So really ... what is wrong with redistributing wealth?

[haele]

40. Nothing, It's actually very beneficial to the wealthy to redistribute wealth through taxes -

Money in circulation through taxation (wealth redistribution) allows the government to fund jobs that are not available in the private sector, common education and infrastructure, (amongst other beneficial communal services) in an even-handed, non-discriminatory way (far more based on individual merit) and creates more long-term value and revenue to both individuals and communities than charity or direct giving does.

These activities are investments that create more money, fund innovation, and stabilize communication and delivery resources for everyone. This in turn creates more wealth within a communal structure, which in a long cycle, ends back up into the bank accounts of the wealthy, giving them a long-term source of money for them and their children.
They may not have more money "today", but in ten/twenty/fifty years, that investment via taxes leaves them and their heirs with some serious return in dividends - a stable wealth stream.

The evidence is staring them in the face - it took 30 years for the "wealth redistribution" investments of the 1940's through the mid 1980's to wither away via supply-side (voodoo) economics, when it took just about seven years for those investments to build up a economic machine that ensured some base of opportunity for prosperity for just over 75% of the population back in the late 1930's/early 1940's, and a form of stability for the other 25% that could allow for their children, if not them, to at least be able to dream of attaining economic security and could be better off than the parents. Keynesian economics worked until it was vilified and pretty much torn down to bare bones during the mid-1980's.

When all the wealth begins to be redistributed to the top and just sits there, as what historically happened prior to the 1930's, the cycle becomes much shorter, and even though the wealthy see a short-term "boost" in their wealth, there is no base for that wealth to continue to grow from, and it begins to actually lose value as the customer and production demands that determine that value shrinks.

If you don't have customers, your business fails. If you're a small entrepreneur and you don't have customers - because the majority can't afford your product, can't get to your business to purchase your product, or don't have the energy and means to know your product even exists, you fail.

So, wealthy people who anthropomorphise money - by pretending "your money" can create more of itself without a broad and increasing customer base to demand goods and services, you are cutting your own throats and stealing from your children and your later years to party with today. Money only has value if it can get out and grow; if you keep it to yourselves, it can't, and it stagnates and eventually dies - leaving you with billions of dollars of worthlessness.
And then, all you'll be left with is no way of paying to protect yourself from the millions of un-employed people you made surplus or redundant while you played your self-centered "survival of the richest" reality TV world. I guess you think it's worth it so long as tonight, you get to "party on" in the (as Steven Colbert so elegantly put it) the Russian F*** Pit in your Olympic-sized pool tonight with the few-dozen of your money's friends that can stand to be around you for any length of time.

Haele