The 20 Richest Americans Are Just the 20 Greediest Moochers

You'll never go wrong if you just assume every rich person you meet inherited, stole or grifted from the taxpayers every dime they've ever owned.

Paul Buchheit at Alternet:

The top individuals on the 2013  Forbes 400 list are generally believed to be makers of great companies or concepts. They are the role models of Paul Ryan, who  laments, "We're going to a majority of takers versus makers in America." They are defended by Cato Institute CEO  John A. Allison IV, who once protested: "Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let's call it an attack on the very productive."

But many of the richest Americans are takers. The top twenty, with a total net worth of almost  two-thirds of a trillion dollars, have all taken from the public or from employees, or through taxes or untaxed inheritances.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates may be a knowledgeable and hard-working man, but he was also  lucky and opportunistic. He was a taker. In 1975, at the age of 20, he founded Microsoft with high school buddy Paul Allen. This was the era of the first desktop computers, and numerous small companies were trying to program them, most notably Digital Research, headed by brilliant software designer  Gary Kildall. His CP/M operating system (OS) was the industry standard. Even Gates' company used it.

But Kildall was an innovator, not a businessman, and when IBM came calling for an OS for the new IBM PC, his  delays drove the big mainframe company to Gates. Even though the newly established Microsoft company couldn't fill IBM's needs, Gates and Allen saw an opportunity, and so they hurriedly bought the rights to another local company's OS -- which was based on Kildall's CP/M system. Kildall wanted to sue, but intellectual property law for software had not yet been established. Kildall was a maker who got taken.

David Lefer, a collaborator for the book  They Made America, summarized: "Gates didn't invent the PC operating system, and any history that says he did is wrong."

Warren Buffett

At first glance, Warren Buffett seems to be a different breed of multi-billionaire, advocating for  higher taxes on the rich and a  reasonable estate tax. But his company, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn't been paying its taxes. According to the  New York Post, "the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002."

A review of Berkshire Hathaway's  annual report confirms that despite profits of over $22 billion in 2012, a $255 million refund was claimed, while $44 billion in federal taxes remain deferred on the company's balance sheet.

Berkshire Hathaway has another little surprise hidden in the small print of its income statement. It shows an income tax expense of almost $7 billion, all of it hypothetical.

SNIP

Koch Brothers
This is an easy one, sad to say. Koch Industries is  taking away our clean air and water,  taking its waste to Detroit and Chicago, trying to take away the  minimum wage, seeking to  take down renewable energy initiatives, and  taking away jobs

And trying to take us for fools, with statements like this from  Charles Koch: "I want my legacy to be...a better way of life for...all Americans."

They also inherited everything from their daddy, then surfed the stock market boom collecting dividends off the work of the middle class.

The Walmart Family

Where to begin?  Walmart takes from employees, takes from the taxpayers, takes from competitors and suppliers, takes from foreign workers, takes from the environment.

Walmart sales associates make about  $9.00 per hour, which comes to $18,000 per year for a full-time worker, well below the  poverty threshold for a family of four (and even below the threshold for a family of three).

Walmart makes more than that from profits and subsidies. In the U.S., the company makes over $18,000 per employee, including  $13,000in pre-tax profits (after paying salaries) and a taxpayer subsidy of  $5,815 per worker.

On top of all the business profits, the four members of the Walmart family made a combined  $28.9 billion from their investments last year. Less than a third of that would have given every U.S. Walmart worker a $3.00 raise, enough to end the public subsidy.

SNIP

The richest Americans keep making money. And they're taking the rest of us for all they can get.