Being A Better Billionaire

NOT ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE BAD. A organization called "Patriotic Millionaires", with roughly two hundred members, has a heart. Fully aware of America's grotesque and ever increasing economic inequality, the group advocates policies designed not only to preserve their personal wealth, but to enhance to well being of the working poor. These policies include taxing the corporate wealthy as a higher level, as America did until recently, reinstating an estate tax, raising the minimum wage, taxing stock transactions, and increasing spending on social programs, among other measures. Membership requirements include at least five million dollars in personal wealth, and an annual income of no less than one million dollars. The group is growing. Among its founders is Abigail Disney, whose grandfather and great uncle co-founded the entertainment empire. She is the black sheep liberal of the family. Its members are well aware that the inevitable result of our seemingly never ending concentration of wealth is that one person owns all the world's wealth, while everyone else starves. Also, that a violent revolution, a sort of Occupy Wall Street on steroids, consumes society. Eighty four percent of all corporate stock shares are owned by the top ten percent of the general population. One half of the American people own stock, one half do not. The Patriotic Millionaires understand that the current system, in which politicians are purchased and policies are created and enacted by the corporate wealthy for the corporate wealthy, is not sustainable. They further understand in in any capitalistic economy, supply is driven by demand, and that the greater the number of people who have sufficient wealth to demand and purchase consumer goods and services, the greater the level of production, and hence, societal prosperity. It is the millionaires and billionaires whose fortunes are dependent upon the working poor, not the other way around. Prosperity is built from the ground up, not the top down. The group has been accused of being theatrical and falsely patriotic, such accusations coming, unsurprisingly, from within the wealthiest segment of American society. As usual, they have it backwards.