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Can a rich person be a good person? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I don't mean doctor-making-150k-a-year rich, I mean properly rich with millions to billions of dollars.

I think many will say yes, they can be, though it may be rare. I was tempted to. I thought more about it and I wondered, are you really a good person if you're hoarding enough money you and your family couldn't spend in 10 lifetimes?

I thought, if you're a good person, you wouldn't be rich. And if you're properly rich you're probably not a good person.

I don't know if it's fair or naive to say, but that's what I thought. Whether it's what I believe requires more thought.

There are a handful of ex-millionaires who are no longer millionaires because they cared for others in a way they couldn't care for themselves. Only a handful of course, I would say they are good people.

And in order to stay rich, you have to play your role and participate in a society that oppresses the poor which in turn maintains your wealth. Are you really still capable of being a good person?

Very curious about people's thoughts on this.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think everyone should be forced to give away everything they don't need to survive, I just think (in America's case) if you have enough wealth for several generations to live in luxury while our people are dying from inaccessible medicine and healthcare and more than half of our country has no savings living paycheck to paycheck, we've massively failed as a society to provide basic needs for our people. You could fund universal healthcare with just a tax on billionaires and they wouldn't have to change their lifestyle at all. If I had enough money that I lost 90% of it and I literally couldn't notice the difference, I'd be full of guilt every night watching people die because they rationed their insulin.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even without a tax in place (and I seriously and truly support putting a tax in place), millionaires and billionaires could take relatively small steps to improve life for a lot of people.

Do you remember last year that news story where a church used the donations from the collection plate to buy up the medical debt for some people? If I'm recalling correctly, the church bought up the debt, pennies on the dollar, and with like $50k were able to help over 100 people. I may have wrong figures for the money value and the number of people impacted, but I think the point remains that a lot of people's lives got better without the medical debt, both financially and emotionally.

Billionaires have the capacity to do this same type of thing. Just pick any city and throw money at a major problem that directly impacts citizens. You don't even need to work with the city or state government there! Get together with your other billionaire friends and strategize to pick a variety of cities. Make a game out of it about who can afford to pay off the problems in Los Angeles or Chicago, and who can only afford to pay off the problems in Sacramento or Springfield.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I 100% agree they could and should, but I don't think it should be made their responsibility. You also wouldn't have to tax very drastically, because replacing the healthcare system with something like Medicare for All would cost less than the overall cost of our current bloated system, so the money could just get reallocated and the tax increases would just shift the responsibility slightly to the wealthiest of us. It should be popular with the "party of small business" and "lowering tax for the middle class" since it would cost businesses and workers both less money for better outcomes, but they only pretend to have principles when it can be leveraged for power. Health insurance is a fucking scam, and the fact that we can't unanimously agree companies making money extorting us with our lives aren't beneficial to society is bleak.