2024-04-04
8 分钟The Economist Hi, it's Alice Su here.
I co-host Drum Tower, our weekly podcast on China.
Here's an article handpicked from the latest edition of The Economist, read out loud.
I thought you might enjoy it.
Two new books argue for doing away with the rich.
Not in the Pol Pot sense of murdering them all.
For the writers,
a Dutch professor of ethics and the director of a left-wing British think tank are impeccably nice.
Rather, they favour policies that would make it impossible to have too much money.
How much is too much?
Ingrid Robbins of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the author of Libertarianism,
thinks the state should prevent anyone from accumulating more than 10 million dollars or pounds or euros.
It's a rough figure.
In addition to this hard political limit,
she thinks there should be a much lower ethical limit.
In countries where the state pays for health care and pensions,
no one should amass more than one million dollars in savings,
and society should scorn anyone who does.
Luke Hildyard, who runs the High Pay Centre in London and whose book is called Enough,
stops short of an absolute cap but suggests something close to it.