So what? If instead of building the world's biggest yacht, they paid them to dig and refill holes, from the perspective of someone 100 years from now, both would be pretty much equally wasteful. Otoh, investing that into research, wouldn't be.

No. Humans need accomplishments and doing pointless work (dig and refill holes) is a drag on the soul no matter how much you pay. Look at all the programmers that get mad when doing dumb work.

The yacht is a tangible item that will last and can be pointed to with pride by the workers. Pointless work damages us.

No, because there would be a yacht at the end of it. That has value.

Thank you! People act like the uber-rich buying expensive things is a waste of money. We want them to spend their money. Get it into the hands of people who really need it.

And rich people buy stuff that requires skilled labor. Those craftspeople jobs are well paid. Reducing friction for rich people to buy locally made items is a good thing.

Do that through taxation. I thought trickle down economics had been broadly repudiated.

Probably because rich people do not spend enough of their money, not because they spend too much of it.

Seriously, reading comments like those you replied to hurts my head.

In fact all that's been happening is trickle up, since the wealthiest keep siphoning more and more money, such that we essentially have no middle class left.

I like how we use the word class and then deny having a class/caste system.

Plenty of billionaires invest cash in capital expenditures which aren't totally frivolous. Build a global satellite broadband network or something.

I just want to see this incredible yacht.