General Discussion

But that is not what is happening in late stage capitalism. Nearly 100% of the obscenely rich either inherited that or else they were able to take advantage of their wealth to dial up special deals for themselves that took them from comfortably wealthy to unfathomably rich. Just look at the money that goes into defense contractor hands. Look at all the no-bid contracts Trump is illegally giving out. Look at hos these insiders are stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from regular people by their daily insider trading games.

If we can't police the white collar crime, we should at least tax the fruits of those crimes.

And regarding the inheritance factor, our founding fathers were very much against generational wealth because in the old country, that became pretty much the same thing as royalty. I have no problem with a person wanting to give their children a good start in life. But there is no earthly reason that a person should be able to pass along billions of dollars to their offspring. Our public policy should make it much more attractive to dispose of massive wealth through philanthropy than to give it to generations of the family so that they can lord over the rest of us forever.

I guess my point in all of this is that America is very much in an "Eat the Rich" state of mind, and our politicians should stop being so timid about saying this out loud.