Yes, some of it goes to the politician's waste, but the trickle-down via government is FAR better than the trickle-down from merely expecting the extractive class to create jobs and maintain a robust middle class.

Heck, when the tax rates were that high, we had: * the GI bill, enabling all vets to go to college for free, * built road systems like the Interstate highway system * built schools * built libraries * WENT TO THE MOON.

Seriously, if you want to complain, you will find waste in absolutely ANY large organization, corporate, philanthropic or govt. -- it just comes with scale -- there's economies of scale and inefficiencies of scale.

But it does not follow from the existence of nontrivial inefficiency/waste/fraud/etc. that large organizations and their projects are therefore worthless; only that improvements might be sought.

Back in those days, tax rates were raised to pay ofr projects. I am opposed to increased tax rates that are not specifically earmarked for a purpose. Yes we went to the moon, but that was driven by cold war politics. Yes we had other good things too - the GI bill, infrastructure investment, etc. I'm all for that. Perhaps my vitriol got us off topic. I just feel that taxation is not the optimal way to redistribute financial profits. It's not sufficiently granular. And when we try and codify the granularity - we get a complicated, byzantine tax code that tries to accomodate all the 'nooks and crannies' that no one can really grasp. Rather, I would like to see a 'wall' in Trump lingo against the recycling of financial profits into more financial instruments which is just speculation. And an incentive for the reinvestment of financial profits into the REAL economy. Sure the ROI is greater in financial markets, but that is in large part because greater profits create greater demand for financial instruments which just raises their price.

ok, fair enough, so this is more a regulatory than a tax approach.

I'm not against it, but I wonder at it's effectiveness, as regs are subject to many of the same loopholes, exclusions, and workarounds as taxes, along with regulatory capture (see FCC and Net Neutrality).

Neither is perfect, and I think we need both.

E.g., rags/taxes to cap CxO pay multiples -- so they have to bring up the pay of the average worker if they want higher exec pay. Regs for minimum wage above the poverty line...

either way, I think we need to get the masses of idle capital back into the middle class if we want a robust country and society.