[maerF0x0]

>You're creating a class of people with indestructible inherited wealth that never have to work, that only have to collect interest and rent on the backs of everyone else.

That wealth is invested in profitable ventures that either create benefits in the system (assuming rational actors) or 2) lose value due to poor choices.

Capital is rewarded because the investors are taking opportunity cost risks that advance the sum value of humanity's wealth.

[astrodust]

I think you have a profound misunderstanding of what someone with billions of dollars in inherited wealth does with their money.

It's not investing in "profitable ventures" that "create benefits", it's tied up in businesses they inherited, it's squirreled away in tax havens, it's spent on lavish properties, club memberships, expensive cars, and tuition for their children. If you're lucky a tiny fraction of that trickles down in the form of scholarships or charity work.

Then that money generates enough of a return that their kids can inherit billions in turn and the cycle repeats.

There's a point at which you have so much money that you will no longer ever have to work, but your kids will never have to work, and neither will their kids. It has such a heavy gravitational pull that in the long run there's no way you can lose.

If you have even half competent people managing your money an estate worth $10B can pretty much exist forever and grow at or beyond the rate of inflation even when extravagantly luxurious cost of living expenses are deducted. A million dollar a month allowance won't put a dent in this money.

[maerF0x0]

> it's spent on lavish properties, club memberships, expensive cars, and tuition for their children.

All of that is trickle down to workers for those jobs

> it's tied up in businesses they inherited

That means the sum benefit to humanity is still going!

> Then that money generates enough of a return that their kids can inherit billions in turn and the cycle repeats.

I cant imagine someone who more deserves to direct the money after their death than the one who earned it. I'm sure many parents (not Buffet though) would rather their child have it than the government.

> If you have even half competent people managing your money an estate worth $10B

I'm sure those half competent people are well compensated for their skills. Shame that billionaires are so evil as to provide those jobs...

[Faark]

You are missing the point. For a society to work, it's members have to perceive it as somewhat fair. The naive idealist would demand equal opportunity for everyone born. But we humans want to use the means available to us to directly improve out children's opportunities. Our freedom to do so makes our society inherently unfair. Especially when we expect those "investments" like education to pay for themself...

The interesting question is, like always politics, how to balance those trade-offs for bests outcomes.

Yes, that means both giving parents the chance to help their kids while also not having a disillusioned crowd without perspective demanding to tear down society in favor of whatever promises to be better. And yes, that requires some degree of wealth redistribution like decent public eduction.

[astrodust]

Working for less than minimum wage on a temporary worker permit is not in any way 'trickle down'.

These ultra-rich people can dictate terms, can sway policy, in ways you can't even fathom. The person earning almost nothing has no say, no vote, no power at all.

There's no benefit to humanity when all their money is being squirreled away in offshore accounts where it creates only a handful of jobs.

When you're talking about giving something to your kids you usually mean, at most, a million dollars. Estates under $4M aren't even taxed. It's only in cases beyond that where the taxes get stiffer, and they should.

You don't want what happened in Europe where for hundreds of years the same families control everything with almost zero change in the status-quo despite countries and empires coming and going, long, vicious wars, famines, disease and conquest. Money doesn't move down the chain unless you make it move.

Trickle down is what the ultra-rich tell people is going to happen so they can hoover up more money.

In a perfectly ideal society every child born has the same opportunity as any other, they're all free to make it or blow it. That's obviously never going to happen, but letting the ultra-rich maintain their wealth indefinitely creates a permanent and insurmountable advantage for that class to the detriment of everyone else.

[ska]

  assuming rational actor

There is a reason such toy models are called "toy models". They are very useful for understanding and interrogating ideas. They aren't so useful for modeling real systems. One can only hope that policy making is a little more sophisticated (alas, often in vain).

[ahoy]

> Capital is rewarded because the investors are taking opportunity cost risks that advance the sum value of humanity's wealth.

And the vast majority of that advance in humanity's sum wealth accrues in the hands of those very capitalists. How peculiar!