"Elon, Trump and most of our 'billionaires" have no real wealth of their own. It is simply assets supported by debt that can and eventually will evaporate at any time."
Elon has his Tesla shares and Trump has his properties. These things actually *do* have value, are not necessarily supported by debt--only the case if those assets are leveraged for loans, at which point it becomes a factor of their debt-to-income ratio for the purposes of classifying their net worth, and nothing suggests that the valuations on these assets will simply "evaporate at any time."
"Reducing the gap in money is not enough. Another source of imbalance will inevitably show up. The way to curb this is stronger institutions made with better people of higher character."
Got any suggestions of how we get to institutions staffed by "better people of higher character" when the Ivy League that feeds these institutions are pay-to-play schemes where students are mostly selected from wealthy families and "higher character" isn't evaluated? The Ivy League isn't exactly screening applicants/students for character flaws--not with people like Josh Hawley coming out of Yale/Stanford or Bannon/Kushner coming out of Harvard or Donald Trump coming out of UPenn.
I agree with a lot of what you say in some respects about character, I just don't think you see what extreme wealth does to character. It makes people more individualistic and less patriotic. It makes them think of themselves and not the country. It also degrades the meritocracy when the meritocracy caters to wealth and the children of the wealthy get auto-populated into the Ivy League and then into these important institutions afterwards where their character flaws show up and have real consequences for everyone else.
"Elon, Trump and most of our 'billionaires" have no real wealth of their own. It is simply assets supported by debt that can and eventually will evaporate at any time."
Elon has his Tesla shares and Trump has his properties. These things actually *do* have value, are not necessarily supported by debt--only the case if those assets are leveraged for loans, at which point it becomes a factor of their debt-to-income ratio for the purposes of classifying their net worth, and nothing suggests that the valuations on these assets will simply "evaporate at any time."
"Reducing the gap in money is not enough. Another source of imbalance will inevitably show up. The way to curb this is stronger institutions made with better people of higher character."
Got any suggestions of how we get to institutions staffed by "better people of higher character" when the Ivy League that feeds these institutions are pay-to-play schemes where students are mostly selected from wealthy families and "higher character" isn't evaluated? The Ivy League isn't exactly screening applicants/students for character flaws--not with people like Josh Hawley coming out of Yale/Stanford or Bannon/Kushner coming out of Harvard or Donald Trump coming out of UPenn.
I agree with a lot of what you say in some respects about character, I just don't think you see what extreme wealth does to character. It makes people more individualistic and less patriotic. It makes them think of themselves and not the country. It also degrades the meritocracy when the meritocracy caters to wealth and the children of the wealthy get auto-populated into the Ivy League and then into these important institutions afterwards where their character flaws show up and have real consequences for everyone else.