I admire Desmond for being upfront about the fact that his changes would cost the rich more money. I’ve always admired Bernie Sanders (though I don’t disagree w

I admire Desmond for being upfront about the fact that his changes would cost the rich more money. I’ve always admired Bernie Sanders (though I don’t disagree with his policies) for being forthright about that as well. It irks me when folks propose wealth redistribution plans and argue that it would not redistribute wealth, and that instead more wealth would appear for the poor. Still, I think he misses the mark a bit. He says that he “ wants the wealthy to ‘take less’ in exchange for a safer, fairer, less anxious society.” I think it’s a bad pitch. It is safer, but not for the wealthy; they mostly don’t interact with the poor, since they live in secluded upscale neighborhoods. It is fairer, except from the perspective of the people who are paying to make it more fair, while others benefit. Society is less anxious, but not the people who are financing the operation, since they have less money. It’s a net benefit to society, but I don’t believe it’s a benefit to everyone. There’s also a substantial obstacle to ideas like these: mostly, the rich make the rules, and they are unlikely to make rules that go against their self-interest. In my opinion, rather than finding ways to redistribute income, we should be looking for ways to predistribute income. Programs and policies like welfare and progressive taxes are, in my opinion, bandaids attempting to cover up that the game is rigged; rather than addressing that some folks are able to amass far more wealth, or earn a far higher income, they attempt to correct for the fact that it happened afterward. I think that’s backwards, and society should make policies that make it harder to have inequality in the first place. One example would be taxing share buybacks at the same rate as dividends, since they are fundamentally the same mechanism for returning capital to shareholders, except one receives favorable tax treatment. Another example (and my guess is this is the largest) is having reasonable interest rates. Net worths of upper middle class Americans have skyrocketed over the last twenty years (and more) because of very low interest rates which have created asset bubbles in real estate and equities. This has also been a huge boon to the ultra-rich. These increased asset prices also have the effect of depressing returns for all, and raising the cost of housing for all. It also fuels the income gap between rich and poor because folks in high growth industries are able to earn disproportionately more than in low growth ones. The way forward is to level the playing field, rather than acknowledging or complaining the playing field is not level and then attempting to correct for that after the fact.