Are billionaires evil?

 Okay, so, Andrew Yang discussed this on his podcast, and I wanted to weigh in too. This is actually one of the topics that got me banned from r/antiwork. Because some guy (the same guy who was the anti UBI communist pro JG guy) was going on about how all billionaires were categorically evil and I was like "well, maybe they're not ALL bad...". You cant show nuance on left wing subs. If you violate their ideology, they ban you. Just like in real life, when they take power in real countries. They just delete the opposition and people who lack moral purity. It's one of the reasons I can't take them seriously or align with them.

  Now, Andrew Yang is a christian. Despite having the whole human centered capitalist thing, he never really seemed to get the ethos I was going for, which was humanism, but still, he's a nuanced guy, so...yeah. But yeah they were discussing like whether rich people could get into heaven, and in christianity, the answer is almost categorically no. If I were to adopt that perspective, I'd be inclined to agree with them. Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely, and insane amounts of money is a form of power in society. And the problem with most billionaires is they wanna preserve that power.

 However, many have shown themselves to be a bit humanitarian. They donate millions to charities, they try to solve malaria and stuff. Ya know, some try to at least do some good with their money. I would say I agree with left wingers enough on class antagonism that most will simply preserve their position in the broken system rather than allow the system to be fixed, which is problematic, but are they all like baby eating monsters? No. Here's the thing. The most moral people have SOME flaws, and the most evil people sometimes have SOME good to them. No one is like 100% good or evil. Which is why I'm disinclined to say that billionaires are just categorically evil.

I mean, there's personal morality, and then there's the system. Sure, the system that makes billionaires that rich is evil in its own way. I don't believe one can get a billion dollars ethically, minus possibly winning the lottery. You probably screwed over some on the way, and the fact that the system has flaws that allows for people to become billionaires is a condemnation against it. So I actually do have some left wing views here. But, I dont tend to blame the billionaires themselves unless they're really jack###es about it and overtly protect and defend the system that made them that wealthy and oppress everyone else. Ya know? it's a system. The reason it happens is because the ownership mechanism of capitalism draws wealth away from workers toward the wealthy, and then the wealthy can just sit on a ton of wealth. And then they claim they got it through hard work. I dont deny billionaires work hard, but I dont think work truly earns you a billion dollars. It's the ownership. So my issue is when they act like privileged ###holes and promote this dogma of hard work, expecting us to slave away while acting like they earned their place to rule over the rest of us. 

What's my solution? Well, I'm not really a communist, or even a socialist, even if I occasionally delve into leftist thinking. My solutions are pretty liberal, and similar to Yang's. I just want the wealthy to pay more in taxes, and fund a UBI that gives some of that wealth back to the rest of us. Hell even though I kinda agree with the billionaires shouldnt exist, if I think about the actual solution to that, which would be a 100% marginal tax rate on incomes above $1 billion, I wouldnt really advocate for a hard cap. Because perhaps that extra money does serve as a motivator to make them work harder, to grow their companies, and produce more wealth for society. And perhaps if we taxed them that highly, they wouldn't, and there would be less to redistribute later. So I'm fine with billionaires existing, given they pay laffer curve level tax rates, say, around 70% of their income, to fund generous social programs for the rest of us. UBI, universal healthcare, free college, housing, stuff like that. They keep some of it, as a reward for working and trying, and then we use social programs to ensure the wealthy actually "trickles down" to the rest of us. 

And yeah, that's where I differ from leftists. Leftists just have this idea that all members of that class are evil, with many going so far to think they should either be executed (in the marxist-leninist approach), or should be forced to work (like the maoists) did, or some other flavor of cruelty that stems from their idea of class warfare. Nah. I'm a lib. I wanna be civil and humane here. Just pay taxes and fund my super progressive crap, and you can make as much money as you want. I don't really care.

r/antiwork might think I'm a right winger or some class traitor for such an opinion, but ya know what? Screw them. They kind of dig themselves into irrelevance with their extremism. And I'd argue the sub isn't even against work any more. They just hate their bosses and want *spongebob rainbow* "communism." That isn't the answer, dawg. The answer is UBI and more moderate stuff that helps people without being so vindictive you wanna violate peoples' human rights. Ya know?

Again, yang kinda gets it more right than leftists do. I think yang could use a slightly more leftist informed worldview as he's a little too conciliatory to the wealthy given his own background as a CEO and entrepreneur, but still, his actual solutions are WAY closer to what I support regardless of that worldview.