Welcome to the New Middle Ages

I think it’s really a middle ground. Yes, a large majority of the wealthy people did get there by working hard, and being disciplined with money. And that’s good. And if you’re really successful, you should be able to help ensure your kids are successful too, and money helps with that. You deserve that for your hard work.

But a line needs to be drawn somewhere of how wealthy you can get before it’s “too much” and has a negative affect on society. And how we can distribute a portion of that excess wealth to the people who would get the most benefit from it.

I don’t think anyone’s going to be discouraged from putting in the work to becoming a billionaire just because their billions are taxed more than their first few million dollars. That money accumulation has diminishing returns on value to self & value to society.

I'd tag the trouble you are running in to is that many people understand that inequality isn't a problem. My neighbor doing well isn't making me worse off.

The current growth in inequality does look bad - the bank bailouts in '08 are a good example of a problem - but if you try to start a conversation first with inequality you aren't going to the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that increasingly the people with power are wielding it to stamp out prosperity. Commercial failures, in particular, should go bankrupt, not be rewarded. Companies that rely on massive amounts of debt should be crumpling under the load. The major governments of the world are creating an environment where these companies can limp on for extended periods of time, burning resources (that other people could have used) as they go.

Part of the point the author makes is that the tech sector--as a cluster of monopolies with disproportionate socioeconomic power--is part of the economic problem.

Like it or not, the tech sector does not operate in a vacuum. What the tech sector enables, and how it concentrates wealth, has consequences for all of society. Anyone who is connected to the tech industry, as an investor or employee, has a social obligation to be aware of the externalities created by this industry.

No one gets to mix paint thinner into the office coffee and then cry 'stop playing office politics' when they get called on it.

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I take as a given that the incredibly wealthy will always (in aggregate) wield their power in a way which has little regard for society as a whole. I’m open to suggestions about what can be done to improve things. Maybe focusing on your points about how perverted capitalism has become, is more fruitful.

> Growth in inequality correlates very nicely with expansion of the money supply.

This gets complicated. The money supply has to expand to keep up with growth; getting the flexibility to do this is the reason why the world abandoned the gold standard. Failure to expand the monetary base adequately leads to deflationary economics, which is another kind of hell entirely.

That said, the fed's response to the last two economic disasters (2008 and 2020) has been to do quantitative easing in ways that do concentrate wealth in the hands of asset owners. Buying questionable assets with printed money does give the owners of those assets money at the expense of non-asset holders.

There are ways to respond to economic disasters without increasing inequality, but these choices are not politically feasible in America as they would involve giving money directly to people who don't have much of it.

Giving money to rich people (through monetary or fiscal policy) is seen as politically good, while giving money to anyone else is 'welfare' and is a political third rail.

Economists do know how to deal with these issues. The problem, as with everything else in America, is that the politicians (hello, Mitch McConnell) and interest groups (hello, Koch network) who have a veto over policy don't want to deal with them.