Scrooge McDuck was rich but was he greedy?

The wealth tax proposed by Bernie Sanders has reignited the already prevalent wealth shaming crowd, many of whom say that the wealthy must be taxed more because they are "hoarding" their wealth, and it needs to be in the hands of people who need it more.

I blame Scrooge McDuck.

Scrooge McDuck hoarded his wealth of gold in bank vaults. Mr. McDuck famously liked to dive in and swim around in his gold. But this vision is wrong, and most interestingly, what's wrong about it reveals that the critics of the wealthy don't even understand their own criticism well enough to apply it consistently.

The essential complaint, underlying everything else, is that the wealthy are greedy. But it makes little sense for a greedy person to hoard their money in a vault, because as long as it lies in the vault it's not making them more money. With gold, you might get lucky and hold onto it while the price goes up, but with fiat money, hiding it in a vault or under your mattress only ensures that you are losing wealth as the money diminishes in value over time.

What the greedy wealthy person who's not an irrational nincompoop does is to invest their money, which really just means letting other people use it with a promise to pay it back with interest. Even the money sitting in a standard bank account is being borrowed by others, to buy a car, do home repairs, start a business, etc.

That's not hoarding; it's helping others by letting them use your money. It's also not generosity or kindness, but a desire to make more money.

In other words, if you apply that complaint of greediness consistently, you'll see why rich people generally do not actually hoard their money. They're too greedy to do so.