BOND BILLIONAIRE BILL GROSS: I Got Rich At The Expense Of The Less Well-Off And Now I Feel Guilty

[Tony_FLADEM]

Bill Gross' latest monthly PIMCO Investment Outlook is out, and it spends some time discussing the massive wealth disparity in America.

"Having gotten rich at the expense of labor, the guilt sets in and I begin to feel sorry for the less well-off," he writes.

Gross calls for the wealthiest Americans to support higher taxes rather than be "Scrooge McDucks."

From his note:

Having benefited enormously via the leveraging of capital since the beginning of my career and having shared a decreasing percentage of my income thanks to Presidents Reagan and Bush 43 via lower government taxes, I now find my intellectual leanings shifting to the plight of labor. I often tell my wife Sue it’s probably a Kennedy-esque type of phenomenon. Having gotten rich at the expense of labor, the guilt sets in and I begin to feel sorry for the less well-off, writing very public Investment Outlooks that “dis” the success that provided me the soapbox in the first place.

If your immediate reaction is to nod up and down, then give yourself some points in this intellectual tête-à-tête. Still, I would ask the Scrooge McDucks of the world who so vehemently criticize what they consider to be counterproductive, even crippling taxation of the wealthy in the midst of historically high corporate profits and personal income, to consider this: Instead of approaching the tax reform argument from the standpoint of what an enormous percentage of the overall income taxes the top 1% pay, consider how much of the national income you’ve been privileged to make.

In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled from 10% in the 1970s to 20% today. Admit that you, and I and others in the magnificent “1%” grew up in a gilded age of credit, where those who borrowed money or charged fees on expanding financial assets had a much better chance of making it to the big tent than those who used their hands for a living.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gross-feels-sorry-for-less-well-off-2013-10#ixzz2jJTxRLzl

[xchrom]

1. Hmmmmmph. Nt

[Newsjock]

2. I will believe him when he donates his ill-gotten billions

Or simply gives it to the U.S. Treasury willingly, like any American already has the ability to do, to reduce the debt.

Until then, he's just so much self-entitled hot air.

[roguevalley]

14. ah, nothing like a condescending sad from a billionaire bastard. If he really feels bad, then

show it. Commit hari kari. Now.

[jsr]

3. He feels REALLY, REALLY guilty.

[rrneck]

4. Then pay up asshole. nt

[Bucky]

8. That's not how it works.

He's not favoring that he alone atone for his wealth. He's saying that the wealthy should pay more taxes because that would be the fair way to handle it. I think he's right.

[rrneck]

9. Of course the IRS is the collection agency.

You don't bribe a politician to break the law. You bribe him to make your crimes legal.

It seems to me that it has become all too easy to elevate these issues into the stratosphere of ideology and forget that reality actually exists on the surface of your skin. So of course people should pay their taxes and not rig the economy to enrich the few at the expense of the many, but in the end each and every asshole that did it is going to have to give up a boatload of money, because they stole it.

His feelings of remorse won't put food on my table. As far as I'm concerned he's just another asshole that stole my money and says he's sorry with the attitude that we all live in a world where the stuff of reality is taken care of by others and a few kind words will make it all better. It won't.

He stole his money, so he needs to atone for his crime. The fact that they rigged the system to make it technically legal doesn't mean shit. He knows he did wrong and he needs to pay up.

[Bucky]

10. Well, your bitterness aside

He may be an asshole for stealing your money, but on the other hand, he is suggesting a concrete solution--one that disadvantages his socio-economic class (or, more properly, one that starts to correct for the huge advantages people in his income bracket have enjoyed over the past 30+ years).

If he wants to hop over to our side of the fence, I prefer to provisionally welcome him rather than dump the full blame on the first of many overdue mea culpas. But that's just me.

[rrneck]

12. He's welcome to join up

but the membership dues are high.

At some point the rubber has to meet the road. Millions suffered more than hurt feelings because of people like him and leveraging the media to get credit for telling us what we already know is just more corporate risk dispersion.

So he made enough money to keep him and his progeny in a luxurious lifestyle and now he figures he should pay more taxes? Yeah, that's like breaking your leg and saying, "Oops, my bad. We oughta do something about that."

He won't get off the hook with me until he pays his debt to society.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

5. CNBC and Fox "Business" are gonna be all over this story I'm sure. nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. K&R but I'll reserve any enthusiasm until we see what he actually does about it.

Parasites mostly drop a few pennies and then expect $100 dollars worth of praise for not bothering to fight a starving person to get them back.

A billionaire that simply gives 99% of their money away still has $10M. Who can't live better than any people in history with $10M? What is it that you can't buy with a net of $10M that justifies taking more from those with nothing?

[hatrack]

7. OK then Bill . . .

Now you get to be a Profile In Courage (tm) because the rest of your fellow predators will never, ever, ever, EVER allow higher taxes to happen.

You provide cover, they mock-excoriate you as a traitor to the "Makers", and the beat goes on.

Nice work!

[JHB]

11. So Bill, how about spending some of that on building an infrastructure...

...to promote and deliver that message, and elect politicians who will act on it?

There were changes in laws and regulations that let you and others like you reroute that money from ordinary workers into your pockets -- tax changes, deregulation, weakening labor laws and their enforcement, union-busting and off shoring, etc. -- that strengthened the leverage to shoot money upward while sawing off the levers to push against that.

Support rebuilding those levers.

[Agony]

13. I notice that this jerk doesn't say anything about paying people more for their labor

the labor that he purports to feel guilty about exploiting.

So, screw you Bill, until you recognize that the real problem is how relatively little real labor is compensated since your ilk has prevailed. Higher marginal tax rates without higher wages will not fix the inequity over the long term.