How Rich is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line
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How Rich is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line Ingrid Robeyns1 · Vincent Buskens2 · Arnout van de Rijt3,2 · Nina Vergeldt2 · Tanja van der Lippe2 Accepted: 5 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Is it possible to identify a ‘riches line’, distinguishing the ‘rich’ from the ‘super-rich’? Recent work in political philosophy suggests that this is theoretically possible. This study examines for the first time the empirical plausibility of a riches line, based on novel data collected from a representative sample of the Dutch population. The data reveal that the Dutch indeed draw such a line, namely between 1 and 3 million euros. Strikingly, respondents agree on its approximate location irrespective of their own income and education. Although most do not consider extreme wealth itself a severe problem and object to the government’s enforcement of limits to wealth and income, widespread support exists for increased taxation of the super-rich if that would improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable members of society. Keywords Riches · Super-rich · Inequality · Evaluation · Norms · Vignettes
1 Introduction Recent years have seen much discussion of inequality, in academia as well as outside academia. The Occupy movement that in 2012 mobilized mass protests worldwide against wealth disparities spurred subsequent debate among leading economists (Mankiw 2013). In 2014, the discussion was centered around Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, in which he documented the rise in inequality and, in particular, the strengthened position of the wealthiest (Piketty 2014). More recently, the book The Triumph of Injustice by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, has argued how in the USA recent fiscal policies have increased inequality at the top of the income- and wealth distribution, hence consolidating the position of the richest Americans (Saez and Zucman 2019). In politics too, policies targeting the superrich are increasingly being discussed. In 2019, a proposal by the US-Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to raise a 70% marginal tax rate on incomes above 10 million dollars was followed by heated political discussion and further * Ingrid Robeyns [email protected] 1
Ethics Institute, Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, 3512BL Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy
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academic debate (Saez and Zucman 2019; Krugman 2019).1 At the time of writing (first half of 2020), several candidates for the Democratic nomination for the next US presidential elections are proposing wealth-taxes on the extremely rich. At the same time, philosophers have taken these redistributive proposals one step further, and have argued that, analogous to a poverty line under which no one should ideally fall, one can also conceptualize a riches line above which one owns or earns too much (Robeyns 2017, 2019; Volacu and Dumitru
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