What, like all ten thousand of them, across the entire globe?
Or the all the contractors employed to make the luxury towers in downtowns across the world
What, like all the semi-legal immigrants and blue-collar workers? Those people often are barely getting by, and it's kind of feast-or-famine work.
A cynical person would say that's pretty much what the Gates Foundation accomplishes.
Cash flows. It circulates. And as long as it keeps moving, there is usually enough for everybody.
Wealth inequality is like a small group of people continually siphoning water into bottomless private cisterns. Eventually, the rest of the world becomes a desert. The problem isn't that the cisterns exist, it's that the water flowing out is nowhere near the amount flowing in.
I see the problem as too much lending and investing and not enough spending among the wealthy. It's like demanding that the people whom you charge to drink your water can only piss in your toilets. When you spend the money, you give up control over what happens to it next, and that is what allows the next guy to spend it freely. When you lend or invest, that next guy still owes you. No businesses can afford to cater to him, because the money he has isn't really his.
That's why the lavish spender is not the problem. When he eats a $500 steak, that money goes out to support servers and busboys and chefs and butchers and cattle ranchers. And it goes from them to television actors and book authors and electricity workers and personal trainers and dog walkers and auto mechanics. The cash flows. It circulates.
With the guy that buys a 50% stake in the restaurant with his cash, without providing any actual competitive advantage to the business, that money doesn't actually help anyone unless the previous owner can improve the business with it. Except now he has half as much incentive to do so. All those people down the chain only earn money if the restaurant can sell more steaks. If putting your name on the front door doesn't convince more people to walk through it, buying part of the business is not benefiting anyone except the new part-owner.
That's why I oppose both consumption taxes and income taxes. Both discourage the free flow of cash through the economy.
A tax based on the increase in one's personal wealth would be far more useful. It discourages only excessive hoarding. Philanthropy that yields control of the cash is the best, as the services and goods obtained don't even count against your own balance sheet.
The big spender is actually the good guy, provided that he is still able to spend as much as he earns. That's the real job creator. His willingness to spend money is what makes people want to sell him goods and services. If he only invests, those businesses still need to find actual customers who are willing to spend their money.
What about all the people who make the super-yatchs for the wealthy. Or the all the contractors employed to make the luxury towers in downtowns across the world. Tens of thousands if not millions of people directly gain (and likely from the middle and lower classes) from the spending of the lavish-lifestyler.
Who is to judge if this big-spenders behavior is somehow something we should curtail. Instead, we should fear the money hoarder, who keeps large amounts of capitol out of the market, hides it in tax shelters in Ireland, or re-invests it in ways to achieve political gain at the expense of society.
I'm not so sure philanthropy should should have a morally superior reward status in the tax code, when we can't really calculate the effects of spending enough to truly show what is most beneficial to society.