Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Nice try. Financial success (not at birth; later) is due to some mix of hard work and good luck. The (totally legit) policy question we need to answer is how much of the success that's due to luck should be retained solely by the beneficiary of that success?

Indeed, and where were are born is clearly due to luck. That’s much more provable than anything else and it clearly affects our success!

Unless you're really proposing a birth tax, I think you're dodging my question. : )

I’m intentionally pursuing a strategy of exposure to luck with limited downside. If it ends up benefiting others along the way (and it will in many ways) it doesn’t seem like something to discourage. And luck is by definition available to all.

Ah, but the *benefits* of luck are distributed unevenly. This is the reality that reasoned policy should address and not simply duck with flimsy excuses. PS it's not at all obvious that a wealth tax would really change behaviors (depending on the threshold and tax rate).

In contrast capital and productivity are not fixed and so the gains from those are more reliable. Everyone is better off focusing their attention on those instead of the lottery. And that produces more societal benefits.

Yeah, right but it's not at all clear growing wealth and income inequality are unrelated to this, that these gaps don't aren't both dangerous and actionable, and that the costs of things like a wealth tax exceed their benefits. 1/

I'm not saying you're definitely wrong, but it's not clear that you're definitely right either. I'm trying to curry a reasonable, evidence-centric discussion to help us suss out how to proceed. Phrases like "strip-mine the American dream" may feel good but they don't advance us.