America's most cited conservative jurist not yet sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, Richard Posner, has taken to musing about the source of grand fortune — and does not “find any merit to the celebration of the tycoon.”
All financial success, Posner posited earlier this month, boils down to chance, the luck of having wealthy parents or meeting the right people or being born with intelligence. If luck does trump all else, adds Posner, “a brilliant wealthy person like Bill Gates is not 'entitled' to his wealth in some moral, Ayn Randian sense.”
But Posner still opposes steep taxes on the rich. He considers them disincentives. Counters legal analyst James Kwak: If the rich don’t have “any particular moral entitlement to their wealth because that wealth is the product of luck,” why not have them pay more in taxes than the poor and middle class?
No comments:
Post a Comment