Modeling a Wealth Tax

They still pay more in actual dollars. Dollars are what people are after here.

It's surprisingly not different.

If you have an asset that is dormant, is $100, and you tax it with 1% for 20 years, you get to $81.79 by calculating 1000.99^20.

Now suppose instead, your asset grows by 10% a year, and you have no tax. That asset grows to 1001.10^20 = $672

Now suppose that prior to the investment each year you tax it with 1% and invest the rest, for 20 years, again at 10%. So you get 1000.99^201.10^20 = $550

That $550 of $672 is exactly the same portion as $81.79 is of $100. In other words, growth or no growth, it has exactly the same effect, either way a 1% tax over 20 years takes 18.2%.

> Penalizing static value seems almost reasonable.

In the philosophy of taxation there's a different approach. Money you own is money you earned. Typically earnings are taxed. You produce X value, and a small portion of X is allocated to a general pot of money to fund general things in society, e.g. infrastructure, rule of law etc. But after that, it's your money. If you then invest it and earn more, again, a portion of those earnings are taxed. But if you don't do anything with the money, for the government to take it, is seen as a form of theft.

The principle why the one form of appropriation is okay and the other isn't, is because when you earn, you benefit. And the government benefits, too. When you just store, you don't benefit, and taking it is a purely negative experience. Many people are willing to share part of their new earnings. Few are willing to give up something that has always belonged to them.

Inflation is a natural penalty on static value anyway. So are opportunity costs. Plus, actually static value is quite rare, money in a savings account is being put to work by the bank. The amount of really static money (like money under your mattress, or a permanently vacant home) is quite a small portion of the financial system and again being penalised by inflation and opportunity costs already.

And government supports and enriches society. It's symbiotic, not parasitic.

"claim credit for what people have created on their own"

Nobody creates anything on their own. Full stop. Every single citizen is supported by countless public infrastructure initiatives, from transportation to safety to education to etc etc, without which no significant achievement would be possible.

This is just bad (bad == misleading) math. Where's the appreciation of the assets? Where's the real examples from other countries that have tried wealth taxes? I don't know what he's _trying_ to do, but the effect of his rhetoric certainly seems to me that "If you won the lottery, you this would be bad for you! [but if you don't, it'd be great for you, and really only bad for ultra-rich people like me]"

I'd love to see some real numbers on "how much paul graham would pay" vs "how much your average startup founder who fails a couple times and has a moderate success or two" would pay.

Also we're talking about "over 60 years" - this isn't "government swoops in and steals half of your dragon's hoard of gold" this is "you pay taxes to support the society that allows you to safely hoard gold in the first place, and oh by the way you're still richer than anyone else and certainly wealthy enough to live a stupidly comfortable lifestyle even if 95% of your $100M assets got repo'd and you somehow managed to never appreciate your assets at all"

If it wasn't obvious, I'm clearly pro wealth redistribution, and I get that many people are fundamentally against that. It seems dumb to me to think that modest wealth redistribution is unjust or bad unless you are currently a member of the ultra rich. (and just to be clear, I feel that even a 5% wealth tax should be described as "modest")