It's an example of hypocrisy for Microsoft founder Bill Gates to take on income inequality as his so-called top priority, says economist Steve Beaman.
"Let me start off with the incredible hypocrisy of the wealthiest man of the world coming out claiming that income inequality is high on his agenda," Beaman told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV Monday.
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Gates recently
wrote a review of Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" in which he concluded that "high levels of [income] inequality are a problem," but that capitalism is not the answer.
"If you read his review thoroughly he excluded himself, saying that entrepreneurs who build their own wealth should be excluded from that calculation," Beaman explained.
The chairman of The Society of Advance Financial Education contends that "he's trying to build his own image."
"The income inequality issue is very real," he said. "We have seen over the last 10 years the inequality in this nation grow to preposterous proportion, frankly higher than it's been since about 1927."
"A lot of that can be attributed to the explosion growth in the stock market," he contends. "That has built the wealth of shareholders, many of whom are in the top 10 percent, and so that's what's creating this income disparity."
According to Beaman, "there's a lot of positioning by these massively wealthy investors to have government support their investment activities."
"They use a populist approach to cover it and try to sound like one of the regular people when . . . they're not regular people," he added.