If the spammers weren't making money, then they would stop sending the spam. Even worse, the money they do make is used to fund ever more diabolical and vicious forms of spam (like the latest round of ransom-ware), but what really angers me is that the spammers gladly target weak victims like children and people who know very little about computers.
Meanwhile, the big email companies that do understand the threats have adopted the business model of "Live and let spam", which also infuriates me. The spammers obviously LOVE filters, since the filters just give more credibility to the spam that slips through while ignoring the blizzards of spam that disguise the new and more dangerous attacks.
Why don't any of the major email providers provide REAL anti-spammer tools to break the spammers' business models? I'm not saying that we can eliminate all spam or turn the spammers into decent human beings. I'm just saying that we could reduce their profits, and that many of the spammers would respond by crawling under less visible rocks. Less spam would make the Internet more valuable for everyone.
Considering the numbers, the approach that seems most promising would be crowd-driven analysis and counterattack targeting. Essentially there are lots of people who hate spam and only a few suckers who feed the spammers. If ANY email system made it easier for the wannabe good Samaritans to help out, then the crowd can help cut the spammers away from the suckers. The integrated anti-spammer tools could allow volunteer spam-fighters to help analyze the spam in several steps. At each step the automatic analyses would be confirmed or corrected or refined, eventually focusing on the most effective countermeasures to disrupt ALL of the spammers' infrastructure, to pursue ALL of the spammers' accomplices, and to help defend and protect ALL of the spammers' victims, even including the poor corporations whose reputations and customers are abused by the spammers. (Concrete examples of specific targeting suggestions available upon request. There are LOTS of obvious ones.)
By the way, I think you have to limit the anti-spammer tools to the targeting, and the actual kill buttons should remain under the control of the professional spam fighters working for the email services. I would be WAY too eager to pull the trigger.
P.S. Proof of concept: Stock market pump-and-dump spam has almost entirely stopped. The stock exchanges acted to block the profits, and the spammers gave up.