Should everyone’s income be similar, or should some people be allowed to amass huge fortunes.?

Question

as detailed as possible, please =) thanks

Answer 1

Most people would probably say that everyone should have similar income, because most people don't have massive fortunes, but there are some good things about having certain people with a ton of money.

The most basic advantage is that people with a lot of money can invest and create new businesses very easily.  By being able to create new businesses easily, innovation is more likely to happen.  And, of course, without people being able to create massive fortunes, why would businesses strive to be the best?  A CEO of a company wants a lot of money, so he's going to do his job, make sure the people under him are doing a good job, and so on down the line.  Massive wealth doesn't seem fair, and it isn't in many cases, but ridiculously rich people do help to increase innovation and create business in an economy.

Answer 2

If everyone's income be similar, then it's not going to be fair. For example, A has a higher knowledge than B in producing X, then A needs a higher return for knowing the theory of producing X.  Since A has an opportunity cost of producing X, but B doesn't, that's why A needs compensation for producing X. Thus, A and B income shouldn't be similar in any ways.

Answer 3

Consider, for example, Warren Buffet.  An investment of $10 per share with him in 1965 is now worth about $135,000 per share and each $10 original share produces about $8-$9000 per share in income and each $10 produces $72,000 in goods and services people have that they would not otherwise.  The original employment base was around a dozen people and now 250,000 people (more or less) have jobs they would not have had.  Many of those people would not have jobs had Buffet not been allowed to amass such a fortune.  Many people would pay higher prices for goods and services.  The question has a natural opposite, should some people have their assets seized if they can not use them to produce jobs, services and so forth at a good price?  Should low productivity people be allowed to have any money at all, since they are detracting from society?

Barring illness, people get paid, as a group, in proportion to their personal productivity.  The more productive you are the more you are paid.  To even everyone else out, you would have to remove the income of the top workers.  Americans make about 200 times the wage and product of a worker in Bangladesh.  The implication of your question would be, "should every American take a 200 fold pay cut to even things out?"  The alternative would be, "should all workers get paid in proportion to the value of goods and services they produce?"  If so, then there should be no minimum wage, there should be fair corporate governance laws, and unions should be required to negotiate workers wages person by person.

Answer 4

Redistribution of income was tried in the Soviet Union, and it didn't work.  The people who can get things done need a motive to do them.  If income was evenly distributed, the same people who had the most money before would have it again in a few years.