What do they do with it then? The only way they could hold money and it not have a positive impact is if it's sitting in cash.
If they invest it or hell, even put it in a savings account, the money is having a positive impact on the economy. If they buy a ridiculous $50M yacht? That money flows to the company that built it.
That's true, but it'd be true if all that money were divided between 1000 people's bank accounts or if 50 people bought $1m yachts too. And that way there'd be more people enjoying the wealth rather than just one. Some people think that's better.
That's not necessarily so. If you invest in real estate (and many do), wealth and income can grow even without any physical improvements, just due to supply and demand. National income will grow (since it includes rent) but it doesn't create any new jobs.
Here's an analysis showing that capital is earning more than labor mostly due to housing prices:
All of which may have something to do with rock solid fact that global capitalism is lifting people out of poverty at the fastest rate in human history.
You would have to define "hoard" here. But there is a more interesting question which is that when Bill Gates is worth 54 billion a lot of that is stock in Microsoft, not fungible cash.
When you have a millionaire who is "rich" because they own their house (no mortgage) and the house is worth more than a million dollars, they might still be living paycheck to paycheck. The difference being they could leverage their house if they needed money on short notice.
That said, it would be interesting to see what shooting down rent-seeking taxes would do here. If for example you allowed copyrights to expire in a reasonable time, then you could have people put on a play and keep the profits. Something they can't do today.
Life was better for everyone when we had a demand side economy. The working class and middle , had some money to put back into the economy, even after they paid there bill's. I was only a kid in the 60's but I had eye's, and society was more equal and better for everyone.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "money" the wealthy have most of their wealth tied up in ill liquid assets like property, would you call owning property hoarding? Cash is almost always invested, either directly or indirectly through deposits.
Actually, straight up hoarding would be helpful to the economy, IMO. If the money isn't being used to build some ridiculous yacht or 40 bedroom house that no one is going to ever make full use of, then the people that actually would have done that work now are freed up to do stuff the benefits the rest of the community.
Why all the downvotes? HN'ers like yachts and empty mansions, huh?
If they invest it or hell, even put it in a savings account, the money is having a positive impact on the economy. If they buy a ridiculous $50M yacht? That money flows to the company that built it.