[paulddraper]

> like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically.

Zero-sum is one perspective, but not one that I subscribe to.

Does your neighbor having $10b of stuff make you better or worse off than if than if there's $10b of stuff at the bottom of the ocean?

[mmcconnell1618]

I don't believe the economy is zero-sum either but handing $10B in capital to your child gives them a significantly unfair advantage compared to most others.

Image that the economy is a field of wheat. It grows bigger every year as workers become more productive and learn how to fertilize and water more efficiently. At the end of the season, everyone gets a chance to head into the field and collect some wheat.

Some people don't have any tools. They pick the wheat by hand. Others have managed to fashion scythes and can collect a little more. But, the kid who inherited $10b has a fleet of combines that race into the field and collect 75% of the wheat in a flash.

The economy (wheat field) grew bigger and everyone had a little more wheat but the $10b kid got way more than the others and can now buy another combine for the fleet to get even more next year.

Without some rational tax on inherited wealth, we will create (and already have created in the United States) a plutocracy.

[breakpointalpha]

I'm sorry if someone mislead you into thinking wealth was, or could be, fair.

Your analogy is so far off the mark on how wealth is created, it's laughable.

$10 billion in family wealth is almost never held in cash, it's invested in companies, land, and other ventures. Wherever an investment is made, people are put to work collecting salaries and benefits, generally speaking.

You've made a gross oversimplification, and a misleading one at that.

[mmcconnell1618]

I never said everything had to be fair. If a worker with a scythe hands it down to their child, that child has an unfair advantage compared to the child of a worker with no tools. It's the degree of the unfairness that matters.

No, not misleading at all. I never said the $10b kid had cash. Obviously, wheat expires (cash) and would be converted into another form of wealth. In this instance, he buys combines which have to be built by someone. You might even say he's a job creator.

But.... and this is a big but.... all investments are not job creating investments. Financial services, speculative investments, automation and robotics that increase worker efficiency but reduce the number of workers. I would argue that the efficiency of $10b in capital in the hands of a single person is far, far less efficient than $10b distributed across many people who use it to consume goods directly. The control of wealth by a small group produces a system where the rules favor the wealthy minority at the expense of the less wealthy. You can only go so far before the guillotines come out and the people take matters into their own hands.

[hedvig]

Yeah but a majority of us believe it should be taxed and not just cross our fingers that some jobs are created for a while.

[paulddraper]

Image the economy is a field of wheat.

Someone comes in with a tractor plough and plants twice a much wheat as last year. There is now lots of food in the economy and bread and pies.

In fact, the tractor plough plants so much wheat year after year that a few of the farmers stop planting and start working on building and maintaining tractors.

Eventually the tractors do well enough and wheat is cheap enough that the some farmers can afford to raise wheat-fed cattle.

[refurb]

Reading to your kids gives them a huge leg up. Should we stop parents from doing that?

[Frondo]

It's a problem if you care about any of the measurable real-world consequence of wealth inequality.

It's also a problem if you view it as a symptom of a system that isn't functioning well at giving everyone a fair shake in life, in participating economically or politically.

The number itself isn't a problem, it's what it causes and what it's caused by that's the problem.

Get money out of politics, get everyone a vote and the capacity to use it, make sure everyone's fed and housed adequately, everyone has access to health care and education ... make it so we're living in a Star Trek TNG universe, and I don't care about how much the next guy has either.

Until then, it's worth looking at, at least the very least to help us to see why we don't have all those nice things.

[nicoburns]

No, but other people having $10bn of disposable income increases prices for you. Or if you look over the long term, skews the economy towards producing luxury goods rather than meeting the basic needs of ordinary people.

[refurb]

Pretty sure a guy/gal who has $10Bn of disposable income isn’t buying underwear at Target like me, driving up the price.

[nicoburns]

They're not driving up demand, they're driving down supply, by making it relatively more profitable to make the goods that they do want, and thus relatively less profitable to make budget underwear (and other basic goods).

[chrisbennet]

But owning property in your neighborhood my drive up your rents so you need to move.

[ahoy]

It does when that neighbor buys my apartment building and hikes my rent.

[astrodust]

It also does when your neighbor wields such enormous political power they can get you evicted from your building under eminent domain, bulldozes it, and replaces it with condos you can't afford.