> I 100% agree that we should get those numbers up for women and minorities, but the way it should happen is that those groups make successful businesses of their own. Not artificially inflate it with affirmative-action type policies or anything else.

Race-conscious (and gender-conscious etc.) policies like affirmative action are effective because they directly address the systemic and institutional discrimination these groups face. If you're not a cis straight white man of a certain height and background, you aren't starting with the same advantages as those who are. Therefore, if we adopt policies that don't take those disadvantages into account--i.e. they benefit everyone equally--we don't solve anything. We simply magnify the existing inequality.

And it's important that we do solve this. White men hold a disproportionate amount of power in American society because it's easier for them to make more money, own more things, run for office, buy houses in neighborhoods where housing value increases at high rates, start businesses, invest in stocks, network with others who are able to do these things, send their kids to prestigious schools, avoid crime-ridden neighborhoods and food deserts, etc. etc.

> Rather than begrudging the success of white men, how about we encourage non-whites and/or non-men to participate in that success.

Can I ask you where it seems like I was begrudging the success of white men? I think you're reading a lot into what I'm writing. I certainly don't feel that way. I'm not saying we should tax white male owners of SBs and redistribute the wealth to others; I'm saying we should tax Jeff Bezos et al down to $50 million and remake US society.

Further, what are your ideas for encouraging minorities to participate in that success? Is it something other than adopt policies that directly benefit them?

> But nobody wins when you tear the successful people down because you are jealous of their success. It didn't work in Nazi Germany with the Jews and it didn't work in the USSR with Kulak farmers, and it's not a good idea here either.

That's a little hyperbolic. I don't find it productive when you impugn my motives as "jealousy" and compare my tax prescriptions to the holocaust.

> Wealth inequality has absolutely nothing to do with poverty. The wealth gap has been growing for the past 50 years while poverty has been going down

I think it depends on how you look at it [1], but broadly yeah, I would agree wealth inequality isn't related to poverty. But I'm saying we take money away from billionaires and give it to those in poverty. I think that would have a direct effect on their poverty status. Maybe I wasn't explicit enough about this, I don't always make all the connections clear.

> Nobody is starving as a result of Jeff Bezos owning Amazon.

Not by virtue of owning Amazon, but quite literally because he didn't spend the money to feed them, yes they are. It's also the same for you and me, FWIW, it's just that I could maybe do it for 1-2 people and he can do it for millions.

Maybe that's what we're dancing around here, maybe you're a taxation is theft person and I'm a property is theft person.

> And can we please, for the love of god, stop pretending that wealth (especially wealth in the form of owning a significant portion of a very successful business) is liquid?

It actually seems like it's pretty easy for him to do this [2], and his ex-wife is proving it also [3]. Selling stock is pretty easy. I don't super care about the exact numbers, and I would prefer a better policy framework that prevented him from amassing so much wealth in the first place. But again I think that's profit sharing, taxing inordinately high comp, worker membership on corporate boards, etc.

[1]: https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/154286/50YearTrends.pd...

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2020/08/05/jeff-be...

[3]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/tech/mackenzie-scott-bezos-do...