Yes, redistribution from the wealthiest to the poorest would drastically raise the average wellbeing of humanity. However, the problem is and always has been that the wealthiest people are the ones who run the political system. It's much more explicit here in the UK where the Conservative party is full of both old and new money, but this is true everywhere. Even revolutions just replace the old rulers with new ones.<p>It should be plain to see that poverty is caused by a lack of money, the hard part is prying that money from those who have the vast majority of it.
> An annual wealth tax applied to the world’s richest would raise U.S. $2.52 trillion a year
> An annual tax on the world’s richest would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty<p>So, the US govt printed an additional $2 Trillion last year. How many people did it lift out of poverty?
Why do we need to gather even more tax revenue when congress and the fed can just expand their balance sheets to infinity?<p>The government is terrible at managing money. More tax revenue != less poverty.
> An annual tax on the world’s richest would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the whole world, and deliver universal health care and social protection for all the citizens of low and lower middle-income countries (3.6 billion people).<p>That would be a level of investment that generations to come would notice. To invest that money would paid off not just by moral metrics of wellbeing, but in pure economic ones.<p>Why are we obsessed in spending money in powerful individuals instead of smartly invest in humanity's future? Billions will get better jobs, we will spend less in security and war, geniuses will pop up in the thousands from that population, and artists, and so much potential would be put to better use.<p>We should do it.
Raising money is one thing. Spending it is another. So much energy is spent on policies to do the former, and seeimingly very little on how to do the latter far more efficiently. This policy proposal makes for a fantastic soundbite, but how will the additional revenue be allocated in a way that actually leads to better outcomes?<p>Simply increasing the top of the funnel is not going to make all the downstream inefficiencies and inequalities go away.
Surely there's a way to allow for an increase in prosperity of the non-wealthy more effectively by taxing commerce/transfers-of-wealth alone.<p>I pity the fool who thinks that taxing people, income, or property can allow for any real move toward relief of the non-wealthy.<p>If it needs to be accomplished to the extreme, then concentrate on extreme commerce.