Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real problem though isn't wealth inequality, it's income inequality. If someone has a billion dollars that's invested in various stocks, and never tries to withdraw that money, leave him alone. The day he decides to sell his investments and start buying private jets, that's the time to tax him on his income. The argument against a wealth tax, is that it penalizes savers, and rewards spenders. Which is not what we…
Could you please expand on why its necessarily better for the average Joe to invest money (without knowing beforehand whats gonna be a "productive enterprise" of course) instead of fuelling the economy directly by buying goods? (honest question)
Another word for savings is "deferred consumption". If I earned 1000 dollars this month, and spent 700, I have 300 in savings, or, put another way, I deferred consuming 300 of those dollars.
Now, 300 in a checking account doesn't do anyone any good but me, but if I took half of that money and invested it w/the bank at a 7%/year interest rate, I'd be investing $150/month, and once I started getting that return back, I'd be getting $160.50 back.
What that does for the bank is gives it capitol to loan out to businesses.
If someone went to the bank and got a loan of $150, with a promise of paying it back at 9% in a year, they'd borrow that $150, pay the bank back $163.50 in a year, and the bank would pay me, the original creator of those funds, $160.50. They'd get a profit of $3.00, which is the difference between loaning that money out at 9%, and paying me back at 7%.
If the bank couldn't create money out of thin air, and doesn't fraudulently loan out customer's deposits, the only way to obtain a loan would be if someone else deferred consumption.
Obviously, banks can create money out of thin air (by loaning out funds on deposit), and when they do so, they don't have to give the money back with any interest, so they do. They can loan out $150 at 5% (cheaper than anyone else, perhaps!) and they can keep all of the profit, or $7.50. (more than twice the earlier profit of a non-fraudulent loan.)
I suspect OP subscribes to a more "savings-based economic growth" theory, in contrast to a "consumption-based economic growth" theory.
I obviously am an advocate of the savings-based approach vs. consumption-based approach.
That said, the banks + federal oversight encourage money to be created out of thin air, which makes it easy to spend money, and makes it impossible to incentivize deferred consumption. So, everyone spends money, no limits on it, and we all get to ride the waves between economic booms and economic crashes.
The crash is an inevitable response to the boom, and any policy that wants to have booms without crashes is a logical fallacy.
I hope this helps a bit! I can gather some more sources if you're curious, but the basic gist is in accordance to the Austrian school of economics. Read more on that, and you'll encounter much better explanations than mine!
:wave: