I'll copy my answer from above since I think it's an important point and relates to your question:
"Money at the top levels is not at all like money for the rest of us. For a middle class citizen, money is about consumption and freedom to do what you want (with enough of it).
At the top end of the distribution, money is no longer about consumption or freedom (since you can never realistically consume as much as they have, and you don't have to work after you've saved like $10M). Money at that level is a proxy for power - a group of oligarchs can basically have the power of a shadow government, but unelected. And the real question to ask is "how much power/leverage do we want an individual (or a group of rich oligarchs) to have in a democracy."
So taxing the rich is not even about spreading the wealth, necessarily - if you redistributed it directly you might get inflation by redirecting investment money into consumption. It's more about limiting the amount of power that a person can accumulate over others."
If you take away rich people's money, other kinds of "insiders" will still pull the levers to enrich themselves and benefit their cronies at the expense of the public well-being.
The regulatory state, even if democratic, is fundamentally self-disregulating (as opposed to self-regulating).
"Money at the top levels is not at all like money for the rest of us. For a middle class citizen, money is about consumption and freedom to do what you want (with enough of it).
At the top end of the distribution, money is no longer about consumption or freedom (since you can never realistically consume as much as they have, and you don't have to work after you've saved like $10M). Money at that level is a proxy for power - a group of oligarchs can basically have the power of a shadow government, but unelected. And the real question to ask is "how much power/leverage do we want an individual (or a group of rich oligarchs) to have in a democracy."
So taxing the rich is not even about spreading the wealth, necessarily - if you redistributed it directly you might get inflation by redirecting investment money into consumption. It's more about limiting the amount of power that a person can accumulate over others."