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Comment by glofish | Hacker News Reader

the author complains that the stock market is up since its lows and labels that as fat cats getting rich again.

> It is not right that society’s richest people profit from this crisis while millions fall into desperate poverty. I include myself in this.

there is an easy way to start rectifying this injustice, if the author truly believes it is not fair. He can donate his wealth to the government - yes that is a thing. Will he do it? After all he argues it is fundamentally unfair. Writing an editorial is just talk, time he does the walk.

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This has always been a shit argument. Injustice has to be fixed across the board, otherwise it's a tax on just the honest/moral people.

I am talking about the choice of word and testing wether he means it or not.

If he said that the would not mind paying more for taxes, that is ok.

Saying "it is not fair" is just populist BS - would you keep money that you honestly thought was given unfairly to you?

You are being pedantic.

Think: a sincere declaration of a willingness to cooperatively sacrifice to solve a group problem, if others do too.

Don't think: an offer to individually self-immolate, which would not solve the problem. That is a straw man test of whether someone "means" business.

Ah yes, because a millionaire is gonna make a dent in the multi-trillion dollar deficit. No. What will help fix wealth inequality is not donations from rich people; it’s the government. There’s more non-philanthropic rich people than philanthropic ones.

This is such a tired and lazy argument.

1) The "easy way" is not the same as the "correct and effective way".

2) He's young, retired, enormously wealthy, and can do anything he wants. But still donated his time/energy to help educate people about wealth inequality. To you, it may be "just talk" but he's already doing way more than 99.9% of people in his position.

So he will preach about wealth inequality but won't go and give his wealth to the poor, but will instead donate his time and energy telling everyone how other wealthy people should pay more.

That is a poor argument and not even really correct. He is advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy which would indeed take away from his own wealth. You can't expect people to sacrifice themselves completely to help others when the necessary changes are systemic and not individual.

An individual action is not a solution for a systemic problem. His personal donation will do nothing to solve the problem.

it will show if he is serious about saying it "is not fair"

Imagine you are in a position when something happens that you believe is unfair and you have a way to reduce that unfairness, even just a tiny bit. Wouldn't you do it?

Would you only write an editorial and not rectify it?

Did he say that he doesn't give his wealth to the poor?

He could easily turn around the lives of hundreds of people without affecting his lifestyle at all. That isn't nothing.

It would also lead by example. If others followed him, he would have helped the lives of many times that.

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