What does “stored wealth” mean? Is it really redistributable, just like that, without any consequences?

Sir, Edward Luce writes: “America’s elites have stored more wealth than they can consume. This creates three problems for everyone else” “The discreet terror of the American bourgeoisie”. February 8.

What does “stored wealth” really mean? You do not hide your main-street purchase capacity in cash under a mattress; you hand it over to someone else in exchange for an asset or a service.

When some very wealthy recently bought Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, he froze, with a sort of voluntary tax, US$450 million on a wall or in a storage room. Those US$450 millions were received and used by some other wealthy or not that wealthy. Should that not have happened? Should he have used his money better? What if those who now have his money know how to put it to much better use?

The war against wealth is raging. Whenever wealth has been obtain by criminal, or by unjustified means, like monopolies or excessive intellectual property rights exploitation, that war makes sense. But, those who preach that all will be well and dandy, if only wealth is redistributed, like from the 1% to the 99%, never explain how one now converts a Salvator Mundi, into fresh main-street purchase power, and the consequences of doing so.

We could assume that much of that lack of explanation is because many of the wealth redistribution fighters are in fact redistribution profiteers interested in increasing the value of their franchise.

PS. Not long ago, visiting the Museum of Louvre, it dawned on me that most of what was exhibited there would not have come into being, were it not for the existence of the filthy rich. Can we really afford, do we really want, to live without them?

@PerKurowski

Is it time for a sort of Piketty wealth tax to be applied to the national football (soccer) league?

Sir, Tim Harford quotes Stefan Szymanski’s book Money and Football with: “It costs something like a billion quid to turn a club from a bottom-half Premier League team to one of the best teams of Europe” “How to level a playing field” August 8.

Boy that sounds like it is high time for a Piketty wealth tax to eliminate the structural inequalities in sports… so that everyone has an equal opportunity.

By sheer coincidence on August 5, I tweeted out in the Internet space: “First division soccer (football) clubs should pay out to the lower divisions' clubs, for fertilizing, 50% of all transfer payments received.”

Really, if we use handicap system in golf (more or less strokes), and handicap system in horse racing (more or less weights), why can’t we use handicap system in team sports, like taxing the better and subsidizing the lesser ones, in order to let the individuals shine more on their own worth? Aren’t teams now sort of de-facto monopolies, or at least oligopolies? 

What would happen if for instance some second tier club, to make up for their almost irreversible second tier position, would suddenly have access to pay for what them in relative terms would be a player of the category of Zlatan Ibrahimović? I think that if so the quality and the spirit of football (soccer) on a global level could prosper tremendously.

Teams might be de-facto monopolies… so why not turn football (soccer) over to all the individual players... or their fans?

@PerKurowski

Maybe it is time to revisit the whole concept of progressiveness in taxes.

Sir, John Gapper, perhaps solely wearing his hat of a writer, basically proposes creating a publisher monopoly in order to counter the growing strength of a distribution monopoly such as Amazon, “Publisher must become giants to take on Amazon”, May 29.

As a reader, I am not certain I want to be squeezed by those who clearly would then have an interest coming into some agreements that might not benefit me, though the truth is that technological advances married to the reach-out of globalization, do seems definitively to be leading us down that path.

And what can we do to keep alive our alternatives? I have not given too much thought on how it could be implemented but I think that the introduction of tax-rate progressiveness, for corporate profits and or dividends, based on market shares, could be something worthwhile to explore.

Why for instance should “The Shop Around the Corner” have to face the same tax structure as Amazon?

And of course, in the same vein, why should a company that fights naked and unprotected in the markets face the same tax structure as one that operates under the protection of intellectual property rights?

Unfortunately the fight for the best gate-watching positions is a never-ending story

Sir, I can certainly identify with Dr. Thomas Snitch’s despair when, quoted by Gillian Tett, he cries out “These folks would rather turn down the offer of free help to save the rhinos than to be put in a position where their annual report states that fewer animals are being taken by poachers” … and thus undermine their ability to raise money, “Wild animals, poachers and the human jungle” August 25. 

And quite often it is much worse, since “these folks”, these think-tank’s without ideas but with a “concern” that defines their business model, often monopolize the public debate on “their” issue. Indeed some of “these folks” are really like powerful multinational corporations operating with much less of that transparency they often accused others to be lacking. 

But Dr. Snitch, thanks to another gate-keeper, Gillian Tett, at least here got himself a chance to describe what he was up to. And that is much more than what others who are being ignored by the media and the journalists who, also feeling threatened, take refuge in the hierarchy of their own little net-works or in their own officially approved little intellectual silos. 

Thankfully the world is changing, and insignificant persons like me now have, because of the web, better chances of bypassing the gate-watchers in order to voice any significant concerns of theirs… and perhaps even to be able to challenge one or two hierarchies. 

PS. A Challenge!