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These aren't even hard problems. Until you meet someone in Congress. Then it suddenly seems hopeless.
I have no idea if this is true (I've asked economists-in-training, they say they'll get back to me), but I've read that the huge increases in tax rates on high income during the war was less to generate revenue (tho more revenue was certainly a need - there was also a growing focus on growing the number of people who paid taxes, which prior had been quite small), but more to ensure profits were not realized and instead kept invested in the economy and the war machine.
A kind of practical "hodl" to keep the wartime economy stock with reinvestment - or really to discourage removing money from industrial investment - to benefit the war-time economy.
Would like links to things to learn more about this line of reasoning.
Would the people benefit from redistributing the things they are hoarding? Corporate stock that pays little to no dividends, mainly? It’s not like they are hoarding wheat. I don’t really get what people think will happen if we redistribute the stored wealth.
All wealth is, is a claim to direct labor and materials, the magnitude of which is relative to the total amount of wealth competing to direct those at present. If some portion of the wealth is locked away, the labor and materials are still being deployed, just the total pool of wealth competing to direct them is smaller than it would be otherwise. Unlocking wealth does not actually bring more stuff into existence.
Now, it could redirect labor and materials used to built yachts or luxury homes into more practical goods. But my impression is that the labor and materials used for those things are minuscule compared to the overall economy, and most of the wealth of the very wealthy is not actually used for those sorts of things.
It’s not. Wealth creates political power, which the wealthy wield to stack the odds in their own favor at the expense of everyone else.
worse, you completely miss the political dimension. hoarded wealth buys the lobbying power to prevent these necessary structural changes. you are engaging in the exact kind of apologetics that has led to american infrastructure collapsing while the capital class extracts rent. thinking that resource allocation is a 'no-op' is economically illiterate
Pretty sure the vast, vast bulk of wealth held by the richest US households is indeed “reinvested in the economy at large”.
Where do you think it is instead?
The idea that less than 100 people in the country have some sort of mandated right from the devil to dictate the direction of technology in our country should fill every single decent human being with disgust.
We must correct this. The fact that several hyper scale data centers could provide US school children free lunches + breakfast for a year should be the first immediate sign that something is deeply wrong with our country.
imagine the horror of free loaders eating free lunches, living in affordable apartments close to school, and riding high speed rail each weekend to visit nature. will anyone think of our lords? and what about my iphone? obviously phones will cease to exist once we implement these communist pipe dreams. just look at china, they've got all of this and they clearly hate it. no phones, no brand clothes, oh the terror. you should be locked up in an insane asylum immediately
Amazon is pretty great, too.
Also schoolchildren in my state have had free school breakfast & lunch since Covid.
This is the problem with people like you, you simply lost your humanity because you care more about trinkets than literally shaping a better world for your children.
