Space-sized egos, tiny tax bills… Billionaires should be jettisoned | Eva Wiseman
The time has come to abolish billionaires. I mean, it's been coming for a while, but now the alarm is ringing.
It started ringing when it first became clear that the existence of billionaires revealed a huge failure in our economic system. When it first became clear where wealth comes from, a combination of inheritance, corruption and exploitation. When the benefits of billionaires, who have often been believed to helpfully provide a trickle-down of cash to the rest of us ordinaries, were revealed to be at best minimal and at worst devastating, as their tax avoidance fatally impacts education and healthcare. In June, ProPublica reported that American billionaires essentially pay no taxes - they didn't break the rules; the rules were broken already. And in this way wealth begets wealth - a millionaire can become a billionaire by simply sitting very still.
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