CC: I think it is very hazardous. What I've seen is it disconnects people from the community. It challenges their humility, meaning they actually think that they have this money so it makes them better than other people, or smarter than. So it, that disconnects them. They stop being interdependent and vulnerable with their neighbors and so they stop needing other people. They think they can buy all the things they need. It's a prescription for alienation and disconnection. I think there are sociopathic tendencies through the whole culture, but if they fall to people at the very top of the wealth ladder, they can do huge amount of damage. So I think it's a, for the sake, you know this is just for the sake of people and their children. We should have these extreme levels of inequality. They break the tribe apart. I mean the tribe in the human family sense. Yeah.
Rob: So I think that the solution, the big target to aim for is to get rid of billionaires entirely. So that no one is allowed to become a billionaire. That means, getting rid of all the ones that currently exist by taxing them out of their assets and wealth. And then making it a crime, and not just a crime, but an abomination, a moral, a morally unacceptable thing to do to accumulate that much wealth.
CC: Yes, I mean one thing to do is we can say look as a society you earn over, I would put the threshold down considerably but you know. You could have 100% tax on wealth over half a billion dollars. You know. Right now we have a estate tax that taxes at 45% and it's a fixed rate whether you have 10 million or 10 billion. But I would be in favor of a graduated estate tax that, where that rate goes up higher, just like in 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted a very progressive estate tax. The top rate was close to 90% on estates, on wealth above a certain threshold. And I think that that, and then that, you know it's important obviously that government not waste money and that we all be vigilant about how our tax dollars are used. But those investments can be made in things that lift up everybody. That's where we've gone astray.
Rob: So is there a conversation? I mean you're talking about wealth inequality and dealing with it by cutting tax INAUDIBLE 31:58 and things like that. I tried to write a bigger picture go for the stars rather than go for ten miles away kind of a goal. Which is to totally get rid of them. Is this a conversation that's happening?
CC: Well, I think that actually my co-author Josh Hoxie wrote a little piece called, you know, is it time to ban billionaires or effectively tax wealth over a certain amount so that we don't have these huge distorting forces. In the same way we would say golly, if there was like one corporation that had so much wealth and power and control over the market, we would need to institute some kind of anti-trust intervention, break them up.
Rob: That's like Bernie Sanders saying--
CC: Yeah we shouldn't have six banks that control 60% of the money. That's just too much concentrated wealth and power. So if you care about democracy you have to care about these accretions of wealth and power.
Rob: Alright so your co-author wrote an article back with the idea of taxing, what was the exact article about?
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