Those who "hoard" wealth do not do so by filling a swimming pool with gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. They invest in companies that provide jobs and the goods and services that the rest of us enjoy. Yes that is virtuous.
Sitting on billions of dollars in stock in a publicly traded company isn't really all that different from having a swimming pool full of gold coins. The day-to-day functioning of that company is not going to be affected if the billionaire sells shares to pay taxes rather than giving the shares to their children. An initial investment in a company is virtuous but once you have billions keeping that money in the family isn't really virtuous given that the alternative is contributing to the society that made the initial investment possible.
Investing in companies is contributing to society. Government is not society. Investing in Walmart so that the rural poor have more access to affordable goods is virtuous. And a whole lot of the contributions to government are absolutely not. Like the money that goes to build bombs to kill people in Yemen, or the money that funds your local police department's efforts to suppress protests against their unaccountable violence.
Do you mean supply of credit? Because additional money wouldn't drive demand for credit, it would drive supply as those with money look for places to lend it.
If you are saying an excess supply of credit leads to financial crises, I agree with you. But the federal reserve that intentionally pumps money into the big banks to make credit easy is a far bigger contributor.
I agree that Milton Friedman had his flaws, one of which is this very topic, he never properly connected the federal reserve, money expansion and easy credit to economic instability.
> They invest in companies that provide jobs and the goods and services that the rest of us enjoy. Yes that is virtuous.
They invest in companies and expect a return! If money was directly redistributed, then the people running and working for those companies might able to keep that value that they have created.
This is true to an extent, but in no way is someone worth $200 billion amassing the wealth the same way someone earning and saving $2 million over a lifetime.
This also implies that only the person investing would provide that function of providing goods, jobs and services. Since he government does the same (produce goods, jobs and services), does that the government is also moral? Why is one more moral than the other?
Not all jobs or service contribute to society. But if you invest in a company that provides goods and services that people don't want, that money is lost and you lose your ability to invest further.
When government provides a service that people don't want, that service can continue indefinitely, especially if the few who benefit can contribute back to the politicians who keep it going. Lockheed Martin and Boeing can contribute to some politicians to make sure that wars continue and they reap back way more than they contributed from the taxpayer who's only option is to vote between two pro-war candidates. Those jobs making bombs for Saudi Arabia to drop on Yemen don't contribute to society, they are a determent to society, yet they continue without end because nobody loses on that investment as long as the taxpayer can be forced to pay for it.