It means wages and employment are too high which causes inflation. Nevermind the printed trillions, the common employee is the true enemy here.
Seeing as the top 10% hold over 60% of the wealth (in the US, globally we have a dozen people with as much wealth as the bottom 50%), I don't see how this follows.
i must be missing the point you’re trying to make, or the framing, or something. why would i want to be rich if not to direct more resources to achieving my own preferences? of course this is not maximally productive for society: if all money was required to be directed based on where it were maximally productive then it would no longer mean anything to own money; money would have no value to the individual.
These days, I think most of the motivation to be seriously rich (vs. mere "can afford two nicer McMansions, and your kids don't qualify for college financial aid" rich) is a humans-are-primates obsession* with being further up the pecking order.
But your bottom line is still valid. The rich are definitely not allocating resources in ways which are beneficial to society.
*Less-flattering terms, perhaps from the DSM-5, would seem applicable in many cases.
I completely agree but I think you've defined rich wrong. There's only so many multimillionaires and billionaires and most of their money gets plowed into business ventures (even if dumb ones), investments and other things like that that aren't too off the wall.
The economic volatility comes from the much, much more numerous hordes of upper middle class doctors, lawyers, techies and whatnot that are "post scarcity" enough that they can swing a fair amount of money around in pursuit of that.
When a large subset of them decides to do something, like buy toilet paper, or TSLA, or a second house or whatever, there's a huge effect and that's where you get bad tulip mania style volatility and economic patterns from. Nobody on food stamps and nobody with millions to their name lost their ass on beanie babies.
But in general rich people are rich BECAUSE they are good at thinking about being rich.
Your point made sense until you mentioned wealth inequality-- but wealth inequality exists EXACTLY because rich people are good at thinking about being rich. These decisions may not be productive in terms of society -- but they generally favour growing or maintaining the status of "being rich".
No? Unless I misunderstood something.