Sarahproudandtall has a snarky (and very funny) diary up this morning about being a member of the Hated One Percent. It's not meant to be a factual statement, I know, but...well, you see, I am a member of that Hated One Percent. And I have a message for you, and for my fellow one percenters.
I don't deserve my wealth. Not only was I lucky, but I've been subsidized every step of the way. Yes, I worked very hard, and, yes, I've taken a lot of lumps along the way, but, more than anything else, I was subsidized until I became lucky.
I owe it to those who were less lucky than me to make sure thet get the subsidies they need to perhaps get as lucky as I did. Subsidy money, you see, is governmental pre-IPO funding, and like any good capitalist, I know that no more than of my A-series funding rounds will fail completely, perhaps 30% will give me a break even exit, and, on average, 20% will pay for the half that lost money and provide an income. I also know that one in a thousand will be Apple or Microsoft or Google. More than that, I know that we don't know how to find that one in a thousand, because each of them is mixture of circumstance, hard work, grit, ferocity, and, yes, pure luck.
Ignore moral debt to the country that raised me and grew me into what I am. Ignore my parents' notion that we should "pay it forward" through charity. We none of us know how to pick winners, and the money I pay for your roads and bridges and educations and childcare is a very efficient way to bet on people's success, and is the only way to reap those rare-but-critical one in a thousand winners.
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