Reality:

“No, I saw it on the news.”

“Who owns that news station?”

“I don’t know, why?”

The wealthy like to hide the fact that they are affecting policies and public perception in their favor.

They’re the ones usually hiding behind biased journalist, news stations, social media companies, advertising companies, cherry picked science, lobbying groups, and religion.

Rant time.

Wealth taxes aren’t the best. They can very very easily be dodged. Also, enforcement is expensive (as you need someone to sit calculating wealth). Also, deadweight loss is super high.

In my opinion, wealth inequality shouldn’t be higher than a certain limit. Wealth taxes shouldn’t HAVE to exist. Wanting them to exist is like trying to use a bandaid to put out a fire.

Instead, imo, the best way to reduce wealth inequality should be through the existence of consumer cooperatives and worker unions.

Most wealthy people become wealthy through equity ownership of businesses. The equity ownership gives them control (generally) over the business’s ability to allocate resources. This control is what makes them rich.

If this control was instead democratic, the members of the cooperative would be richer.

I’m in Canada and can attest to this. Consumer cooperatives (like credit unions I bank with), cooperative federations (like the one my family gets insurance from), the coop we get electricity from and so on. Almost always, we come out on top financially (compared to if we decided to go with a non coop alternative).

Always the guys with the wealth

Marx was poor though, had to dedicate hours to cracking Engels