wealth, taxing, and agency:
According to Princeton University professor Peter Singer, the top 0.01 of taxpayers or 14,000 Americans earn an average of $12,775,000 with total earnings of $184 billion. The rest of the 0.1 percent, or 129,600 individuals, now have an average income of just over $2 million. And the top 0.5 or 575,900 have an average income of $623,000.
(...) Prof. Singer calculates that if the folks in the top 10 percent donated between 10-30 percent of their income, it would raise $404 billion, an amount that would eliminate half of global poverty. And they wouldn't be left to scrimp on their sumptuous lifestyles.
(...) And Warren Buffet, the second richest man in America, concedes that "If you stuck me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru you'll find out how much talent is going to produce in the wrong soil." Adding that he personally believes "society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned."
(...) To this, we must add several additional sources for the great fortunes. A partial list includes: piracy, colonial pillage, black African slaves, extermination of first nation peoples, child labor, Chinese and Irish immigrant labor (railroads) indentured servitude, eminent domain, massive (often concealed) taxpayer subsidies, worker massacres, inheritance laws, public land grabs, unfair trade practices, supporting foreign dictatorships to gain cheap labor and resources, tax policy, corporate welfare, and always, underpaid, overworked employees.
(...) Self-made wealth is a largely a myth. In the words of economic analyst Mike Laphan, "It takes a village to raise a billionaire. Every taxpayer deserves some credit for the Forbes 400 wealth." So if all production is social -- from public investments to our combined labor power -- where is society's dividend?