J.R. Johnson

/Hmm, I drafted this piece around tax time but don’t seem to have posted it. Now seems like as good a time as any.

There are a lot of ways to make a difference in the world. Recently, I was finishing up a ream of paperwork and thinking about taxes.

We saw a Stephen Colbert skit about billionaire doomsday bunkers and the bit that caught my attention (aside from the flaming moats and water cannons) was the idea that these billionaires must at some level feel that they have no control over the future.

Note that I said “feel.” It’s not that they don’t actually have power. Because they do. The rich have spent decades ensuring that economic power equals political power, and they are happy to exercise that power in ways that further enrich and otherwise benefit them. 

Let’s be real. Not only are they doing just fine, they could do more to benefit others as well.

How? Support democracy, work to reduce inequality, or, if all that seems like too much work and time away from their flaming moats, they could pay taxes like the rest of us.

As Warren Buffet has famously noted, he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. 

If more of us were doing fine, then billionaires would be better off too. Because you only need a flaming moat if someone is mad at you.

And if you have the power to make a mess, you also have the power to clean it up.

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