There is only so much "richness" you can share. You can't give 400 million american a nice car, a big house with a view on the ocean, 100% organic food and access to top level healthcare and education. Unless you produce those thing at that scale, and some things are by definition not scalable (there is only one "best medical school in the US"). So some people have more power to get access to/acquire those desirable items. And software engineers are often amongst the first in line. If you want other people to have a better access to these, by definition that leads to current "first in line" to loose something.

Giving more money to everyone is easy, everyone was a billionaire in Zimbabwe few years back. That did not make them "rich".

There's quite a gap to be filled between the current US situation and "everyone has a house with ocean view". You might not be able (and not want) to bring inequality to 0, that doesn't mean the current level can't be lowered a good deal with good solutions. And yes, education can scale a lot - it's just that many gatekeepers don't want that. The story of humankind is making exclusive things available for everyone.

As others have pointed out, people don't actually want "a nice car, a big house with a view on the ocean, 100% organic food and access to top level healthcare and education." all at once. They want a "good enough solution". Some of them are fine with an apartment with a view on the ocean. Some of them are fine with a house without a view on the ocean. Some of them want organic food, a lot of people eat junk food or processed food and like it.

This is basically a strawman that you built so that you can easily defeat it.

Think of the most extreme possible scenario. An economy where no human workers are needed and only capital is needed to build robots that are equally good workers as humans. The rich will own a lot of robots and no longer be dependent on human workers. Here is the problem. Since everyone else is unemployed, nobody can afford to buy your products. It is actually possible to get wealthier by giving to those who have nothing in this scenario because although the rich own robots, the robots are effectively worthless if they don't do any work. You don't even have to give that money away for free, you can just lend it out.

Lending doesn't work in existing economies because it is very difficult to get access to capital if you have no money to begin with. It's also a chicken and egg situation because you need money in consumer hands to drive demand which then drives more loans. If you spend your loans wastefully then the money will arrive in consumer hands by mere chance. So in theory if you just print an infinite amount of money some of it will trickle down eventually. That's the idiotic policy central banks around the world are following instead of giving out just (emphasis on just) enough money to get everyone back to work.

>Giving more money to everyone is easy, everyone was a billionaire in Zimbabwe few years back. That did not make them "rich".

There is an easy indicator for when to stop. You can stop handing out money once you have reached the 2% inflation goal.

> those things at that scale

When everybody have those things, you no longer think of them as "richness". Richness is what sticks out.

150 years ago very few people had running water, electricity, fridge, WC, etc.

Most urban americans live "richer" lives today than the rich did 150 years ago.

>Most urban americans live "richer" lives today than the rich did 150 years ago.

This "richness" is also relative: If you own a goat in a village with no goats, you're rich. If you own an apartment in a village of McMansions you're poor.

And let's not mistake comfort with wealth. Just because I have electricity, a WC, a fridge and don't plow the fields like my grandparents did might make me seem rich, but my grandparents owned that land they were plowing while I don't own the "land" I am "plowing" at my comfy deskjob, but the corporation does, nor do I own the land I live and sleep on, but the landlord/bank does.

Our lives are now much more safe and comfortable than 150 years ago, but in the end, most of us who are not asset owners, are set to be serfs for life, just like 150 years ago except that instead of being serfs to a crown we are serfs to banks and publicly traded megacorps.

The US has around 150000km of shoreline.

There are roughly 350M inhabitants, but only about 120M households.

If you want to give everyone a house with a view of the ocean, with plots 10m wide, you need to build them around 8 deep to give everyone a view of the ocean.

It may be easier to do if you stagger the plots.

Everybody earning more will just lead to more inflation. I expect most of the additional pay will end up in higher housing prices.

> Everybody earning more will just lead to more inflation.

Normally we measure wage growth adjusted for inflation.

In my case I referred to wages as share of gdp, which has been going down over the last decades. There is no reason that shouldn't at least be a fixed amount. If it's not, it means that people who make money outside of wages (shareholders etc.) are capturing a steadily larger part of the total economy.

Increasing wages for everyone doesn't inherently mean everybody will earn more. Less money will go to shareholders, decreasing inequality

It can be difficult for shareholders to earn money if there is high CPI inflation.

If the previous year over year ROI is 7% and inflation grows by 3% then you have to increase your ROI to 10% just to catch up with inflation. This means only the most productive companies will actually maintain their existing growth.

Compare that to a deflationary environment where every warm body with a big bank account can get 7% ROI without even trying or even do annoying things like employ workers.

This is the wrong mode of thinking.

>I expect most of the additional pay will end up in higher housing prices.

It will _justify_ existing house prices. If inflation picks up the interest rate will rise and the cost of housing will stop growing. The increased wages can still afford the same housing price, but not a cent more.