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> So it seems to me that not all of his wealth is usable Bezos is the richest, so we don't have examples quite at that scale. That said, we have some pretty big (eg gates, buffet) announcing liquidation & donation without anything bad happening. So, he probably could sell his amazon shares and do something else with them. You are approaching some "it's complicated" questions that occur at scale though. It's true, for example, that if Bezos wanted to liquidate immediately, that volume of shares is probably more than the market could buy. It might temporarily crash the stock, if handled wrong. Finance people know how to do this right though, so I think we can say that all of that wealth is usable. There's also the other side, what Bezos would spend that wealth on? You can only buy what exists. Say Bezos decides to solve homelessness and housing scarcity in his state forever. He sells his amazon shares (slowly, carefully) and buys half a million houses. There aren't that many houses for sale, so rices would skyrocket. Say he decides to build instead, to avoid that. The state only has so many builders, roofers, cement shops, cranes... only so much capacity to produce houses. Building or buying half a million houses in Washington quickly is probably near impossible. You might cause detrimental side effects by trying. Normal people couldn't buy a homes, because Bezos has bid up the price of everything. OTOH, builders and pre existing property investors will get rich. Inflation probably happens. This is the kind of problem governments often face. At some scale, common sense economic concepts/abstractions like the cost of building a house break down and underlying realities leak in. Only so many houses exist.There's only so much labour, materials, capacity to produce. A rung or two higher up the meta ladder, a common demonstration of macroeconomic weirdness is the "paradox of choice." What would happen to an economy if everyone saves 100% of their money? All shops & restaurants are empty. There's no work. Businesses fail, default on loans. Share prices crash. It's simply impossible for a whole economy to save. Saving (and more controversially, borrowing) doesn't exist at macroeconomic scale. An economy can't save or borrow. Shutting down car factories today doesn't make it produce more cars tomorrow. So, we can't all save for a car this year to buy one next year. |
> ....only has so many builders, roofers, cement shops, cranes... only so much capacity to produce houses....only so much labour, materials, capacity to produce.
IMO the underlying problem to solve is mobilisng this capacity. And the $$ to do so needn't come from rich people. The US anyway has been running budget deficit, there's also this ~$2T infrastructure bill. Some of that money could be used to solve housing/health/education problems and as an added benefit it'll provide jobs to the US citizens. I'm sure this will have 2nd order adverse effects but they I guess they won't be as disruptive.
I am not saying inequality is a problem; but taxing rich doesn't seem to solve it. It will lead to endless debate and lost time. It will take the focus away from the underling problems which is rotting basic human needs -- food/health/housing/education. The government should address underlying causes that lead to inequality and spend on infrastructure in a big way.