One thing I've believed for a very long time (based on some first hand observations) and that this article backs up:
Super-rich people who got that way by doing productive things or entrepreneurial things -- people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, etc. -- are statistically rare. They are simply the most visible members of the superclass. The majority of people with net worth in the top of the 1% are financial or governmental profiteers who have obtained that wealth by playing financial games or profiting off the public.
In other words: the majority, but not all, of the mega-rich are parasites.
This I think has important political consequences. It's one of the reasons I am skeptical of populist "tax the rich!" schemes.
My strong speculation would be that the productivity of the mega-rich is inversely proportional to their political pull. I base that on the fact that this rule of thumb holds lower in the hierarchy-- those who are of the highest merit are rarely those with the most political skill and influence since few people have time to invest in both. People tend to be good politicians or good producers but not both.
As a result, soak-the-rich schemes are likely to thin the ranks of the productive elite and the recent entrants to the elite ("neuvo riche") while leaving the true oligarchy largely untouched. In fact, the true oligarchy would likely find ways to profit from it. In the long run it would impose a stronger glass ceiling between the superclass and the rest, making them even more like a true feudal nobility. It would make the situation worse.
I am not sure what, if anything, can change this situation in the short term.
I do have one weird suggestion: make it easier to become super-rich. Create some mechanism, possibly in tax law, that vaults people up through the last two or three glass ceilings... maybe something like a mildly progressive tax with sharp dips or fluctuations at major milestone points in the wealth distribution curve. So once you hit a point where there would otherwise be a glass ceiling, your tax rate drops precipitously for a while. It would be of paramount importance that this mechanism be impartial -- that it exclude political gamesmanship as a factor.
This is both counter-intuitive and unfair, so why would it be a good idea? Because it would bum-rush the country club with neuvo riche folks with new ideas. Some of these new ideas might change the system in ways that would benefit the rest of us. Even if there was no direct benefit to the lower 99.5%, it would prevent the ultimate nightmare scenario: the calcification of this elite into a true closed feudal nobility presiding over some kind of new dark age.
Edit:
I realized that while I've never read the idea above anywhere before, I have heard a similar idea in the realm of representative democracy... namely to vastly increase the number of representatives. The idea is to have a Congress made up of 30,000 delegates and a Senate made of up 5000 or something similar. It's basically the same concept... make the system more democratic by making the pyramid fatter at the top.
Super-rich people who got that way by doing productive things or entrepreneurial things -- people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, etc. -- are statistically rare. They are simply the most visible members of the superclass. The majority of people with net worth in the top of the 1% are financial or governmental profiteers who have obtained that wealth by playing financial games or profiting off the public.
In other words: the majority, but not all, of the mega-rich are parasites.
This I think has important political consequences. It's one of the reasons I am skeptical of populist "tax the rich!" schemes.
My strong speculation would be that the productivity of the mega-rich is inversely proportional to their political pull. I base that on the fact that this rule of thumb holds lower in the hierarchy-- those who are of the highest merit are rarely those with the most political skill and influence since few people have time to invest in both. People tend to be good politicians or good producers but not both.
As a result, soak-the-rich schemes are likely to thin the ranks of the productive elite and the recent entrants to the elite ("neuvo riche") while leaving the true oligarchy largely untouched. In fact, the true oligarchy would likely find ways to profit from it. In the long run it would impose a stronger glass ceiling between the superclass and the rest, making them even more like a true feudal nobility. It would make the situation worse.
I am not sure what, if anything, can change this situation in the short term.
I do have one weird suggestion: make it easier to become super-rich. Create some mechanism, possibly in tax law, that vaults people up through the last two or three glass ceilings... maybe something like a mildly progressive tax with sharp dips or fluctuations at major milestone points in the wealth distribution curve. So once you hit a point where there would otherwise be a glass ceiling, your tax rate drops precipitously for a while. It would be of paramount importance that this mechanism be impartial -- that it exclude political gamesmanship as a factor.
This is both counter-intuitive and unfair, so why would it be a good idea? Because it would bum-rush the country club with neuvo riche folks with new ideas. Some of these new ideas might change the system in ways that would benefit the rest of us. Even if there was no direct benefit to the lower 99.5%, it would prevent the ultimate nightmare scenario: the calcification of this elite into a true closed feudal nobility presiding over some kind of new dark age.
Edit:
I realized that while I've never read the idea above anywhere before, I have heard a similar idea in the realm of representative democracy... namely to vastly increase the number of representatives. The idea is to have a Congress made up of 30,000 delegates and a Senate made of up 5000 or something similar. It's basically the same concept... make the system more democratic by making the pyramid fatter at the top.