Don’t worry about the name mixup. I get that often and have no problem with it as long as it doesn’t occur during sex.
The mistaken perception that money is something that only grows on rich people and business masterminds is at the heart of our economic problems, and many social problems as well. Money is a product of law, and the law is a product of government, not industry. It all begins with taxes that provide the “need” for money in the private sector so the government can provision itself without needing money. The government never “needs” our money, but it does need us to need its money, and occasionally to have a little less of it to manage inflation.
The concept that wealth, not the government, creates investment is the basis of supply-side economics which is also the source of most wealth, but it is totally false and is doing great damage to our society. Wealth is a drain of currency, just as trade deficits are. It would not exist if the government didn’t create the currency in excess of taxation, so deficit spending is critical to supporting the wealthy, not the other way around. The total of net financial wealth in US dollars, after private bank debt is factored out, is always equal to the national debt (minus foreign-owned debt) by accounting entity. Every asset in one sector is a liability in another and paying off the national debt would wipe out all wealth, if it were even possible.
Wealth is a product of unspent capital assets as a result of prior spending and taxation policies. As such. it has little effect on future productivity/job creation. It is a symptom of poor capital management on the part of the government if it is allowed in excess and threatens the economy or democratic process. Taxation of wealth should be seen as the stick in a carrot/stick balance that rewards productive investment, as it was prior to the ’80s when RayGun said: “trust us”.
Since then we have all but abandoned the stick and lavished carrots on the wealthy to little avail, as our economic decline would prove. Proper tax policy will keep capital in a “flow” state to avoid punitive top marginal rates and minimize the amount in “stock” state that produces only increased spending directly to the top as interest on Treasury instruments that are mistakenly viewed as “revenue” for the monopoly issuer of the currency that neither needs nor uses revenue to spend. A good first step in proper economic management would be to eliminate welfare for the wealthy by doing away with Treasury bonds or, at least, stop referring to them as “debt”.
