re: #138 Jack Burton, Gunner on Death Star of David

In a period of just 12-13 years I went from being a glibertarian on economics to believing there should be income and net worth caps, or a soft cap made by taxing everything over a certain amount in both areas at 99%. Almost no one is a billionaire without doing a litany of shady and illegal bullshit and exploiting people. It never trickles down. The velocity of money up there is fucking almost zero and that’s a very bad thing.

I knew (not well, but friend of a friend and the like) one person who had a 100 million-ish net worth. Turned out it was due to a massive scam over the course of a decade.

For sure the velocity of money of most inherited wealth is next to 0. 100 million dollar paintings hanging on a wall don’t provide much benefit. This isn’t the case with many first generation fortunes. People like Musk or Bezos are creating massive wealth not only for themselves but for thousands of others. I think that an estate tax with teeth is the way to go, but make it really hard/impossible to avoid.

Edited addendum. I personally know self made centi millionaires and a couple of billionaires who in the course of making their fortune earned even more money for various public employee pension funds.