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This isn't very complicated to solve: redistribute more of the wealth. MMTers say that isn't even necessary, but it is to fix inequality.

Question I've never seen anyone actually answer: Why is inequality inherently a bad thing if the "floor" for everyone is continually being raised?

Researchs show that inequalities have a very negative impact on group cohesion. I'll look up the relevant researchs if you want.

Rough/vague answers I've been given:

- our democracy is not perfect, and allowing someone to become too wealthy affords them too much power, effectively disenfranchinsing the masses.

- Even if the floor is raising, its still too low and it would be better to squeeze those on the high side of the inequality in order to raise the floor even further.

- the social cohesion thing from the other comment.

How high does the floor need to be raised?

Because wealth is power. Wealth is influence. If you control the means of production you have a disproportionately large voice not in government but in society. Not everyone has Jeff Bezos' pen that can in one fell swoop dramatically alter the livelihoods of millions or bring cities and counties to their knees grovelling at his feet.

Irrespective of total overall wealth, the distribution of wealth is an indicator of who decides the future of the society in which that wealth exists. Today, 90% of Americans have as much wealth as the 1% at the top, which means 1% of people wield half of the influence of money in society, and money has an obscenely powerful influence on society.

Its why we get tax cuts and deficits. Why we don't have socialized medicine. Why our labor protections are lacking, why workers get so little mandatory paid time off. Its why stress is up, why working hours are up, why debt is up. Why housing is more expensive - the poor don't use housing as an investment the way the rich do, in the absence of floods of capital floating around for the exclusive purposes of making more money there is a much smaller market for domineering real estate markets so much that you buy out the local government to prevent building to drive up your property values.

"Bad" is subjective and binary. Let's talk thresholds.

As extremes, the floor is death from exposure/starvation and the ceiling is owning all the wealth available. Does it make sense to have a range this extreme? Some think so, but I think they are confusing this for meritocracy. I think it's ineffective and too closely mirrors nature, where one small mistake means perpetual agony or death.

Now the other extreme: the floor and the ceiling are the same. Everyone is paid one wage no matter the work they do. Everyone has a decent amount of comfort. Is this effective? Probably not, because if I get paid the same wage as someone who works half as hard as me, wouldn't I just work less? There's no incentive structure here.

So the rest is exploring areas somewhere in between. Does it make sense for someone to have the power and influence that $100B gives? Does that kind of concentration of economic power make sense? What if it was capped at $1B? Would having $1B be incentive enough to strive for success? What about $500M? What about $100M?

At what point do you say "ok, great job, you've managed to divert an insane amount of wealth to yourself, you won't be needing any more after that?" And the lower you set that level, the higher the floor raises. Is this fair? Debatable, obviously. Is it effective? Probably. Nobody is not going to start a megacorporation because "gee, I wanted to make $100B but I can only ever make $1B, so what's the point? I'll just work in a coffee shop instead."

Now imagine the floor: What if we could all own a house, car, have free tuition, and work 30 hours a week with plenty of time for vacations? In other words, what if we could actually live our lives without running on some endless, stressful treadmill for 45 years?

This isn't about "good" or "bad" but rather being mindful of how wealth is distributed and how it could look if it was done differently. Obviously, we're talking about purely-hypothetical scenarios, but that doesn't mean the ideas shouldn't be discussed.

I'm curious how conservatives would feel about a hefty inheritance tax. The person who worked for the money is dead now so shouldn't care, and the person receiving the money didn't work for it, so it kinda sidesteps the typical argument.

They would be say that an inheritance tax hurts "family farms" and "family businesses", because they are dishonest about the fact that their policies benefit the power and privilege of a only a tiny minority of the population

Sounds familiar - here it's always that changes are going to hurt "small businesses" and the "average, working class citizen" even though that's pretty trivially not the case.

I've gotten to the point where I actually desperately want to find a politician with right wing policies who isn't a dishonest slimeball, it's almost my white whale.

Are you distinguishing an inheritance tax from an estate tax? Arguably the former is more fair than the latter: if a rich man bequeaths his entire estate to one child, both taxes would be the same. But if he gives much smaller amounts to many different people, the inheritance tax would be much smaller.

If your goal is to reduce dynastic wealth, this is arguably a good outcome because there's less "harm" in a bunch of people getting a smaller amount of money than a single person getting a huge amount of money.

However, things are a little less clear if a rich man gives all his money to his 4 children, their 4 spouses, and his 12 grandchildren. It still seems pretty dynastic in that case, even though the estate is being split up between 20 people.

The people most fixated on redistributing wealth seem to often have only a glancing familiarity with how it is produced.

Great wealth isn't accumulated by stealing from the working class, by and large it is accumulated by making the working class better off.

> Do you complain that a skilled chemical engineer gave up his career and turned to moving little green pieces of paper around to make his fortune, because society rewards certain types of paper pushing orders of magnitude more than it rewards inventiveness, skill, and hard work?

The 'moving little green pieces of paper around' is called allocating capital, and it's as important a driver of productivity in the economy as chemical engineering. He was highly rewarded because he used capital effectively.

If it’s “as important” then why does it carry orders of magnitude more rewards?

I don’t think people are complaining so much as I think they are pointing out why charity is not a good way to solve these sorts of social problems.

Charity is random and arbitrary, and does not fairly address problems by actual need. Yet, many people still argue that charity should be our social safety net, and we don’t need to fund programs that help people.

i was following you until you started talking about destroying peasants

I think that bit was tongue in cheek.

Burn them! Burn them at the stakes!!! ;)