Someone inherits millions and builds a media empire with them, which he then uses to get himself elected president, with disastrous results for everyone except himself and his cronies.
Someone else inherits millions and uses them to build an international newspaper and TV empire, which he uses to spew racism and banality and to influence the election outcomes of all of the developed countries which don't have equal-time rules.
Someone else inherits millions and uses them to propagandise 'small government.' He wants 'government drowned in a bathtub' and when a hurricane strikes a major city he gets his wish. Meanwhile his cronies plunder the national treasury and start a disastrous - but profitable - war.
I could go on. There's not shortage of examples to choose from.
Politically, trust fund babies like these are poisonous to democracy. They're born with massive power and an equally massive sense of spurious entitlement.
If you're looking for the origins of Anglo-Disease, these are its disease vectors.
Making sure they pay their way and aren't allowed to run around breaking everything they touch is the main reason for high levels of progressive taxation. Not only does taxing them give governments more money to spend on social investment, it also means they have to get a proper job like everyone else, instead of being dilettante politicians, which is what so many of them seem to aspire to.
Berlusconi, Murdoch & CO own shares of the media market, which are huge and were partially not build up organically, but bought together. Nothing would have spoken against forbidding them to buy so large shares of the media market. In Germany the ProSieben-SatEins Media AG (TV), could not be sold to the Springer ("BILD") publishing company, because they already have so much market share with newspapers. That would even work, if those media networks were profitable (what I think they are). As in case of Murdoch we are speaking of a stock corporation (?), how would you value the corporation for the wealth tax anyhow? Isn't the stock market value, which will be low, if the earnings are low, the best measure for the value of a stock based corporation? My personal opinion is, that strong public media is the best remedy for such kind of opinion manipulation. Of course there has to be a layer between the politicians and the media. ARD/ZDF in Germany work rather good. I think BBC in UK is as well OK, but has already a bit more problems to keep itself out of reach of politicians Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Nothing would have spoken against forbidding them to buy so large shares of the media market.
Except when you already own that much of the press all you have to do is threaten politicians with a negative campaign if they don't pass your favourite 'liberalising', legislation and their careers will be over.
This is part of what happened in the US with media deregulation, and part of what happened in the UK - although Thatcher already had press support before the election, and didn't need to be convinced to hand over democracy to a press thug like Murdoch.
Martin:
As in case of Murdoch we are speaking of a stock corporation (?), how would you value the corporation for the wealth tax anyhow? Isn't the stock market value, which will be low, if the earnings are low, the best measure for the value of a stock based corporation?
It's all Capital Gains and/or Inheritance, both of which are taxed leniently in the Anglo countries, especially on large estates.
