Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns

 Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns, Astra House, New York, 2024

Review by Ed Meek

Excessive wealth seems to be getting a little out of hand. To take one example, Jeff Bezos has a net worth of about $199 billion (according to CNN). We have a limit for how poor someone can be in the United States: the poverty line for annual income is $15,060. That’s where the safety net kicks in. Should we limit how rich someone can be?

In 2011 the Occupy Movement gained widespread support when thousands of people in New York City and around the world protested the concentration of wealth in the top 1%. Today, according to Statista.com, the top 1% holds almost a third of the wealth in the US. The top 10% controls two thirds of the wealth, leaving the rest to be divvied up by the bottom 90% and a measly 3% for the bottom half of the country. Despite the widespread popularity of the Occupy protest, the group made no concrete policy demands. Ingrid Robeyns, Utrecht University Academic (Economics and Ethics) provides a solution for them and us in her book Limitarianism.

Because of the growing disparity between the rich and the rest, capitalism is just not working very well for most Americans. Anne Appelbaum in Twilight of Democracy points out that this wealth gap leads people to embrace authoritarianism under a strongman who promises something better (or a return to the good old days). Sound familiar? While President Biden and The New York Times assure us that the economy is just great with plenty of jobs and inflation under control, most Americans think the economy is poor and the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Robeyns tries to convince us that limiting wealth, and reallocating it, will result in a better life for all of us. Does anyone need to have a billion dollars? She asks. According to economist Jeffrey Sachs, (whom she cites) “2775 people in the world are billionaires.” How about Elon Musk with his $193 billion (according to Forbes). Musk was able to buy Twitter with $40 billion and is now reshaping it to fit his twisted agenda. Musk also owns half the satellites in orbit. Isn’t that a little too much money and power for one individual? Robeyns wants to set a suggested personal wealth limit of 10 million dollars. The principal reason she gives for redistributing wealth is that it is the moral thing to do. It is a matter of fairness. You can hear echoes of this in phrases like “climate justice” and calls for “equity.”

Robeyns wants to redistribute the wealth to solve the problem of poverty. As Matthew Desmond tells us in Poverty, by America, the US has had the same rate of poverty (12%) for over 50 years. That’s 40 million poor people, far and away the most of any first world country. In comparison, a little over 1% of the population of China lives in poverty. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. That just about gets a person to poverty level. To make matters worse, Desmond and Robeyns tell us that it is the top income earners who reap the most benefits from the government in tax breaks for mortgage payments, lower taxes on capital investments than on labor, tax breaks for losses, and low taxes on inheritance.

Robeyns illustrates how the rich work the system and use their wealth in ways that hurt everyone else. They buy political favors, influence the media, and promote a culture of acquisition through

neoliberalism: the belief in individualism, private ownership, and free trade. Neoliberalism gained traction under Reagan and was picked by Clinton, then the Bushes and Obama. Now the tide is beginning to turn under Biden and the “social democrats” who are attempting a new version of the New Deal.

Robeyns also claims the wealthy are standing in the way of addressing climate change since they are the group with the biggest carbon footprint with their mega-mansions, car collections, yachts, and private Jets.

Philanthropy is not the answer according to Robeyns. With a few exceptions, philanthropists divert money that might have been better spent. Bill and Melinda Gates are an exception with their work on world health and green technology. Too many rich donors use tax-deductible contributions to enrich elite colleges and influence politicians to perpetuate the upper class. Robeyns even claims Limitarianism will be good for the rich. Avoiding taxes, finding friends and lovers they can trust, maintaining multiple estates must be a struggle, she says.

How should we tackle the problem of excessive wealth? Robeyns wants much more progressive income taxes. After WW11, tax brackets went as high as 90% on income. The top bracket today is 37%. She suggests a CEO to average worker income ratio of 12 to 1 (it’s 344 to 1 now according to the Economic Policy Institute). She’d like higher taxes on capital and the elimination of tax havens. And last but not least, she’d like much higher taxes on inheritance. Inheritance is not earned or deserved, she says. She wants to limit it to $400,000.

Robeyns is not alone in her call to address the concentration of wealth. Biden wants to raise taxes on the rich and eliminate tax havens. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have brought up closing the wealth gap (from Bernie Sanders to AOC to Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio). The organization Patriotic Millionaires is working to address the wealth gap. But because both political parties in the US embraced neoliberalism for so long, a significant number of Americans have turned against the government. Rebalancing and regulating capitalism must occur if we are to deal with the many problems we are facing. Limitarianism is well-worth considering and debating.

There is an ongoing argument about what the biggest problem we face is. Some would claim it is the conflicts between nations. The rise of China, the aggression of Russia, the discord in the Middle East. Others would say it is the challenge of climate change. Or maybe it is the issue of media disinformation promulgated by Fox News, Truth Social, Facebook, X and Tik Tok with the spreading of conspiracy theories, gaslighting and the blurring of reality. It is certainly arguable that the thread that connects all these problems is the concentration of wealth and power. The only way to solve all these issues, according to Ingrid Robeyns, is to redistribute the wealth and power.