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I think focusing on the trust fund kid worth 200 million is also a red herring though. The focus should be on consumption inequality, not total amount of wealth

• jnbiche 10y ago
  > If someone is just sitting on a lot of cash then they're not hurting anyone, but if they're outspending everyone else then they are (in a sense) hurting them. I disagree strongly. That 200 million would be far, far better invested in some pie-in-the-sky social start-up than just sitting there. Spending should definitely not be taxed anymore than it already is, we want people to spend money.
  • kcanini 10y ago
    Where do you think people with that much money keep it? I imagine it's invested in all kinds of things, including venture capital and private equity.
  • savanaly 10y ago
    When they spend the money, the goods they're consuming or moving around are displaced from where they would have been. Spending the money doesn't create goods out of thin air. So unless they are making an investment that is a good one that somehow no one else knows about, it doesn't really impoverish society for them to sit on it. This argument, of course, applies on the margin and does not apply to every bit of wealth in the system.