[adamlett]

When you say the government "squanders" money on projects like the F-35, it sounds like you think that the money spent just disappears and is gone, and all we're left with are some fighter jets of questionable value. But the money that the government spends goes back into the pockets of private citizens. Who then spend the money again, and spread it around. Silicon Valley, the symbol of entrepreneurship and self-made billionaires, owes it existence in part to huge, government sponsored, military and aerospace programs, ultimately funded by tax payers. A lot of private companies got very rich on the back of that. And now it's somehow unreasonable that the government wants to take some of that wealth and distribute it somewhere else?

[pas]

Redistribution coupled with corruption (cronyism) results in new oligarchs.

This is a classic trade-off, just like surveillance and security. If you estimate that the chance of abuse is sufficiently low, then yes, those are great things to have.

If not. Holy shit, you know the drill.

So, the problem is not income inequality (lack of redistribution, or the network effects (the compounding) of capital), but the rationality of decision making. The stability of the utility function of those who make the decisions. Which is the aggregate of the whole power structure.

Do we see a stable trend in good governance?

I'd say that the US could use some internal redistribution. Less spending on war on things and more on education and social safety stuff. (It'd be probably much better for the US to stop funding the useless manpower-hungry parts of agencies - like the TSA and all the terror chasers - and send those guys that would get unemployed over to work as social workers, or even just pay them to get a degree and do something useful.)

[vasilipupkin]

The issue is not the desire to redistribute per se. The point is it matters what you actually do with the money. Some uses are productive and some are wasteful. Soviet Union was born out of the desire to redistribute - and failed. So this discussion can not be had in the abstract

[grahamburger]

The same thing happens if someone gets rich and sticks their money anywhere but under their mattress.

[adamlett]

But that's what they do! The ultrarich of the world can live handsomely off the interest of their fortunes and don't ever have to touch the principal, which just grows and grows.

[zo1]

That money still goes somewhere. You don't get interest by keeping money under your mattress. You get interest by loaning it out, or the value of something you own increasing. And even if you've "bought" something that appreciates in value, you've anyways lost the physical money which is now being spent by someone else.

Which is almost the same scenario as the one you suggested. So ultimately, it seems your complaint is not of the money being used/spread/churning throughout the economy, rather than being hoarded under the mattress. But rather, it seems you're complaint is with the fact that the rich have it and it's not being taxed for purposes you deem useful.

[adamlett]

If I keep a million dollars in the bank, the bank can loan out a million dollars, and I earn interest.

If I spent half of that million dollars, then whoever got paid likely puts the money back in the bank and the bank can still loan out a million dollars.

This is in a nutshell why trickle-down economics don't work.

[manigandham]

Families this rich are not just static forever, they usually have lots of ventures and businesses that are contributing to their wealth. They are well invested, but that's not the only thing.

They also do spend and consume a very high amount and there is the inevitable dilution through the generations as families grow and each person uses their fortune in a different way.

There are plenty of ultrarich who are no longer.