Reply #46: Look at Sweden. Their society creates a great deal of wealth for everyone [View All]

[1932]

by taxing high levels of income progressively and reinvesting it so that society can continue to create wealth.

Tax the wealthy lightly, stop investing in education and infrastructure, and you'll find that society can no longer build a middle class out of people who don't already have capital, and you'll find that one of the few routes to getting wealth is being born wealthy. You'll aslo see a society that stops creating wealth. Wealth actually shrinks, but it circulates among fewer and fewer people, so the elite feel like they're still wealthy and are quite content as society decays. (This is the sort of thing Jared Diamond writes about in his new book.)

Incidentally, in Sweden -- I shall repeat -- they have among the highest after-tax income equality in the world. I don't know why you'd be so worried about making it into the upper middle class in Sweden. The point of that society is that almost everyone has the chance to make it into the middle class. I also don't believe that you couldn't go to Sweden and work hard and reap the rewards of your wealth. I do think that you might want to readjust what you think the rewards of hard work are. Living in a functioning society in which people are content and can get a year of paternity and maternity leave, and not live desperate miserable lives, and that your neighbors get this too -- those might have to become things you value.