A Wall Street Journal article about family offices caught my attention. A family office consists of a staff of advisors who cater to a wealthy family’s financial and personal “needs”. Families with net worths in the upper tens of millions or over $100 million might have a family office. The following is an excerpt from that article:
“Family offices are often the centerpieces of wealthy families’ financial lives.
“Many handle mundane tasks like paying thousands of bills a year for wealthy individuals and their offspring so they never have to glance at a credit-card statement. They help staff individuals’ estates around the world and liaise with advisers to pick out, and finance, toys like planes and yachts. They can oversee teams of assistants who do everything from booking travel to managing packing suitcases and making restaurant reservations.”
-Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26, 2025
This level of excessive liquidity is somewhat hilarious when we consider how much time we waste on budget debates in Washington. Concerns over deficit spending prevents the Federal government from adequately funding food, housing, health-care, and education programs for the Nation’s working poor, despite the system’s structural characteristics which ensure the poor will always be among us.
This occurs despite the obscene amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a small but expanding group of millionares and billionaires–a group which could not exist outside of a society–as a lonely person living on a desert island would never accumulate much more than a hut and a stack of wood. There is a level of extravagant wealth, which goes way beyond just compensation for services rendered. This should be taxed away. Yet we allow this pool of capital to be spent on extravagance rather than invested in the people, which would truly create a strong nation.
Eliminating debt financed deficit spending is not that difficult. The system needs higher progressive tax rates which target the well-off. This would create several advantages. First it would eliminate the nonsensical debates over deficit spending through the elimination of deficit spending– funded through higher tax rates on the wealthy. Second, it would shrink the wealth gap which is important because the massive wealth gap undermines democracy as the wealthy, through the power and influence which money buys, acquire a disproportionate share of power. Third, it would slow the dynamism of the capitalist system, as the excessive concentration of capital accelerates investment in job reducing technologies which prevent the working classes from catching up to the ever changing job market.
Of course, all of this ignores the fact that federal deficit spending need not be debt financed at all. The Federal government, as a sovereign monetary authority, can create all the money it needs. It needs to tax and borrow simply to take money out of the economy in order to prevent inflationary pressures–not for funding purposes. The latter point, however, is a discussion better suited for another time.
Did I mention we probably don’t need to spend a trillion on the military ($900 billion in the National Defense Authorization Act plus $156 from an earlier supplemental act) during the upcoming budget year?–but now I stray from the point.
None of the above is intended to inspire hatred against the wealthy. Few of us would walk away from the privileges that wealth offers. Wealth and poverty are structural characteristics of the capitalist system, i.e., there will be rich and poor people in a capitalist system, so we should avoid making it personal– most people, rich or poor, seem well-intended.
If we are, however, to have a healthy, democratic society, the wealth gap, and the debt financed deficit spending which follows must be addressed. It would most easily be addressed through higher progressive tax rates which target the wealthy.
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