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Income inequality is growing, yes. But are the wealthy somehow responsible for it? Is their "getting richer" directly responsible for it? There seems to be a

Income inequality is growing, yes. But are the wealthy somehow responsible for it? Is their "getting richer" directly responsible for it? There seems to be a growing consensus on the left that they are. I have yet to see a convincing argument to show this though. Someone who builds a company worth 100m didn't have to steal money from me (or anyone else) to do it. If they did steal, then that's what needs fixed. Prevent the stealing. The individual who has 100k to invest can watch that 100k grow if they invest wisely over time. They can pile the earnings on top of their savings from their salary, and get richer faster than someone without the 100k invested. The rest of us who don't have 100k to invest don't see that same benefit--but merely because the 1% chooses to invest and to watch their money grow isn't a bad thing. Now if they're doing corrupt things with that money, then yea--fix that. This concept of a wealth tax "fixing" income inequality is folly. It won't fix anything. It's at best a band-aid attempting to treat a symptom caused from underlying issues. We need to treat those underlying issues--not the symptom. Wealth tax happens to garner a lot of support though because many of the 99% love the idea of receiving something for free that's taken from the 1%. But it's not the governments job to legalize theft and pick the winners and losers, it's the governments job to fix the underlying issues.

johnfn 6y ago
I’m stuck on the second sentence of your argument. If the wealthy aren’t responsible for income inequality, then who is? An action doesn’t have to be illegal for us to condone it. Do you like income inequality? No? Then let’s take measures to stop it.
- camhart 6y ago
  There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. People need to be able to cover their needs. Food, housing, healthcare, and I'd be open to arguments in favor of education. But I don't see income inequality as bad necessarily. I see massive amounts of people unable to cover those needs as bad. Fix the problem that people can't cover their needs--not that fact that some fortunate entrepreneur got richer faster than me.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. Non invested savings are zero sum. This is just macro economics. If one person has a savings surplus, the other person has a savings deficit (unemployment). Buying existing housing isn't an investment. Building new housing is. Buying an existing company isn't an investment. Starting new companies or growing old companies is. Non invested savings are growing, just look at treasury bond yields and interest rates. If you buy $100 worth of treasury bonds the government has to issue $100 in debt, otherwise yields drop. If the government doesn't issue additional debt it cannot invest the additional money on behalf of buyers of the treasury bonds. Conventionally, inflation would rise immediately because more money is circulating in the economy but it doesn't, implying excess savings that are not being invested.
    - chii 6y ago
      > Buying existing housing isn't an investment....Buying an existing company isn't an investment. yes it is - because the person you're buying it from now can invest the proceeds of that sale (to something else). Buying shares off the sharemarket is investing - not because you're directly giving the company your money, but because your buying is the end of a chain of investment that directly leads to the IPO at the other end. Same with housing. Your way of seeing only direct investment as "true" investment is too shallow, and lacks the actual nuance of how the financial markets operate. If you sell your shares to somebody else after an IPO, the IPO might not ever have happened, or that the raising of money costs more (to account for the risk of having to hold the bag till the company profits). By strata-ing the risk out to different people, the financial market allows all levels of risk to be bought, by all manner of different people. The direct "investment only" method is as primitive as bartering for goods/services.
  - mytherin 6y ago
    > There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. There is an essence of truth to that, but it certainly does not tell the whole story. Consider what happens with Amazon. When they put a family-owned store out of business, those people need to work somewhere. They then turn to the only place left that has any jobs in their area: the Amazon fulfilment center. They then get a minimum wage job there. It is clear those people have directly lost wealth as a result of Amazon. In some cases the "creating wealth" argument holds up, but in reality what is mostly happening in the age of globalism is wealth consolidation, not wealth creation. Amazon is not creating new wealth, they are simply taking all of the customers and wealth away from all of the smaller businesses and consolidating it into a single huge entity. This obviously has strong negative consequences for the people who are losing wealth. There is a reason wages have remained stagnant for over 50 years while corporate profits keep on growing to record highs.
bo0tzz 6y ago
> Someone who builds a company worth 100m didn't have to steal money from me (or anyone else) to do it. Wage theft makes up the major part of all theft in the US [1]. At least some part of the value of companies is coming from this theft. As an example, look at Amazon and how they treat their warehouse and delivery workers. They're not just working them like this for the sake of it, but rather it's an example of concious wage theft in order to save money and, thus, increase the value of the company. 1: https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-forms-of-theft-in-the-u-s/ https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-...
- camhart 6y ago
  This is interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'm in favor of preventing wage theft. That certainly seems corrupt. I'm arguing that underlying issues like this need to be fixed.
lanternfish 6y ago
Isn't it literally the government's job to legalize theft and pick the winners and losers? One of the government's main tools in regulating the outcomes of a country is tax policy and if you want to call that theft, sure, go ahead. It doesn't make it the wrong course of action to take. You even lay out a remarkably cohesive argument for that 'theft' in your statement: if wealth provides an excess of agency for the wealthy, the only way to optimize for maximal opportunity (or maximal innovation if you'd prefer that framing) is to reallocate opportunity capital from the hyper-rich to the general population. The way you get more entrepreneurialism is not by increasing the payout for 'winning' the startup lottery, it's by letting more people play.
- camhart 6y ago
  > The way you get more entrepreneurialism is not by increasing the payout for 'winning' the startup lottery, it's by letting more people play. I'm not arguing we need to increase the payout. Letting more people play is exactly what we need. I'm simply arguing that people winning more isn't what's preventing people from playing.
imtringued 6y ago
>It's at best a band-aid attempting to treat a symptom caused from underlying issues. We need to treat those underlying issues--not the symptom. The underlying problem is that the economy is breaking basic macroeconomic equations, namely that savings must be invested. A wealth tax would force such an outcome. This is unpopular for republicans. Government investment would force such an outcome. It's still unpopular for republicans. Building more houses would force such an outcome, it's unpopular for democrats. Deeply negative interest rates for consumers would force such an outcome except that cannot happen because people will just hoard cash. I can list more and more things. The pattern is clear, all the options are disappearing and we are left with nothing to do. The reason why economics doesn't work isn't that the textbook is wrong, it's that people come up with more and more sophisticated ways to prevent the textbook rules from functioning.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  I'm curious what it means to say that savings must be invested. I have an account with an online broker/trading platform in which I put a portion of my money each month (most goes into stocks, some into ETFs). I think that counts as investing, but I also save money in the bank for paying bills, rent, food, and emergencies. That's not invested, and it makes up a large portion of my 'wealth'.
  - gjulianm 6y ago
    I think that in that context, investing means putting money back in circulation. For example you invest in a company and that money goes to pay providers, salaries, taxes, etc. It gets back into circulation straight away. But I don't think that's the case with most stocks and ETFs, most of that money just circulates in the stock market for speculation, maybe a small part of it goes back with comissions and brokers and taxes, but it doesn't do that much good in the overall economy.
  - everybodyknows 6y ago
    >save money in the bank This money is effectively lent to the bank, which will then re-lend it. A small share to the Federal Reserve, the rest to mortgage holders, businesses trying to meet payroll and so on.
throwaway77770 6y ago
> But it's not the governments job to legalize theft and pick the winners and losers, it's the governments job to fix the underlying issues. So in other words, don't try to paper over the flaws of capitalism by instantiating a welfare state from taxes; instead abolish capitalism directly? Probably not what you meant, but it could be read that way.
- camhart 6y ago
  You are correct. I never said, or intended to say, capitalism was the problem. For example, waste is estimated to account for 25% of healthcare costs. I've worked with with hospitals, and they do things incredibly inefficiently due to all sorts of bureaucratic and political nonsense. There's a massive amount of resistance to change. I believe they're allowed to get away with it primarily because hospitals generally aren't allowed to fail. I'm not arguing we need to close up hospitals, but something needs to change there to encourage improvement.
ookdatnog 6y ago
I (leftie) don't see growing wealth inequality necessarily as a problem; however, it does factor into which solutions are available for the problems I do care about. One of the problems I care about are the living conditions of those who are worst off. Despite economic growth, the conditions for these people have, depending on the area, barely improved, stagnated, or even deteriorated over the last decades in many wealthy nations. The question then is: why does this happen, and how do we fix it? There are broadly speaking two options: either the economy is performing poorly and not generating enough wealth for everyone to thrive, or it is generating enough wealth, but the spoils are being distributed unequally. The fact that we have huge inequality points to us being in the second situation, and the solution is, accordingly, redistribution. As an aside, I'm quite curious what you mean by "underlying issues".
- camhart 6y ago
  I agree with you--peoples living conditions should be improving and at a good rate. One thing to consider though, is when people talk about the affordability of anything from X years ago to now, oftentimes those "things" have changed significantly. For example, house sizes have gone up drastically over time, and at the same time house fewer people. In 1950's houses average 292 sq ft / person, where in 2010 it's up to 924 sq ft [1]. Healthcare "cost" have changed as a result of advancements in treatments but also due to a population living longer and longer. We need to take these things into account because it's going to be more difficult to buy a home that's 3x the size, and likely has a lot more expensive electronics and other appliances in it. You can't just wave the hand over what a home is today vs what it was 70 years ago. I don't believe everyone needs a new iPhone every 12/24 months (or even one at all), or a 2000 sq ft house to themselves, but everyone does need food, shelter, affordable healthcare, and again I'm open to the argument for education. I bring these points up primarily because there are ample examples of people from the FIRE community (financial independence retire early) who live on a minimal income but save and are able to retire early. In my opinion, they're able to save more simply because they focus on only buying what they really, truly need. And they're able to resist advertisements that attempt to convince them a want is a need. Many of the crazy successful examples from the community are dual income 6 figure earners, but there are examples of teachers retiring early by living frugally. One of the interesting things of capitalism is it's convinced society that many wants are needs. If you can outsmart society, you can profit/benefit. I agree redistribution is what's needed, but where I disagree is on the how. I'd rather see more opportunity given instead of reward taken. I don't think a lack of government funds is the issue. > As an aside, I'm quite curious what you mean by "underlying issues". At a high level the problem that I think we'd agree on is more people need to be able to cover basic needs. Housing, food, healthcare, and arguably education. I'm not an expert in any one of these, but I have worked with hospitals before. There's a massive amount of resistance to change within hospitals. They move and innovate (and as a result improve) extremely slowly. They're very inefficient (25% of hospital costs amount to waste [2]). I'd argue this is one underlying issue under the umbrella of the "healthcare" issues. I don't wish to propose a solution--because I honestly don't claim to have one. There are some arguable reasons for why healthcare moves slowly--extreme risk aversion. But I think that's why we employ politicians with our tax dollars--to propose and implement solutions. A failure to fix these issues is a failure of our politicians, and since we vote them into office, a failure on our part. Just as another example, I've been told that permits alone to build a home in my area cost ~35k. I've also been told that about 50% of construction costs (or perhaps it was only construction labor costs?) end up going to taxes. I don't have any sources to back this up--just heard from various sources I deemed semi reliable. [1] https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-changed-much-over-the-years-take-a-look/#:~:text=1950s%3A%20The%20average%20new%20home,canary%20yellow%20and%20petal%20pink https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-change.... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/us-wastes-25-healthcares-spending-1463576 https://www.newsweek.com/us-wastes-25-healthcares-spending-1...
dagss 6y ago
You speak as if ownership is a force of nature. It is not. Ownership, wealth, money is an outcome of processes of the government -- like the existence of police and military, and that the majority of the population (in a democracy) agrees to only the state having a monopoly on violence, and agreeing on who owns what. In a democracy, one asks everyone to agree a) that violence is monopolized, b) to protect ownership. If wealth is then superconcentrated -- why would that work? Why would or should most people participate in that specific social arrangement? A problem with capitalism without any form of wealth tax is that it is fundamentally unstable mathematically -- those with a lot already have more opportunities to get even more, making wealth more and more concentrated. Without wealth tax, there is no stabilizing force. This is about mathematics more than right or wrong. There just isn't a way a system that only concentrates wealth can keep working without mechanisms to redistribute wealth. At some point, majority of people are slaves or starve and there isn't a way for that economy to progress further. This is not hyperbole... it is human history. Historically, devastating wars and/or revolutions have been the mechanism to reset wealth distribution and happen all the time. Tax on wealth isn't about "fair vs unfair", it is about whether one wants to construct a system that can be stable over more than a few hundred years.
Valakas_ 6y ago
First. What do you say about prevention of the formation of unions? Who benefits from that? The owners of the companies certainly do. Are they stealing though? No. Is it still a problem and making inequality bigger? Yes, because then workers have no negotiating power and have to accept whatever salary they are offered. In the limit, that salary could be food, water and shelter, and we'd be back at slavery. Second. If you have 1B to invest, and I have 1k to invest and we both invest... there is no stealing, and you're getting richer much faster than me. Now you're not to blame for having that money, or investing it, but it is undeniable that the wealth inequality between the two of us is only ever going to grow, all things equal. Third. Ever heard of lobbying? Who do you think lobbies and for what purpose? Hey, Let's use the free market and have people pay as much as they can for insulin. Let's make it legal to do that. Let's say that's 500€/month. Welp. A poor person just lost half their monthly savings. A rich guy? Barely a blip. You know who's also a rich guy? The owner and co. of the company of makes insulin. Where is the stealing? Cmon. Saying that unless there is stealing then it's ok is so uninformed I have no words for.

johnfn 6y ago

I’m stuck on the second sentence of your argument. If the wealthy aren’t responsible for income inequality, then who is? An action doesn’t have to be illegal for us to condone it. Do you like income inequality? No? Then let’s take measures to stop it.

camhart 6y ago
There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. People need to be able to cover their needs. Food, housing, healthcare, and I'd be open to arguments in favor of education. But I don't see income inequality as bad necessarily. I see massive amounts of people unable to cover those needs as bad. Fix the problem that people can't cover their needs--not that fact that some fortunate entrepreneur got richer faster than me.
- imtringued 6y ago
  >There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. Non invested savings are zero sum. This is just macro economics. If one person has a savings surplus, the other person has a savings deficit (unemployment). Buying existing housing isn't an investment. Building new housing is. Buying an existing company isn't an investment. Starting new companies or growing old companies is. Non invested savings are growing, just look at treasury bond yields and interest rates. If you buy $100 worth of treasury bonds the government has to issue $100 in debt, otherwise yields drop. If the government doesn't issue additional debt it cannot invest the additional money on behalf of buyers of the treasury bonds. Conventionally, inflation would rise immediately because more money is circulating in the economy but it doesn't, implying excess savings that are not being invested.
  - chii 6y ago
    > Buying existing housing isn't an investment....Buying an existing company isn't an investment. yes it is - because the person you're buying it from now can invest the proceeds of that sale (to something else). Buying shares off the sharemarket is investing - not because you're directly giving the company your money, but because your buying is the end of a chain of investment that directly leads to the IPO at the other end. Same with housing. Your way of seeing only direct investment as "true" investment is too shallow, and lacks the actual nuance of how the financial markets operate. If you sell your shares to somebody else after an IPO, the IPO might not ever have happened, or that the raising of money costs more (to account for the risk of having to hold the bag till the company profits). By strata-ing the risk out to different people, the financial market allows all levels of risk to be bought, by all manner of different people. The direct "investment only" method is as primitive as bartering for goods/services.
- mytherin 6y ago
  > There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. There is an essence of truth to that, but it certainly does not tell the whole story. Consider what happens with Amazon. When they put a family-owned store out of business, those people need to work somewhere. They then turn to the only place left that has any jobs in their area: the Amazon fulfilment center. They then get a minimum wage job there. It is clear those people have directly lost wealth as a result of Amazon. In some cases the "creating wealth" argument holds up, but in reality what is mostly happening in the age of globalism is wealth consolidation, not wealth creation. Amazon is not creating new wealth, they are simply taking all of the customers and wealth away from all of the smaller businesses and consolidating it into a single huge entity. This obviously has strong negative consequences for the people who are losing wealth. There is a reason wages have remained stagnant for over 50 years while corporate profits keep on growing to record highs.

bo0tzz 6y ago

> Someone who builds a company worth 100m didn't have to steal money from me (or anyone else) to do it. Wage theft makes up the major part of all theft in the US [1]. At least some part of the value of companies is coming from this theft. As an example, look at Amazon and how they treat their warehouse and delivery workers. They're not just working them like this for the sake of it, but rather it's an example of concious wage theft in order to save money and, thus, increase the value of the company. 1: https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-forms-of-theft-in-the-u-s/ https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-...

camhart 6y ago
This is interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'm in favor of preventing wage theft. That certainly seems corrupt. I'm arguing that underlying issues like this need to be fixed.

lanternfish 6y ago

Isn't it literally the government's job to legalize theft and pick the winners and losers? One of the government's main tools in regulating the outcomes of a country is tax policy and if you want to call that theft, sure, go ahead. It doesn't make it the wrong course of action to take. You even lay out a remarkably cohesive argument for that 'theft' in your statement: if wealth provides an excess of agency for the wealthy, the only way to optimize for maximal opportunity (or maximal innovation if you'd prefer that framing) is to reallocate opportunity capital from the hyper-rich to the general population. The way you get more entrepreneurialism is not by increasing the payout for 'winning' the startup lottery, it's by letting more people play.

camhart 6y ago
> The way you get more entrepreneurialism is not by increasing the payout for 'winning' the startup lottery, it's by letting more people play. I'm not arguing we need to increase the payout. Letting more people play is exactly what we need. I'm simply arguing that people winning more isn't what's preventing people from playing.

imtringued 6y ago

>It's at best a band-aid attempting to treat a symptom caused from underlying issues. We need to treat those underlying issues--not the symptom. The underlying problem is that the economy is breaking basic macroeconomic equations, namely that savings must be invested. A wealth tax would force such an outcome. This is unpopular for republicans. Government investment would force such an outcome. It's still unpopular for republicans. Building more houses would force such an outcome, it's unpopular for democrats. Deeply negative interest rates for consumers would force such an outcome except that cannot happen because people will just hoard cash. I can list more and more things. The pattern is clear, all the options are disappearing and we are left with nothing to do. The reason why economics doesn't work isn't that the textbook is wrong, it's that people come up with more and more sophisticated ways to prevent the textbook rules from functioning.

claudiawerner 6y ago
I'm curious what it means to say that savings must be invested. I have an account with an online broker/trading platform in which I put a portion of my money each month (most goes into stocks, some into ETFs). I think that counts as investing, but I also save money in the bank for paying bills, rent, food, and emergencies. That's not invested, and it makes up a large portion of my 'wealth'.
- gjulianm 6y ago
  I think that in that context, investing means putting money back in circulation. For example you invest in a company and that money goes to pay providers, salaries, taxes, etc. It gets back into circulation straight away. But I don't think that's the case with most stocks and ETFs, most of that money just circulates in the stock market for speculation, maybe a small part of it goes back with comissions and brokers and taxes, but it doesn't do that much good in the overall economy.
- everybodyknows 6y ago
  >save money in the bank This money is effectively lent to the bank, which will then re-lend it. A small share to the Federal Reserve, the rest to mortgage holders, businesses trying to meet payroll and so on.

throwaway77770 6y ago

> But it's not the governments job to legalize theft and pick the winners and losers, it's the governments job to fix the underlying issues. So in other words, don't try to paper over the flaws of capitalism by instantiating a welfare state from taxes; instead abolish capitalism directly? Probably not what you meant, but it could be read that way.

camhart 6y ago
You are correct. I never said, or intended to say, capitalism was the problem. For example, waste is estimated to account for 25% of healthcare costs. I've worked with with hospitals, and they do things incredibly inefficiently due to all sorts of bureaucratic and political nonsense. There's a massive amount of resistance to change. I believe they're allowed to get away with it primarily because hospitals generally aren't allowed to fail. I'm not arguing we need to close up hospitals, but something needs to change there to encourage improvement.

ookdatnog 6y ago

I (leftie) don't see growing wealth inequality necessarily as a problem; however, it does factor into which solutions are available for the problems I do care about. One of the problems I care about are the living conditions of those who are worst off. Despite economic growth, the conditions for these people have, depending on the area, barely improved, stagnated, or even deteriorated over the last decades in many wealthy nations. The question then is: why does this happen, and how do we fix it? There are broadly speaking two options: either the economy is performing poorly and not generating enough wealth for everyone to thrive, or it is generating enough wealth, but the spoils are being distributed unequally. The fact that we have huge inequality points to us being in the second situation, and the solution is, accordingly, redistribution. As an aside, I'm quite curious what you mean by "underlying issues".

camhart 6y ago
I agree with you--peoples living conditions should be improving and at a good rate. One thing to consider though, is when people talk about the affordability of anything from X years ago to now, oftentimes those "things" have changed significantly. For example, house sizes have gone up drastically over time, and at the same time house fewer people. In 1950's houses average 292 sq ft / person, where in 2010 it's up to 924 sq ft [1]. Healthcare "cost" have changed as a result of advancements in treatments but also due to a population living longer and longer. We need to take these things into account because it's going to be more difficult to buy a home that's 3x the size, and likely has a lot more expensive electronics and other appliances in it. You can't just wave the hand over what a home is today vs what it was 70 years ago. I don't believe everyone needs a new iPhone every 12/24 months (or even one at all), or a 2000 sq ft house to themselves, but everyone does need food, shelter, affordable healthcare, and again I'm open to the argument for education. I bring these points up primarily because there are ample examples of people from the FIRE community (financial independence retire early) who live on a minimal income but save and are able to retire early. In my opinion, they're able to save more simply because they focus on only buying what they really, truly need. And they're able to resist advertisements that attempt to convince them a want is a need. Many of the crazy successful examples from the community are dual income 6 figure earners, but there are examples of teachers retiring early by living frugally. One of the interesting things of capitalism is it's convinced society that many wants are needs. If you can outsmart society, you can profit/benefit. I agree redistribution is what's needed, but where I disagree is on the how. I'd rather see more opportunity given instead of reward taken. I don't think a lack of government funds is the issue. > As an aside, I'm quite curious what you mean by "underlying issues". At a high level the problem that I think we'd agree on is more people need to be able to cover basic needs. Housing, food, healthcare, and arguably education. I'm not an expert in any one of these, but I have worked with hospitals before. There's a massive amount of resistance to change within hospitals. They move and innovate (and as a result improve) extremely slowly. They're very inefficient (25% of hospital costs amount to waste [2]). I'd argue this is one underlying issue under the umbrella of the "healthcare" issues. I don't wish to propose a solution--because I honestly don't claim to have one. There are some arguable reasons for why healthcare moves slowly--extreme risk aversion. But I think that's why we employ politicians with our tax dollars--to propose and implement solutions. A failure to fix these issues is a failure of our politicians, and since we vote them into office, a failure on our part. Just as another example, I've been told that permits alone to build a home in my area cost ~35k. I've also been told that about 50% of construction costs (or perhaps it was only construction labor costs?) end up going to taxes. I don't have any sources to back this up--just heard from various sources I deemed semi reliable. [1] https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-changed-much-over-the-years-take-a-look/#:~:text=1950s%3A%20The%20average%20new%20home,canary%20yellow%20and%20petal%20pink https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-change.... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/us-wastes-25-healthcares-spending-1463576 https://www.newsweek.com/us-wastes-25-healthcares-spending-1...

dagss 6y ago

You speak as if ownership is a force of nature. It is not. Ownership, wealth, money is an outcome of processes of the government -- like the existence of police and military, and that the majority of the population (in a democracy) agrees to only the state having a monopoly on violence, and agreeing on who owns what. In a democracy, one asks everyone to agree a) that violence is monopolized, b) to protect ownership. If wealth is then superconcentrated -- why would that work? Why would or should most people participate in that specific social arrangement? A problem with capitalism without any form of wealth tax is that it is fundamentally unstable mathematically -- those with a lot already have more opportunities to get even more, making wealth more and more concentrated. Without wealth tax, there is no stabilizing force. This is about mathematics more than right or wrong. There just isn't a way a system that only concentrates wealth can keep working without mechanisms to redistribute wealth. At some point, majority of people are slaves or starve and there isn't a way for that economy to progress further. This is not hyperbole... it is human history. Historically, devastating wars and/or revolutions have been the mechanism to reset wealth distribution and happen all the time. Tax on wealth isn't about "fair vs unfair", it is about whether one wants to construct a system that can be stable over more than a few hundred years.

Valakas_ 6y ago

First. What do you say about prevention of the formation of unions? Who benefits from that? The owners of the companies certainly do. Are they stealing though? No. Is it still a problem and making inequality bigger? Yes, because then workers have no negotiating power and have to accept whatever salary they are offered. In the limit, that salary could be food, water and shelter, and we'd be back at slavery. Second. If you have 1B to invest, and I have 1k to invest and we both invest... there is no stealing, and you're getting richer much faster than me. Now you're not to blame for having that money, or investing it, but it is undeniable that the wealth inequality between the two of us is only ever going to grow, all things equal. Third. Ever heard of lobbying? Who do you think lobbies and for what purpose? Hey, Let's use the free market and have people pay as much as they can for insulin. Let's make it legal to do that. Let's say that's 500€/month. Welp. A poor person just lost half their monthly savings. A rich guy? Barely a blip. You know who's also a rich guy? The owner and co. of the company of makes insulin. Where is the stealing? Cmon. Saying that unless there is stealing then it's ok is so uninformed I have no words for.