Yes but I think the outrage isn't about wealthy engineers and merchants, but that there is not a suitable protection to prevent wealthy children from joining the rentier class and subsequent failure to contribute to society.

For arguments sake, I don't think it's outrageous to guarantee someone who has created great value that their children will live comfortably throughout their lives. But there may be a class of people who consume a disproportionate amount of goods and services who have not personally contributed to our society, but by fortune of birth are allowed to continue an extravagant lifestyle.

People don't want to be told the world is a meritocracy when it's roulette (born to the right people in the right place), but so much of the system operates under the meritocracy/exceptionalism belief system (American dream, effort and skill will lead to success, anyone can succeed), and if people see it for what it is, lots of people are not a fan of the changes that will occur. "They live" [1] for a suboptimal economic arrangement. "You aren't successful? Have you tried working harder? Being smarter? Knowing the right people? Getting a better job?" [2] [3]

Wealthy people want to stay wealthy, powerful people don't want to give up power. Everything else is a struggle over the collective spreadsheet. "Should life be more fair? If so, what does that look like?" is what keeps all of this in perpetual tension.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ijiLqfXP0

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38070159

> People don't want to be told the world is a meritocracy when it's roulette (born to the right people in the right place)...

Look at it from the perspective of the parents. My kid is my kid because I decided to have it and it's got 50% of my DNA. I decided to not have my kid in my Somalia. Just as my parents decided not to have me in Somalia.

And all around me I see how so many parents making terrible life choices.

I'm teaching my kid to answer "blame your parents".

“Only the well off living in stable countries should have children” is an awfully dystopian viewpoint, don’t you think?

I dont think there is anything wrong with safety nets, but I think its silly to think that over 50% of the world is going to live like kings when the work like fast food laborers.

The world will operate under a meritocracy because Nature/capitalism has deemed it the most effective.

We can't play roulette with our leadership. There is a reason monarchies are good as dead.

I think even more than their lack of contributions to society, but the power their wealth brings to continue to protect their wealth, privilege, uphold the status quo, and continue widening the disparity of wealth between classes.

It is very easy to answer (and impossible to actually do). Two things:

1. Progressive taxation scale. Not the fake system we have in every developed country, but the real progressive system, which doesn't end at the minuscule sum of 100-200k, but is proportional until the infinity, certainly into the billions.

2. "Ban" offshores and tax heavens.

If this has happened somehow magically a vast majority of the financial issues would go away immediately.

Something quite close to this was done after the 30's depression and after WW2.

Simultaneously, an unfathomably large sum of money would become available in use-it-or-lose-it fashion to the billionaires. Political spending on the 2020 election was about $15 billion, while you're advocating a system that would substationally rebalance a $4.4 trillion national revenue stream. Do you think that the rich would spend more than $15 billion fighting that? Bezos made $70 billion this year and in previous years had an effective tax rate of about 0.9%. Increase that rate to 37% - or extrapolate a curve forward from $578k - and if he succeeded then by himself he could profitably spend more fighting this proposal than Biden, Trump, and every super PAC spent in 2020.

> It’s the natural order of things. Sure we can play with the levers of society and make it so that number is higher or lower, but you also might mess up.

These are mutually contradictory: if we can shift that ratio by policy, it’s a choice. Yes, some choices will have drawbacks but if the number has shifted by 20 points in recent decades it can’t be “the natural order of things” and it’s completely reasonable to ask whether different percentages would be better for society overall.

The pertinent takeaway is that a professional career would yield a much higher percentage of total equity ownership in prior decades.

I worked at a shop where the pay scale worked out like the following.

- Eng2: 140k - Eng Manager: 180k - Eng Director: 250-500k depending - C suite: 20 MM per year (direct payment) - Founder: > 200 MM per year (ownership stake/cap gains).

I suspect that such scales are more common than we know.

The natural order of things is if Bill has a billion dollars and I want that billion dollars I kill him and steal it. What we have is supposed to be an improvement on that, but if most people are starting to feel differently, those holding the money should be worried.

what are you talking about

I interpret it to combine the 2 ideas:

No matter who is in charge, the world is going to be messed up in various ways.

Upsetting the economic pyramid will naturally form a new pyramid, with concentrations of wealth at the top. Pereto + Solow–Swan...eg In communist(ish) countries, the concentration incidentally ends up in the hands of the highest political positions and a few private individuals.

>>Its the natural order of things.

No, there is nothing "natural" about our current ownership distribution. Was Gilded Age wealth concentration "the natural order of things"?

>>Its not like the 10%ers (outside the Physician cartel) are writing laws to entrench their positions.

Are you trolling? Have you never heard of PAC's? SuperPAC's? What do you think campaign contributions to legislators are buying? Many industries and wealthy individuals/groups are in fact doing exactly this.