BOOK REVIEW
06 May 2024

How rich is too rich?

Where should society draw the line on extreme wealth? A fresh account sets out the logic and suggests how to redress inequality.

By Lucas Chancel

Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth Ingrid Robeyns Allen Lane (2024)

As radical as they might seem, calls for limits on wealth are as old as civilization itself. The Hebrew Bible and Torah recognized years during which debts should be cancelled, slaves set free and property redistributed from rich to poor. In classical Greece, Aristotle praised cities that kept wealth inequality in check to enhance political stability. And in 1942, then-US president Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that annual incomes should be capped at the current equivalent of US$480,000.

In Limitarianism, Dutch and Belgian economist and philosopher Ingrid Robeyns argues that it’s time for twenty-first-century governments to do the same. She explores what setting limits on wealth ownership might mean, and why our societies should want to do so. It is a fresh take on a much-needed discussion at a time when, for example, the richest 1% of the US population owns about as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

Robeyns, who has studied how people perceive wealth, opens with a provocative proposal — governments should set a wealth limit on the order of 10 million euros or US dollars per person. This figure, more of a guideline than a strict cut-off, “strikes a balance between what different moral and political considerations tell us is the maximum level” of wealth one should own, she explains.

Why cap wealth at €10 million? The author’s research across Europe suggests that this level, or an even lower “riches line”, would be broadly accepted by the population. Among a representative sample of Dutch people, for example, Robeyns and her team found that nine out of ten respondents agreed that having wealth exceeding €4 million for a family of four — in terms of ownership of certain assets, such as a mansion, a second home, luxury vehicles and a specific amount of savings — qualifies as being super-rich. In low-income countries, that threshold could be much lower.

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