Look, if everyone is a millionaire then no one is rich. We don’t want that level of chaos now do we?
/s
To be fair, $1 million, while a shit ton, is not rich. $10 million and up is astronomical. $999 million is obscene when people are starving.
Most Americans, and most humans, will never save $1 million. (The median USA household income in 2024 was apparently $83K. This is enough to earn $1 million over the course of a household’s earning.)
Applying the 4% rule to the above, $1 million invested could safely return $40K per year. $10 million likewise $400K per year.
My point is that there are many actual millionaires in the USA and that there is a large difference between the top and the bottom of “millionaire”.
Said another way, the vast majority of millionaires are working class and would benefit from most wealth distribution policies in one way or another.
This is a fundamental notion in macroeconomics. Money in the hands of the wealthy gets hoarded and then is not flowing.
And then the working class starts singing Bolshevik anthems.
Reminds me of that article the other day where the richest man in France was telling us why a wealth tax was a bad idea. Okay, pal. No conflict of interests there.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Then why do they keep consistently setting up systems to redistribute our wealth to them?
Because the systems we set up are dependant on money. And who has all the spare money?
Sad thing is when a fellow poor says it.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that nation’s wealth while changes over time is fixed and distributed over the population.
They think that people like musk having 450 billions doesn’t affect how much they have in their pocket.
Money needs to keep moving. If it starts to pool on one side is a sign society gets stagnant and bad stuff starts to happen.
No redistribution, just fair compensation, no more hoarding.
I mean, no more hoarding implies redistribution. You can’t just say “you can’t hoard any more” and then just leave the hoard owners with their hoards alone. You kind of have to break up and redistribute their hoards.
One way to fix it could be to tax investment gains at a higher rate than wages.
Which is just redistribution, but passively. And badly.
We should some Georgism at the bare minimum. Land-value and stock-value taxes. Again, just redistribution but over a longer window of time.
