Using an asset as debt-collateral triggering gains being realized would be good too. As would unifying the income and capital gains tax.

I disagree with TFA's idea that a wealth tax is the best solution. IMO wealth is easier to hide than income, it's just that nobody bothers right now with there being no wealth tax.

I don't think anyone says that really poor people are caused by the existence of really rich people. The argument, as I understand it, is that spreading the wealth of billionaires around would mean fewer really poor people.

That sounds like the same observation that Thomas Jefferson made:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

generally the power shakeup that replaces an elite with another elite is one that replaces an old elite with a rising elite better able to take advantage of some economic conditions the old elite is ill-equipped to take advantage of

https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-new-exploiters-9d8a0684...

Great works on this subject, to my mind refuting your nebulous thesis, include Debt by Graeber, Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow, and Mutual Aid by Kropotkin.

I think you'll find that any specific change in political directions come about from specific reasons (what would even be the alternative?).

>Everyone was working their land for sustenance, and the rent-seeking nobility extracted some percent of production because that's what there was to extract

Until the black death came in the 1300's and killed an estimated 30–60% of Europe's population, and now the nobility had nobody to rent seek or even to work their land.

So then, for the first time ever, the surviving workers gained bargaining power as landowners (lords) competed for labor, leading to high cash wages, better working conditions, and more freedom for peasants, because the feudal lords hadn't yet figured out how to replace the peasants with slaves, H1-Bs and illegals from across the planet.

So according to history, including your post-WW1 example, the only times peasants gained bargaining power was when millions of them died through world wars and global pestilence.

Looking at recent unfolding history, "There's something very familiar about all this" -Biff Tannen

I don't know why you're down voted. Perhaps the observation that inequality is often and the noble savage utopian dream of "all pigs are equal" is not the norm is too a bitter pill to swallow

You can read about the transition from the Gilded Age to The Progressive Era in US history for potential solutions. Anti-trust and political reform is a bit part. Political opinions were controlled undemocratically during that period as well through political machines. Direct election of senators, direct primaries, women’s suffrage were enacted to help with that.

If you have a vanguard with special privileges then congrats, you've replaced the inequality of Capitalism with another inequality. This is the exact challenge GP is talking about; it's hard to avoid the tendency for power to accumulate.

... was an ideology that gave 200 million of people universal healthcare, universal childcare, public housing and increased luteracy rates but took away democracy and national self determination, unleashed genocide and allied with literal Hitler

Two things:

1) You have to get it out of your head that it is enough when everyone has X standard of living. It isn't. It's enough when less than a critical threshold of the population is dissatisfied, and that dissatisfaction can come no matter what the median/lowest standard of living is. This is just how societies work, uniformly.

2) Money is a ledger supported by a social contract. Spending wealth in ways that erode the social contract is bad. I think we can all agree 500M dollar yachts, empty luxury apartment buildings, and buying up shorelines in populated areas are all bad looks, and therefore, erode the social contract. The wealthy really need to step in and police each other socially here, if they want to continue being wealthy.

But that state action is the direct result of wealth's influence over the state and how it operates

I'm not well-versed in "cost disease", but yes, standards go up. Cars have to have airbags and backup cameras and infernal electronic nannies. So an (alleged) increase in safety has been mandated, and the costs are obligatory. IOW, your risk of dying in a car goes down, but it doesn't come for free.

Medical care is getting better, insurance is required to pay for more and more things, but that drives up insurance costs.

In my county, fire sprinklers are required in all new houses.

Costs go up, but at least, in theory, you're getting something in return.

You're welcome to blame the state. Without those actions, things would be somewhat more affordable. But it seems pretty clear from the data on inequality that inequality is a much bigger factor in bidding up living costs than the fact that I need to install sprinklers in my house, even if sprinklers are a very large cost relative to my income.

> if it is even a problem at all.

One of the pillars of capitalism is that the entire economy is more efficient when decision making power is dispersed as close as possible to the people making economic decisions aka what they buy.

When we have ended up in a situation where a handful of people are making all the economic decisions because they have all the money, there is no functional difference between that situation and a command economy.

If you’re a believer in capitalism as a tool to eliminate scarcity you should view the existence of billionaires(adjust for inflation) over the longer term as policy failures that are eroding capitalisms ability to create more and more.

Politically wealth inequality is a problem as the wealthy have more means available to them to influence votes, candidates and appointments. So you have a society that's partly democratic but with a lot of unequal influence at the top.