I saw a post the other day about France taxing wealth that sits still. People were shouting about it online the way they always do. One side calling it theft. The other calling it fairness. But no one was talking about the part that matters. So I am writing this to say something simple and true. The problem is not wealth. The problem is what wealth is doing. I am not against a person building something of their own. A man should be able to save, provide, and leave something behind for his children. A family should be able to stand on steady ground. Prosperity is not something to be ashamed of. It is part of dignity. It is part of belonging. It means you are rooted enough to plan for tomorrow. But I come from a place that has been losing its lifeblood for generations. The work left. The jobs dried up. The ones who stayed had to do with less each year. And the children who grew up here learned early that home could not hold them. I do not remember the skating rink the way my father does. It was gone before I ever had the chance to hear the music echo off the walls. The same with the arcades. The places where kids once gathered, where weekends had a destination, where a town felt young. I never knew them full. I only saw the buildings after the laughter was gone. I inherited the silence, not the memory. That is what it means to be born after the turning. You do not watch the light fade. You grow up in the dark and are told it has always been this way. And the money didn’t disappear. It just stopped moving here. Money is not gold. It has no inherent value sitting still. Our currency is alive only when it circulates. It is more like blood than treasure. When it flows, the body lives. When too much of it pools in one place, everything downstream starves. So when France says that wealth which sits stagnant will be taxed, they are not punishing anyone. They are keeping the bloodstream from clotting. They are forcing circulation in a system that only survives through movement. That is not revenge. That is maintenance. That is how you keep a nation alive. And here is the truth almost no one says out loud. The wealthy will not allow their fortunes to be taxed away. They will move the money. They will invest. They will build. They will create. They will take action. Because the alternative is to watch their wealth shrink while it sits idle. This is how growth actually happens. Not by begging. Not by hoping the wealthy will choose generosity. But by making it clear that wealth must serve something greater than itself. Personal prosperity is good. Legacy is good. But wealth that refuses to return to the world that gave it meaning is not prosperity. It is abandonment. A river that moves nourishes everything along its banks. A river that stops becomes a swamp. And nothing grows in a swamp except decay. The problem is not success. The problem is forgetting where you came from. Wealth must move, or a nation dies. ~CA #AppalachiaInsider #EasternKentucky #OpEd #EconomicStewardship #RuralVoices #WealthAndWork #OurHome #KentuckyStrong OpEd: The preceding information does not necessarily reflect the views of Appalachia Insider as an organization.