&gt;The flip side of that argument is that the top xx% people and organizations have accumulated so much wealth that they really don&#x27;t know how to allocate it sanely. As soon as some channel opens to receive it (government or private), money starts flooding in, eroding the integrity of that investment channel - and stupid investments inevitably get made.<p>How does this work, generally?  Sure, there are people with &quot;so much wealth they don&#x27;t really know how to allocate it sanely,&quot; as you say.  But ultimately what happens with it?  The &quot;super wealthy&quot; don&#x27;t have it sitting under their mattresses--it&#x27;s in all kinds of investments: stocks, property, etc.  I don&#x27;t really get the point in your words, other than &quot;some people have more money than others&quot;.<p>What counts as a valid use of money, to you?  Paying for other people&#x27;s college?  Paying other people&#x27;s mortgages?  What makes one use of money&#x2F;property more valuable than other uses?  As seen on HN recently, mutual funds are investing in startups, some of which essentially pays our salaries.  Is paying $10m for a yacht a less sane use of money than a million people paying $10 for gas?<p>For the 2nd time in as many days, I&#x27;ll use Bill Gates as an example.  He&#x27;s apparently worth something like $80B.  Apparently ~$15B is in Microsoft stocks, and the rest is in Cascade Investment LLC.  That&#x27;s all being invested in a variety of ways, certainly:  some public companies, some bonds, some private company, etc.  It&#x27;s all being used in various ways, ultimately paying salaries, paying taxes on properties, investing in capital.  If it were to be liquidated (assuming that you could do so without losing value), and given to everyone in the USA equally at $80B &#x2F; 330 million people =&gt; $242&#x2F;person in the US, why would that necessarily be allocated &quot;better&quot;?  My naive guess would be that a significant chunk of it would end up at Walmart, Apple and Samsung--how is that more sanely allocated?<p>Or is your point that the government could better allocate that money?  If the government were given $80B to use &quot;on behalf of the people&quot;, do you think it would be better spent?