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.