When the “filthy rich” buy assets, they might do it good or bad, but they are de facto voluntarily redistributing money.

Sir, Tim Harford writes “Researchers concerned about the concentration of money in the hands of a small number of people tend to focus on the income or wealth share of high earners”, “All things are not equal in measuring inequality” August 18.

Indeed, all things are not equal, the income or wealth shares of high earners, c'est pas la même chose.

The debates on inequality, promoted mostly by redistribution profiteers, conveniently ignore that the moment money, meaning Main-street purchasing power, is exchanged for an asset, it has effectively been redistributed, to the vendors of those assets.

So yes, governments can redistribute money, but that does not mean it can redistribute wealth as easy, and without possibly serious unexpected consequences.

Not long ago, someone really wealthy, by means of a sort of voluntary tax, froze US$ 450 million of his real purchasing power on a wall, by acquiring Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. How do you redistribute that painting? One way is to get another filthy rich to redistribute his money buying it, most probably for less. Another way might be cutting it in thousands of small-certified pieces and thereby allow many much less wealthy to buy these, and thereby perhaps redistribute much more than US$ 450 million. Should we proceed to hack up Salvator Mundi?

Sir, at the end of the day, the one question that always lingers is, who redistributes money the best? The usual answer “Me!” or “Us!”

@PerKurowski

How much of billionaires’ wealth might have de facto already been redistributed?

Sir, John Gapper writes interestingly, from the perspective of how these are designed, about “public art museums funded by billionaires”. He concludes in that, as so many follow the same principles; it is beginning to have similitudes to a franchise. “Billionaires are franchising the art museum” August 9.

Currently in the political market, way too often we hear offers phrased in the simplistic terms of: “Let’s take it from the filthy-rich and give it to the poor and, Puff! all odious inequality will have disappeared.”

In order to stop the creation of those false expectations, which at the end only leads to frustrations and the enrichment of the of the redistribution and/or polarization profiteers, by increasing the value of their franchises, there is a real societal need for much more information. 

Like, what wealth to be redistributed are we talking about? How much might billionaires have already de facto redistributed their Main-street purchasing capacity wealth, by demanding and buying assets that no one else but them would be demanding, at least not at those ridiculously high prices?

Not long ago, someone really wealthy, by means of a sort of voluntary tax, froze US$ 450 million of real purchasing power on a wall, by acquiring Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Sir, I ask, how do you redistribute that painting without perhaps serious unexpected consequences? Cutting it in thousands of small-certified pieces, and selling these in the market for much more than US$ 450 million? 

@PerKurowski

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