They do. He's paying sales tax to buy them, he's paying for the wages for people that built then. Consumption is when the money starts to trickle down. I think I'd be ok with forcing super-rich to spend their money or taxing then above some level. Let's make the limit somewhere around GDP of a smaller European country (Slovakia - ~105bn, Ukraine - ~140bn) & tax above that.

> do Larry Ellison's yachts "benefit others"? (And i mean beyond the immediate effect of "spending money".

I don't think that's a useful question, though the answer is generally no. Yachts, or more generally pleasure craft, are a form of entertainment. The owner spends large and ever-growing amounts of money, funding other people's lives, in exchange for some kind of fun for themselves and their immediate circle.

Larry Ellison could certainly make them benefit others by, say, using them to provide housing for the homeless, but that's not a part of the primary equation.

> We should always keep in mind that opportunity cost is a thing, and that investment involves plenty of "spending" and economic activity of its own.)

The economic activity of moving around vast sums of money benefits very few people, and those are generally not the people working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. That's the reason people want a wealth tax: concentrating wealth to such an extent benefits almost nobody.

"funding other people's lives" is not enough? When the shipbuilder fires people, and the engine maker fires people and Larry fires the maintenance people who will fund them?

I do think it's enough. My point was that excluding money from the question is not useful, because buying a yacht is explicitly an exchange of money for entertainment.