Rob's Blog

What the hell is the matter with people that they want to tell other people what to do with their money all the time?

Take Bill Gates for example. Very rich man. His dad reckons he should pay more tax. Can’t have all these rich people keeping their money when they could be paying tax, after all.

But hang on a minute, what exactly do rich people do with all that money when they’re not paying tax? There are really only two things a person can do with money: spend it or invest it. By spending it, he transfers it to other people. By investing it, he lends it to other people who then spend it. Either way, you’re helping other people out, boosting the economy, creating jobs, allowing other people to earn a living. It’s not as if rich people put their money under the matress and then go about jeering at poor people. Even without deliberate philanthropy they actively improve the lives of others.

All taxing rich people achieves is a change in who decides where the money gets spent. Quite apart from the moral argument that the person who rightfully should make that decision is the person who earnt the money through their own hard work in the first place, isn’t it a bit of a leap of faith to suggest that governments somehow spend money “better” than private individuals?

Bill Gates seems to have ideas about how he can use his wealth to make the world a better place. Good luck to him, I say. It doesn’t stop busybodies whinging and complaining. Take Dr Mercola for example, who, on learning that Gates is investing in pharmaceutical companies, says, “Great, just what we need. The richest man in the world is now supporting one of the richest industries in the world. Does this make any sense?”

Does Dr Mercola make any sense? What does he think the drug companies are going to do with that money? If they’re not spending it on research into new drugs that will make sick people healthy, or using it to improve their bottom line so that they can charge less for the same drugs, then what?

Do we really want the likes of Dr Mercola deciding where money gets spent? Because it’s exactly that type of person who works for the government and decides where the tax extorted from rich people gets spent.

Sidenote: I’m well aware that I’m linking to stories that are a year or two old. However, I was inspired to write about Bill Gates after hearing about his recent KBE.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2004 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Authorised Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.