[makomk]

Analogies like this one are exactly why all these headlines about the super-wealthy are misleading. When people see these astronomical sums they think in terms of actual things they can buy because that's the main thing money represents to most, but those big numbers don't represent actual goods and services consumed by the super-wealthy and their fraction of overall global consumption is much, much smaller than the wealth difference. In fact, the fact that the super-wealthy spend so much less of their wealth than ordinary people was originally one of the arguments people used to justify wealth redistribution especially after the global financial crisis in 2008 - and it might've made sense then.

The current crisis we're in is not rooted in the financial system but one of underlying supply, though, and it's not possible to fix this by redistributing the resources the super-wealthy are consuming to ordinary people because they're not consuming enough. If you think of money as a claim on scarce resources, almost all the wealth of the super-wealthy is not real money. It's just an imaginary figure produced by multiplying their shareholdings by what the amount of actual money they could trade a single share for.

[quantified]

Those big numbers do represent the potential things consumable if they were converted into new consumption. They’re not sitting as cash in the bank. But they are a great proxy for it. Cash gets borrowed nearly for free against it, for example. Absolutely not “imaginary”. Access to quality and luxury is not based on anything more imaginary than more money than someone else. Access to better land, to preferential treatment by politicians, police and health systems the same.

Wealth guards the opportunity to consume, as well. I really don’t understand what you mean by “not consuming enough.”

[6510]

It is not the purchase power that needs to be distributed but the absolutely massive influence that comes with it for free in our system.

Our system is to have an elected government govern over a game of capitalism. By its very nature this combination accomplishes stuff by concentrating wealth in the areas where it accomplishes the most.

These accomplishments should be things like social progress, preservation of the eco system, quality of life, sustainability, resilience. We can trade some for something else for a while but the whole point of governing is to have a long term plan for everyone rather than a short term plan to expand gains for a hand full of people for a short while.