart enough? There's a very long history of aristocracies perfectly content to exploit the lower classes, and then got all shocked when the peons wanted the wealthy executed - assuming of course the aristocrats hadn't first riled up the ignorant masses with some reason to start a war.
They only invest in those things that prop them up. Like donating to police or lawmakers, or the very poor with next to nothing to lose (and thus the most dangerous).
I completely agree that the richest should contribute to society, especially as someone in the middle class. However, let's pretend I was born into the wealthiest class. If I inherit a business, that business provides jobs (ie. wages) for people, and is a functioning part of the economic system. Does that mean I am not contributing?
Regardless of how rich I am, I still need to eat and live and put clothes on my back. Are these not contributions?
Or are you suggesting that the wealthiest are parasites simply because they should contribute more to society than someone less financially well off?
> I'd say the higher in the social rank, they ratio of contribution to taking drops exponentially, not linearly.
You mean the richer people are, the ratio of their contribution to taking grows? That does not seem possible, because that will not make the person rich in the first place.
Avoiding taxes isn't illegal though. So in a global economy I'm not sure your argument is technically justified and simply the righteous argument most people would accept as true.
If my US company shifts labor to India, do we assume it is bad simply because the US doesn't receive those wages to stimulate the US economy? Does this benefit India though?
I think your argument depends on perspective, from US point of view this situation is bad, from India's it isn't bad. From the wealthy person's doing this, it simply benefits him/her.
I don't know how to solve this and completely agree with the argument but it is technically flawed.
