(Last week, we asked readers this question: Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars? Here are the responses we received.)
An emphatic no! And the question borders on the absurd: Does anyone deserve to be a pauper? Again, no! But to go further on the billionaire issue: It is an obscene amount of money, most likely amassed by stealing (under the lie of Good Business Practices) the humanity and dignity from employees by treating them as “human capital” to be exploited, raping the land and profiteering from unsafe working conditions here and abroad, and, if “old money,” profits gleaned from slave labor. No one needs that kind of money, and those with it behave as if they not only deserve it – their God-given right! – but are entitled to get whatever they want, no matter the cost to the planet or others. A pox on their houses, I say.
DARLENE OLIVO
Concord
Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars? Yes, of course. Those who earned it through finding their niche, following the rules, working hard, being honest in business dealings and never giving up on their dream of success. Examples which come to mind: Michael Bloomberg, Bill and Melinda Gates and Oprah Winfrey.
Billionaires whose wealth was spawned through inheritance? Those who hide money offshore, declare bankruptcy as a means to erase their debts to others, use phony charities as personal piggy banks? Not so much. We have far too much “corporate socialism” and plutocracy in America today. Examples that come to mind: Charles and David Koch, Donald Trump and Alice Walton.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.”
NANCY HEATH
Epsom