Up until probably WW2, war and revolution were the ultimate redistributor of wealth and arguably mitigated or even prevented too much concentration of wealth. A

Up until probably WW2, war and revolution were the ultimate redistributor of wealth and arguably mitigated or even prevented too much concentration of wealth. Arguably in some cases that concentration is what precipitated wars and revolutions. I worry about this now, particularly in what's increasingly a post-nationalism era with almost frictionless global capital mobility. The ultra-rich do their damnedest to pay almost no taxes on their massive wealth and buy themselves even greater tax breaks. The Trump tax "cuts" (I say this because for many professionals living in blue states it was a tax increase) were such a nakedly self-serving (even corrupt) wealth grab at the expense of the country. It's depressing how easily manipulated the GOP base was and is in supporting this (or at least not holding their representatives to account). What difference does it make if you have $50B in assets vs $60B? I mean really? You gained that wealth because you lived in a country that was politically stable, had infrastructure like roads and bridges and wasn't being invaded or fighting wars (mostly). Someone needs to pay for that. This almost feels like an algal bloom of wealth. In an algal bloom, individual organisms are finding local optima. The net result however is that everything dies. So how about this: 1. We need stronger estate taxes. Inherited wealth is a recipe for a permanent ruling class and a pox on our house. 2. Owning land in the US subjects your worldwide income to US taxes. 3. We need to start property taxing income rather than taxing spending. This further lowers effective tax rates. The last one requires a little explanation. Let's say you earn $100m in a year. As ordinary income this may cost you $40m in taxes. Of course, no one pays that. It's typically structured so you only earn income for tax purposes when a gain is realized. So if you need "only" $20m to live this year instead you just realize a $20m gain and pay taxes on that, leaving the other $80m untaxed. It's worse than that because not all of that $20m will be a gain. This allows you to offset tax liabilities essentially indefinitely. But it gets even worse than that. At the height of the QE era, you could borrow money for essentially nothing. So instead you borrow $25m, putting $5m aside to service the debt for some number of years and don't realize any income and pay no taxes whatsoever. Companies were issuing corporate bonds like crazy in this era to avoid US corporate taxes.