Increasingly, members of Congress support measures to abolish America’s billionaires. Tough cookies if you happen to be a Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet. However, Uncle Sam, America’s only trillionaire, stands to reap an enormous windfall if such measures were to be enacted.
In his piece for the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo discusses how a proposal might take shape. “Billionaire abolishment could take many forms. It could mean preventing people from keeping more than a billion in booty, but more likely it would mean higher marginal taxes on income, wealth and estates for billionaires and people on the way to becoming billionaires.”
Reached for comment on his yacht vacationing in the Arabian Sea, Uncle Sam was unable to restrain his enthusiasm, “More booty, hell yeah! How does everybody feel about more booty?” Deafening cheers amidst the rhythmic thump of loud music could be heard through the phone connection.
The call to abolish billionaires originates from the idea that having a billion dollars is immoral, and a system that creates billionaires is inherently corrupt. Manjoo illustrates this point, “At some level of extreme wealth, money inevitably corrupts. On the left and the right, it buys political power, it silences dissent, it serves primarily to perpetuate ever-greater wealth, often unrelated to any reciprocal social good….that level is self-evidently somewhere around one billion dollars; beyond that, you’re irredeemable.”
While Uncle Sam generally agrees with Manjoo’s point, he takes exception with the last part, “I believe one can be redeemed at the level of a trillion dollars. Once you’re at the level of a trillion, money ceases to have a corrupting influence. You take very seriously the extreme wealth the American people have imparted on you, and you don’t squander it on buying political power, silencing dissent, or trivialities unrelated to the social good. Now, if you’ll excuse me for one moment, the Royal Saudi Air Force is about to conduct exercises using shiny new American made fighter jets.”
According to polls, an overwhelming majority of Americans, both Democrat and Republican, favor proposals that would tax the rich. Expanding healthcare is a top priority of many members of Congress.
As the Trillionaire in Chief, Uncle Sam takes the public’s trust very seriously. Speaking from the deck of his luxury yacht, “Healthcare, closing the wealth gap, lifting people out of poverty, everybody knows I’m one hundred percent committed to reducing inequality…Hey, baby doll, go fetch your Uncle Sam another drink, would you?….Oh yeah, gender equity, we’re going to cover all that.”
The question remains, what to do with the 2500 or so abolished American billionaires? “I think I’ve got that one figured out,” says Uncle Sam. “We’ll banish them to an island in the Pacific – a sort of, Island of Misfit Billionaires, if you will. We’ll make them quite comfortable there.”
If there is something 