[YTNUKLR]

My take on the subject, though I have not read the entire piece:

-Economics is inherently efficient. Any vacuum in the market is quickly taken up. Niches are filled, businesses consolidate and lower the ultimate cost per unit, and maximize profits. Any competition breeds a better outcome for the consumer.

Government and bureaucracies are extremely inefficient because they have no true competitive incentive to 'produce a good product/outcome' like private-sector businesses do. A lot of the tax money the US Gov't collects goes straight to paying bureaucrats, and for all the associated infrastructure-trucks, buildings, utilities, etc. Oftentimes, tax laws prevent money from efficiently reaching those in need, and/or it gets wasted heavily on the way. Billons of dollars of taxpayer money are wasted every year. Billions.

From these two data points, you'd think I was a pure Libertarian. Well, I am in another life. For the moment, I recognize that there are people on this planet that do not have as much as I do, and I feel it is the responsibility of the rich to help human society acquire more material comfort, if it is not much to the detriment of the rich to do so. For Bill Gates, $200 is nothing. But, $200 to a starving family means the world. This does not mean if I were a politician, that I would force the rich to give up money for any reason. I think that's extortion (and tyranny). However, usually these rich people seem to be conscious of their social responsibility, for which I commend them (Bill Gates, for one).

I do not have a problem with anyone having $100B (or more), or a business like ExxonMobil making $41B in profits in one year, and I do not think they should be taxed excessively (more than poorer people, but not unreasonably).

The bottom line is that I feel generally that those that are skilled/knowledgable about acquiring capital, say, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, the Execs of ExxonMobil and even the 23-year-old owner of Facebook, the investment managers of the Harvard University Endowment ($35B), and Google, to name a few, should continue to do what they are good at--acquiring more capital.

We all know that money begets more money, as Adam Smith said, and now more than ever that point is obvious.

Look how much money Harvard University made on their endowment last year. 17.2% on $28.9Billion! That means they made over $5 Billion last year, just managing the money effectively. I can guarantee you that unless Harvard starts having classes of 10,000 people, they are not going to be able to spend that money fast enough that they actually start eating into the principal of their investment. I think their budget is something like $500Million annually, even INCLUDING free tuition to all familes who earn less than $60,000 per year. Well, they have nothing to worry about then, because they just raked in 10x ($5,000,000,000) that amount last year in interest....and guess what, it was all tax-free!

Look where the government's at. $10 Trillion in debt. Huge, $500B deficit and growing larger. Recession on the way(?) The private sector is raking it in big, and I think that's OK, because ultimately the creativity and efficiency of the private sector is CREATING wealth whereas the government is more or less facilitating that and pushing money around.

I do foresee a point in the future where corporations have SO much money, that it will be to the severe detriment to humanity not to dole out some handouts. At this point in time, already, 98% of the money is concentrated in the top 1% of the population. That means if all those 'rich guys' just gave out 1% of their money, EVERY average-joe working American might see a DOUBLING of his annual salary. When the numbers start to show that the money could have far more utility in the hands of an average joe, than in the hands of a businessman, is when it might be right to have businesses give back.

The question, I guess you're asking, is when that might be...the answer to that I do not know.