Kevin Drum has an great response to Warren Buffet’s article :

Yes, rich people are often rich because of their innate talents and hard work. But as Buffett points out, they are also rich because the culture they live in helped them along. If Bill Gates had grown up in Pakistan, he might be worth a few million dollars, but growing up in Seattle he ended up worth $50 billion. So of that $50 billion, how much is due to his innate talent and hard work and how much is due to the fact that he grew up in America?

The answer is obvious. America was responsible for a big chunk of Bill Gates’ fortune, which is why it makes sense that he should be asked to pay more to keep the country going. But instead the ultra-rich fight tooth and nail these days to pay as little as they possibly can. Why are they so begrudging about paying back a country that has given them so much?/dd>

Quiddity states the question well in the comments section of Kevin’s post :

Actually, it’s a rather interesting - and easy to state issue: Should people with good fortune be obligated to share that with those who experience bad fortune?

Of course, determining what is Luck and what is Hard Work can become difficult. But there are many cases which are unambiguously not the result of one’s character. Consider the poor person hit by a car. That’s clearly bad luck. Or that millionaire who won the $300 million lottery last year. Not only was he clearly lucky, but this additional luck was bestowed on a very rich man.

Most conservatives will argue that their wealth is generally accumulated through hard work (as opposed to luck, fate, or natural advantages like being a white, male American). That said, I think many conservatives and liberals could probably agree that it’s more fair to tax wealth accumulated through luck than through hard work. So how do we determine whether money has been earned through luck or hard work?

Before we answer that question, let me ask another one : How much is hard work worth? Since conservatives are constantly blocking any attempts to raise the minimum wage, then I guess we can assume that $5.15 /hr. is a fair price for hard work. If it’s not, then there’s no good reason to keep from raising it. I’ve spent plenty of days stuck in long, stressful meetings and they weren’t half as bad as working the concession stand at a movie theater on a Friday night.

Now that we’ve got a cost, we can calculate how much of one’s wealth was earned through hard work and how much was accumulated through good fortune. Let’s assume that Bill Gates works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If he were getting paid the fair price for all those hours worked, then his annual salary should be a little over $45,000. Of course a more reasonable cost would be to assume 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year (you do the math, it’s depressing), but Bill obviously works really hard, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

So if someone does “hard work” every hour of every day for a year and only earns $45,000, can we assume that any wealth earned over that amount was earned by something other than hard work? If we can, then maybe we should leave Bill’s first 45 grand untouched and then tax the hell out of the remaining $49,999,955,000.