The US has higher income for median, for the poor. for those in poverty, for every decile, by a decent margin.

For example, US median income is around 46k. Germany is a reasonable first world country, yet median income is 33k (all in PPP dollars). This is huge. Most of the first world has similarly low income, at every level.

If your argument against income is that some people make a lot, so instead make everyone poorer, I find that a weak argument. It is a common outcome of poorly designed policies that those focusing on the rich or poor but with a bad understanding of history and econ end up making. I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.

Here's some metrics for various ways to measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

OECD has tons more.

> I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.

You think the average person would allocate capital better than those that understand investment and growth, and are willing to risk their own resources? There's a reason govt funds vastly underperform general markets - those with less to lose (i.e., those playing with other's money) likely fare worse at allocation than those that have more skin in the game. I know that most workers I tend to hang out with have a terrible understanding of how econ/macro/finance or even starting and funding businesses works.

Also those countries that tend strongly into socialism instead of capitalism have not done as well as those with strong capitalist bases (i.e., all first world countries - where people can own the means of production and operate for their own profit). If capital were allocated so much better in the places you seem to want, where is the evidence that it works? There's 200+ countries; if it worked, you'd think it would be winning somewhere....

You are free to have that opinion, but I think that the majority of the people affected by these economic policies (who by definition cannot be rich) will disagree with you.

I think that the debate of policy would be greatly improved if proposals started with a statement of fundamental axioms like these, from which the supposed merits of policies are derived.

Where do you think power goes in a free market where the rich/powerful are already at a tremendous advantage? Wealth trickles up.

Large concentrations of wealth are necessary for scaling production, allowing lower costs and increasing standard of living. Moreover, large concentrations of wealth are usually not very concentrated in the first place: the wealth of the wealthy is spread across the economy and the wealth of associations is spread across the world.

> It boggles my mind that people who argue against large governments because their incentives aren't correctly aligned don't see that precisely the same argument applies to private individual/businesses with large amounts of wealth.

The same arguments RE power/monopoly/unaccountability that apply to corporations in the market apply to the government much more in every case. Additionally, the government has the authority to coerce everyone into doing what they want to be done. It also has the ability to steal your money and spend it on things that you might somewhat benefit from at the best or are absolutely morally reprehensible at the worst.

And no, the existence of voting does not make any of that less of a problem.

Right. Efficient economies do reward people according to the value they create. I'm pushing you toward one of the following arguments:

1. Returns on investment are artificially high (relative to wages) because of an inefficiency in the economy 2. We should introduce inefficiency in the economy in order to keep RoIs artificially low (relative to wages)

If (1), then please describe the inefficiencies (you mentioned one possibility--taxes on investment income). If (2), what good could come of this?

I don't see any reason or evidence for this, that is, for the proposition that ceteris paribus and independent of the distribution of tax burden, reducing the level of taxation promotes a more equal distribution of wealth.

Certainly, to the extent that a given distribution of taxation itself promotes inequality, reducing the level of taxation in with that distribution will mitigate that effect, but your proposition is equivalent to the proposition that every distribution of taxation promotes inequality compared to the absence of taxation, which I don't see any reason to believe.

> The statement 'Limit the power the government has to control the flow of wealth' in itself does not mean slashing taxes only for the wealthy. It means the government has limited power to decide who gets what

IOW, the thing called government is less the actual vehicle through which society is governed and more of a distracting figurehead for the masses, and the powerful govern through other means -- and still for their own benefit and others expense (but without even the need to provide a show of public participation and concern for the public interest.)

Yep, I think I agree with this, although I've often seen stuff like "Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg shouldn't have that much money. No one should."

So I think the typical anti-inequality argument has a much stronger conclusion.

Well, that's probably because you are constantly arguing different points that aren't necessarily germane to the discussion. Remember, this was about your point that wealthy people build their wealth by suppressing education in the general populace. So this is a counter-point in that it is possible to build wealth by conscientious behavior instead. There is some research on the latter, but really only conjecture and false narratives on the former.

Wealth inequality and the state of democracy are digressions from that point. I don't think I made any statements about what level of wealth inequality is healthy for the stability of a society, let alone a moral argument for it, nor did I make any claims about democracy. Again, this just comes across as you having an axe to grind, and you'll shoehorn in talking points without addressing the central claim.

> Why would they unless they are suffering at the bottom? How does it actually affect you?

You might want to spend some time thinking their alternate perspectives.

> Or is it just envy of those who have more?

Not any more than it being greed that's motivating you to take your positions.

It's generally not very enlightening to take personal swipes like you did there.

> If political power is created from economic power, then you're just transfering even more power to politicians by creating wealth taxes. It is concentrating it further.

This seems to be hinting at a kind of libertarian worldview that sees the government and politicians as some kind of unaccountable independent power. That's not the only way to think about government, and I'd argue that it's a pretty limited and ultimately unhelpful perspective.

A more democratic perspective is not so opposed to the people gaining more power through their elected representatives.

Is that true though? Not long ago taxes on the wealthy were much higher and income inequality was lower.

Personally I have a kinder eye towards government; it’s A) not efficient by design, it’s meant to be comprehensive, and B) less wasteful then I think most people believe it to be.

Somewhat true. Where you go with it is false, though. You seem to think that the society is all that enabled them to become rich. But if that's true, why does Bill Gates have more money than me? I'm in the same society.

> If a democracy says we can increase taxes on the wealthy, then that is just a choice, not stealing.

That presumes that everything a democracy decides on is just a choice - that it can't be wrong. I disagree with that statement. More, I think history disagrees with that statement.

It does matter for democracy. If rich people spent all their money on blackjack and hookers, it would be fine. But they don't, lot of it is spent on lobbying and keeping the social control over others. (And even if well-intentioned, it's irrelevant, because it still robs others their agency. Munger Hall is a good example.)

It's unlikely you can have ultra-rich without ultra-poor. That's why there should be limits to riches too.

Poor people seem pretty powerful to me. In a world where rich people are infinitely powerful...what percentage of tax revenue do you think they'd be paying? 0%? 10%? The top 3% if earners paid over 50% of income tax in the US in 2016 [1]. That doesn't seem particularly powerful to me. Or, if it is, that power isn't wielded especially self-interestedly.

> You can't make the world better if you are powerless, and you are powerless so long as you can be overruled by those with more wealth than you.

Your inferences are correct, but your premises are wrong. And if you're worried about money influencing politics, well, i've got news for you: reducing wealth inequality is just going to make the influence of that money even less transparent than it is now.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-...

Sort of, yes. But my issue with this is not that the obscenely wealthy have so much more per se - I guess there is a moral argument to make there, but I'm not the one to make since it doesn't bother me too much either. I'm mostly with you on that: speaking in strictly material terms we shouldn't mind too much if a small group of people are much much better off than everyone else, provided that everyone is still looked after and the situation is improving.

And, if you're some trickle-down theorist or whatever, you might even say that some people have to be obscenely rich for there to be any progress. I don't agree with that at all, but it's another argument you hear.

Anyway, outsized wealth inequality like this need not be just a problem in a material sense though. It's also a problem in a political sense. Wealth and power are pretty highly correlated, but democracy functions best when power is more diffuse. So a concentration of wealth interferes with healthy politics and governance, and that's why I don't like the massive disparity in wealth we see know, and why I think it's very dangerous.

It's about income distribution.

It's true that the economy is not a cake you can split in several parts, so it's not a zero sum game, but I think that inequalities should be reduced, and that means taking from the ones who have, to give to those who have less.

And if you take from the ones who have the most, you are not creating poor people, you are just improving the balance.

And again, it's about the extremes, there is less need to touch the incomes of those in the middle.

I don't understand how taking from the rich to give to the poor would be a bad thing.

I hate the constant conflation of rich and wealthy. People who earn a lot of money vs people who own a lot of money. A lot of criticism about inequality, by politicians and economists alike, is about rising wealth inequality, but they only advocate and undertake policies to hurt the higher income class. Why is there no wealth tax, but the govt is funded primarily by income and payroll tax. Why is the federal reserve always worried about falling asset prices. And again here, rising house prices benefited the wealthy, and hurt the high income class, but you didn't differentiate between them either.

If you're arguing the problem is the ability of the political class to pick winners and losers instead of creating rules that are beneficial to society generally and applied to all equally - amen.

Another way to think about this is that your job generates certain value in the economy. If labor's salary doesn't capture that, then that value is going somewhere - either to your governments via taxes or to capital owners. I understand that some Europeans will not have problems with the former, but are you comfortable letting capital class capture all the remaining value after taxes? If not, that is a good enough argument because allowing that to happen is what is driving wealth inequality to high levels.

It was caused by economic parasites, not choices.

I know a fair number of people who inherited property and do almost no productive work.

They live lavish lifestyles and live almost entirely off the hard work of others while their wealth - the result of the hard work of others - both grows and sustains them.

I know a fair few others who are worth to society far in excess of what they are paid and have very little left of that once bills from monopolies, rent and taxes are accounted for.

At some point this system breaks down completely.