It's interesting that you try to put your boilerplate words in my mouth about redistribution of wealth. Despite that, I'm generally sympathetic to the view that a healthy economy depends on investment of capital by the wealthy to create jobs.

But we got into this mess as a result of what is probably the largest redistribution of wealth in history, a redistribution up the economic ladder.

The technology bubble was, we know now, a vast network of interlocking Ponzi schemes. Individual and venture capitalists seeded the game with their money. They dealt-in the investment banks for a cut in exchange for having their analysts publicly tout stocks as winners that they privately judged to be "dogs" and "pieces of shit". Suborning the once-trusted financial industry to abandon their fiduciary duty was key to making the scheme work. They rushed companies to IPOs and cashed out at the peak of the hysteria, leaving millions of middle-class Americans, and their agents the investment and pension funds, holding the bag when the house of cards collapsed. The wealthy walked away wealthier, and millions were left unemployed, tens of millions saw their retirement plans devastated and their kids' college funds gutted.

Under these special circumstances, a re-redistribution of wealth that returned things to the precrime state circa 1994 would be simply a matter of restitution and justice.

--Robert