It's unfair that you were born into a world of people who want your stuff. It's also unfair they were born into a world with no frontier they could homestead to make their own stuff.

The entire world is a frontier. I was born in Siberia; I wouldn’t want to stay there, so when I was old enough, I saved some money and bought one way tickets first to Moscow, then to Europe.

There's redistribution going on in the U.S. today, but not by force, by wealth and influence. Do you think that's less unfair?

Much less. Wealth without force only provides more options, not takea it away. Wealth is a great force multiplier, though, and force can be used for evil.

Why is redistribution of wealthy any more unfair than the circumstances that gave rise to it in the first place?

Nobody inherently deserves their wealth - it's largely a function of circumstance.

This seems like a "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." kind of answer. At what point is circumstance not responsible? How much of our circumstances are we responsible for? Can we change other people's circumstances? By how much, and how does it affect outcome?

It is my wealth that is going to be “redistributed”. I am a relatively well off software engineer; I was born in a poor family on the outskirts of a Siberian town. I learned to program all on my own, by visiting my friends with computers and taking programming books from the local library. It wasn’t a “function of circumstance” — it was a function of my interest and targeted activity. What is unfair here?

Unless you are a multimillionaire, no it will not be your wealth being redistributed. The problem is not well-off people driving their Teslas around and taking two vacations a year, it is the relatively few people hoarding such obscene levels of wealth that their personal holdings dwarf those of entire lower economic classes of people. More than they could possibly need for 1000 lifetimes.

If you expropriate the entire wealth of the top 0.1% (6 trillion dollars), it will last around 2-3 years (social security/medicare/medicaid expenditure of the US is more than 2 trillion dollars per year). The "relatively few people" are of course rich, but they are, as you have said, relatively few. Most of the taxable money are made by the middle class.

Sounds like you landed in the lucky circumstance of having access to a computer and access to a library with programming books. You also got lucky with finding a job that let you save enough money to go somewhere else.

Should we not do our best to afford that "luck" to everyone?

With my own money, I am occasionally donating to libraries and other charities. Of course, you are free to do that and anything else with you own money, too.

It depends on what sort of redistribution you talk about.

Picketty argues that we tax income but not wealth and that's the root of our problems. I would imagine that your income is a way higher percentile than your wealth, income middle-class like you and me get smashed by income taxes (as someone from the working class in the UK it absolutely blew my mind when I learned how much wealth the people all around me had in their families, even just upper-middle class).

https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-sta...

$1,000,000 in wealth is near the 88% in America.

If you're hanging around with people whose families live in the nice parts of London/(a major city), assume they're the top 10% ~ 1 million, assume 4% returns above inflation, they make 50k a YEAR from their assets, totally passively.

So their wealth income is way more than some relatives of mine TOTAL household income.

In effect, the upper-middle-classes are born on basic income. If you're trying to make moeny yourself - just attend that university, take that MBA course, spend 5 years on a very risky career path with internships (journalism, media). There's no point you have to worry if you can afford it you can just play a very long low-probability high upside game.

I am not a fan of Picketty, but yes, this is more or less correct. Tapping these monetary reserves is what I want to learn how to do.