There are rich people and there are
powerful people, and there is a lot of
overlap between the two.

Some of the rich people sometimes do
relatively a lot to help the poor people.
E.g., there are Bill and Melinda Gates,
and they also got Warren Buffett to
allocate nearly all of his fortune. And
little Melinda, sweetheart, got lots of
other rich people to sign up for her 50%
or so 'giving pledge'

http://givingpledge.org/

Net, apparently Melinda has, via Bill,
Warren, and others, moved well over $100
billion into philanthropy. Andrew
Carnegie? Lots of libraries, especially
good for poor people. Andrew Mellon? The
US National Gallery of Art -- free for
everyone. Michael Bloomberg -- $1+
billion to The Johns Hopkins University,
especially to its medical school for
progress in medicine that helps lots of
people, including poor people. And we
could construct a much longer list.

From all I can tell, if the poor people
have a valid gripe, then it is with some
of the power of the powerful people and
not much with the money of the rich
people, and here is why:

Shockingly, in simple terms, for the most
direct purposes of the poor people, the
rich people don't have much money!

Sure, each of the 1000 richest people
could buy a new Ferrari for themselves,
but they definitely can't buy a new
Ferrari for each poor person -- even if
Ferrari could make that many cars.

Or let's consider 'wealth redistribution'
and do a little arithmetic:

Let's look a little at the wealthiest
people in the US; for some data, let's
look, say, at the 2014 Forbes 400 as at

http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

There we see that the 400 people on that
list are worth in total

$2.29 trillion.

The least wealthy person on that list is
worth

$1.55 billion.

Oh, let's be generous: Let's take the
1000 richest US citizens and assume that
each of the 600 least wealthy are also
each worth

$1.55 billion.

Then the total wealth of the 1000
wealthiest US citizens would be

2.29 * 10**12 + 600 * 1.55 * 10**9 =
3,220,000,000,000

dollars, that is, about 3.2 trillion
dollars.

Suppose we outright 'confiscate' and
'redistribute' all this wealth across all
US citizens. So, from Google search

"US population"

we see that the US population in 2014 was

318.9 million

people.

If we were just to confiscate the full

$3,220,000,000,000

and redistribute it among the

318.9 million

people, then from the 'redistribution'
each person would get

3,220,000,000,000 / ( 318.9 * 10**6 )
= 10,097.21

dollars, that is about 10 thousand
dollars.

So, that's what each person would get if
we were to do a 'full redistribution' of
the wealth of the 1000 wealthiest US
citizens.

So, right, $10,097.21 per person is not
enough for a yacht, a house, a new car, or
one year of college.

And that $10,097.21 would be a one-time
thing, not each year.

So, where is the real 'wealth' for
individuals in the US? Sure, just where
it long has been: In (1) Social Security
obligations, (2) the rest of the US
'social safety net', and (3) employee
pension funds.

So, if want US citizens, including the
poorest, to be much richer, which is a
terrific goal, then, rather than
confiscate the wealth of the 1000
wealthiest, find a ways for more of the

318.9 million

people to have good jobs. Just how to do
that is more complicated than the simple
arithmetic used here.