20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’

Well, if you're gonna have rich people that's gonna have to mean that those rich people have much more money than not-rich people. Otherwise, you can't have rich people as a special category- if everybody is rich then nobody is.

Then of course the more money you have as a society, the more money the rich people of your society will have. And if you have a large population, the difference between those who are rich and those who are not is gonna have to be very large just because there's so much more money to be divided between the necessarily few rich people (again: if many people have lots of money then you don't have a special class of "rich").

So to summarise, if you're gonna have a rich society, you're gonna have to have rich people who are much more rich than not-rich people.

Problem is, that's not about inequality, nor about the richess of socieities, but about amibition. You see, everyone wants to be rich. Translated: everyone wants to have more than almost everyone else. So everyone supports an economic system that supports rich people, and therefore, wealth inequality.

Which is funny because the vast majority of people who support that kind of system are necessarily going to have to be not-rich.

So in order for most people to be able to dream that, one day, they'll be filthy rich, most people have to spend their entire lives in relative (or absolute) poverty.

Funny old world, eh?

The question is more on whether you want to pay government to give you health care, police, fire protection, education, child care etc. Or would you want to pay somebody who primarily wants to profit from you. Who will look after your health better? The one profiting from your bad health or the one who looses money if your health is bad? For-profit health care profits from your bad health. Government loose money when your health is bad if they finance health care.

It is pretty easy to see the health outcomes. Americans have for-profit health care and they have some of the worst health outcomes in the western world. Scandinavians all have socialized health care and some of the best health outcomes.

There is no natural law that says government must be corrupt. Corruption varies immensely between countries. Nordic countries have some of the largest governments and lowest level of corruption.

But regardless, you don't necessarily need to reduce inequality through higher taxes. You can also push legislation benefitting regular people more: Stronger unions to give workers better bargaining power. Worker representation or corporate boards so they can better influence how companies are run. In Norway where I live, we have worker participation in company decision making as part of the constitution.

The idea that only shareholders should make decision about how a company is run is just a political decision. In Germanic countries there is a long tradition of seeing companies as part of a community and having a wider responsibility to that community beyond maximizing value for shareholders.

We have a choice. The way an economy operates and is optimized is a choice. It is not a law of nature.

It is pro-capitalism... I am pro-capitalism. I think capitalism is awesome

Sure business will do what they can to pump shareholder earning, the check on that is market competition. In this instance various government regulations , and laws prohibit or limit that competition that would emerge in a freerer market

Insulin in particular was part of a EO package that was going to open up competition (and lower prices), the EO package was rescinded by Biden

> lots of money to "the rich" (aka, seed funding)

No, you're conflating two different things, targetted seed funding for r&d, and just giving money to wealthy people

At its core companies sell stocks to buy machinery and other things to invest in their business.

>>You didn't work for it and - since you were able to put it aside for a later use - you didn't actually 'need' it. So from a moral and societal point of view, that money should have rather gone to pay for teachers wages

wow. just wow. So morally a person should only be paid what the need to live

that is your honest position.. If so I certainly hope people that think like you never attain any real power