For Aristotle, poverty is bad, but so is massive wealth; what’s needed for a virtuous life is located at the golden mean.
The solution is the Destroying Greed, Advancing Freedom (DGAF) act. Under this new legislation, we shoot all billionaires in the head and confiscate their wealth for the public good. The proposal is one large-caliber bullet for each billion dollars of wealth. This solves all the problems laid out above: billionaires can give back or get shot. Let me lay out the details in Q&A format.
Question: Why a billion?
Answer: It is a natural Schelling Point. Plus it still allows people to get stupendously, inconceivably wealthy, thereby forestalling the predictable but stupid argument that no one will be motivated to succeed unless they can be rich.
Question: How fast will this be implemented? Won’t there be any grace time?
Answer: Of course there will be fair grace time. Billionaires will have one week to divest themselves of all cash, securities, property, business holdings, yachts, art, and anything else that brings their net worth to over $1 billion US dollars. If they fail, they get shot in the head. Furthermore, because of the Fraud Undermining (FU) codicil, billionaires cannot give their money to anyone related by blood, marriage, or law. Many options remain: they could spread it around their employees, give it to a cancer charity, endow food banks, build a hospital, university, library, or museum, etc.