Many years ago, a Palestinian prophet said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Spin that how you will, but it sounds like a damnation of wealth to me. Jesus might have meant that while money itself might not be bad, having too much of it would make you bad. And who can look at Musk and Bezos and Murdoch and disagree?
A few years after Jesus said this, Lord Acton wrote, “"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Yes, indeed. Who are the exceptions to this rule?
After the Rebellion in Animal Farm – the very next day, in fact – the pigs claim all the cows’ milk for themselves. No discussion or negotiation is entered into. They just take it. And it’s distressingly hard to find examples where the leaders of a revolution – or the leaders of a left-leaning, democratically-elected government – don’t take the milk for themselves.
However, working out how we can have real democracy and equality is a many-coursed feast. My burek-sized topic today is this – we need laws to stop people getting too rich. We need to help those unfortunate wealthy souls get into the kingdom of heaven.
I’m by no means radical on this issue. I’m a hundred-million-dollar man. You can have as much money as you want, so long as the total is a $100 million or less. Each year, everyone who completes a tax return has to put a rough estimate of their assets and liabilities, rounded down to the nearest million. If you’re over $100 million – or if the Tax Office thinks you might be – you are asked to be more specific. Eventually, the Tax Office sends you a bill. Once you’ve paid up, your net worth will be at or below the safe level of $100 million.
I know, this is still too much money, and God might still reject some of these fellers at the Pearly Gates. I can hear God’s booming voice as I write this: “How many mosquito nets and measles vaccinations could your $100 million have bought for the poor?” But, baby steps toward socialism, I say. Let’s start with $100 million and work our way down if we need to.
On the other hand, there will be those who will squeal at the injustice. “Socialism! Communism!” Sure, keep the insults coming. All I want to do is to save our wealthier citizens from ending up like Elon Musk. Oh, I’d also like everyone to get an excellent education, medical and dental car and respect and dignity in their old age. And if our hard-done-by wealthy folk can be induced to share, then all of these things can be had.
Because, all jokes aside, $100 million is quite a lot of money. Even if you “invested” half of it in things like a nice house in the city and a beach house here and there and a fancy car or two, you’d still have $50 million put away to make a decent income for you every year until you go to your reward and find out if what that Palestinian prophet said was true. And I’m not one really to hand out investment advice, but my mental arithmetic is quite good and I’m thinking that, invested prudently, with funds put back in to cover inflation, you’d still be getting an income of $30 thousand each week. Which, if you’re careful, should keep you in food, toilet paper and fast wi-fi.
The thing that rich people really hate to admit is that, beyond a certain point, getting richer is not about making your own life better. It’s about having more power. On one level, this might be merely about status – look at my billion-dollar yacht, my private jet with a swimming pool, my gold-threaded toilet paper. More importantly though, it’s about political power. Politicians will listen to billionaires, no matter how obnoxious and self-serving they are, because money like that buys you serious things. It buys you newspapers, tv stations, social media platforms. It means you can choose to invest or not invest in things that will create, or not create, jobs for people. And this kind of power makes even iron-backed lefties like Albo go weak at the knees.
So, to prevent the rise of the next Musk and Bezos, let’s set a limit for wealth. Too much wealth in too few hands is bad for the world, but it’s also very bad for the wealthy too. It’s tragic to watch the death of their souls. When Musk and Bezos flew into space while the rest of the world dealt with the global pandemic, my outrage and disgust was mingled with pity. What a sad sight, the richest men in the world, flaunting their toys and actually believing they were doing something cool. I pictured some spoiled brat of a child, riding their gold-plated bike around the playground while the other kids played with sticks in the dirt.
It's not cool, it’s just really, really sad.
We have to save these monsters from themselves.