The difference between these guys and many of their peers in the Forbes 400 is that they earned the money by building things. That makes them very different from a hedge fund manager who clears >$1b/yr. (a) from pure gambling with no benefit to the real economy and (b) by lobbying for - and getting - exemptions in the tax code that drop his income tax to 15%; less than that of the guy managing a McDonalds (or, as Rich points out, his secretary).
In other words, the systemic damage comes from corruption among those writing tax policy, which makes that policy a vector for spreading the resulting distortions and imbalances throughout the economy. The piece also notes that guys like L&S+Z are in a decreasing minority when it comes to a who's-who of the plutocracy. That is to say, they are the exception that proves the rule.
SV has always prided itself (quite rightly) on its distance from DC. But that distance can also mean being unaware of exactly how bad things have really become. Rich does a great job in pointing out that the problem of intense wealth concentration shouldn't be attributed to generalized bogeymen like "technology" or "globalization" or "big corporations". Rather, he charges that very specific and very abusive manipulations of tax law have allowed some of our least innovative, least competitive, and least valuable organizations to become maliciously self-serving at the expense of everyone else.
In other words, the systemic damage comes from corruption among those writing tax policy, which makes that policy a vector for spreading the resulting distortions and imbalances throughout the economy. The piece also notes that guys like L&S+Z are in a decreasing minority when it comes to a who's-who of the plutocracy. That is to say, they are the exception that proves the rule.
SV has always prided itself (quite rightly) on its distance from DC. But that distance can also mean being unaware of exactly how bad things have really become. Rich does a great job in pointing out that the problem of intense wealth concentration shouldn't be attributed to generalized bogeymen like "technology" or "globalization" or "big corporations". Rather, he charges that very specific and very abusive manipulations of tax law have allowed some of our least innovative, least competitive, and least valuable organizations to become maliciously self-serving at the expense of everyone else.