The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

Re:The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospec... by mmooss on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @04:22PM (#43637443)

> "Wealth concentration" is not a policy related to markets, production, and trade. It's a policy related to taxation.

I agree with most of what you say, but the pre-tax results of income are not some single natural outcome, but the results of policies about business, economy, education, healthcare, international relations, trade, immigration, monetary policy (of course), regulation, government budget, etc. - pretty much everything.

Those things can be adjusted to result in less or more wealth concentration.

They also depend heavily on capital gains tax in particular.

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Re:The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospec... by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @04:48PM (#43637783)

While the fact that the artist ended up selling a piece of art for $100k is absolutely reliant on the full totality of the social context .. what happens next is where wealth concentration does or does not happen. And that is (to a good approximation) almost entirely the realm of tax policy.

That is why I gave two different societies as examples - both have managed to construct a social context where this happens, but what happens next is different in each of them.

Put more crudely, wealth concentration is about not taxing high levels of income at high marginal rates. It is not about the specifics of how those high levels of income arise, who they happen to, etc. etc.

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