[mytherin]

Prisoner's dilemma. A single wealthy person giving up their wealth will not have a large enough effect on society to actually change anything. It will only make them worse off (as they now have less wealth). From the perspective of a single person, hoarding as much wealth as possible is a local optimum.

When all wealthy people get together and divide their wealth, this enables education, housing, preventative health care, etc for poorer people in society. This will in turn lead to reduced crime, reduced homelessness, reduced illness and a much more productive society as a whole. This will then in turn generate more money for them.

This is a global optimum that will make everybody better off, including the rich, but it is not easy to achieve. It requires long-term vision, which is difficult in a world driven by quarterly reports and four year election cycles.

[abfan1127]

there seem to be a ton of assumptions in this comment.

[dTal]

At least they put some effort into it. As it is, your comment contributes nothing. What assumptions, and why are they wrong?

[abfan1127]

That's actually a really valid point. I got interrupted by work. I'll see what I can do.

[AstralStorm]

Assumptions are testable, e.g. using game models. Such as Monopoly.

If you want as more accurate model, you can make one, e.g. mock markets. You can even evaluate then using various programmed strategies.

The problem is if your assumptions are completely invalid. Macroeconomy tends to use a few of those, especially based on workings of debt cycle. An almost correct descriptive model which when used as proscriptive causes ruin. Likewise pure supply-demand models fail when applied in the real world.

[machello13]

I don't think you can talk about this stuff without resorting to unsubstantiated beliefs about the way the world works.