41–50 of 76 posts
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The problem with consumption tax is that it's regressive. Poor(er) people are hit harder with such a tax.
Depends what is being taxed. Staples could be excluded, while luxury items taxed more heavily.
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We already have expert consensus on what’s the best taxes, people just don’t like the answer: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... (“Three. Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people. Four. Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes disco…
At least for me, even income taxes as high as 53% have not discouraged me from trying to make more money. They have made me consider moving. At some level, certainly at 90%+, the most rational thing to do to make more money is to spend time lowering your tax bill, which is not a particularly beneficial way (to society) of making more money. But I can't image anyone at an income tax level of say 10% is being actively…
It isn't obvious what a 10% across-the-market tax will do, but by the nature of prices they are always going to be set near tipping points so it probably is going to cause people to drop out of the workforce or reduce the amount of time they spend working. Maybe tip people into less productive jobs that pay cash. I dunno. How many people and how many hours is an open question but all your imagination is really telling you is that you don't deal with marginal participants in the workforce.
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The goal is economic growth, which matters more than anything else. Fun fact: in 1900, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, at about 60% of US GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/argentina-was-one-o... . Today, Argentina has under 20% of the GDP per capita of the US. The difference is that the U.S. has grown at about 1.7% annually for the past century and change, while Argenti…
> The goal is economic growth, which matters more than anything else. That sounds like an argument for human slavery
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To what end? "Best" implies towards a certain goal. Is the goal economic growth? Or is it a fair society? Those are very different. For example, if the goal is a fair society, then we should have a wealth tax, to disincentivize wealth equality. (And an income tax isn't so bad either in). Having only a consumption tax makes sense if the goal is (only) to reduce consumption.
The goal is economic growth, which matters more than anything else. Fun fact: in 1900, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, at about 60% of US GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/argentina-was-one-o... . Today, Argentina has under 20% of the GDP per capita of the US. The difference is that the U.S. has grown at about 1.7% annually for the past century and change, while Argenti…
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Depends what is being taxed. Staples could be excluded, while luxury items taxed more heavily.
Senate argument: "This poweryacht is necessary for my donor's livelihood of entertaining billionaires"
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I’m not classifying it as the best solution. I’m quoting an NPR article describing the consensus view of economics experts. But as I understand it, the reason is that consumption taxes have the least distortion in terms of deviating from the efficient behavior in the no-tax scenario: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/09/using-tax-to-tackle-...
That article spends most of its time explaining why a progressive consumption tax is obviously the right choice, then basically decries liberals as too dumb to understand it and conservatives as too evil to want it, but spends zero words to explain how a progressive consumption tax might possibly be implemented.
The implementation could consist of a tax on personal income, but any re-investment of that income is deductible, plus a tax on luxury items and products whose main purpose is status-signaling.
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The problem with consumption tax is that it's regressive. Poor(er) people are hit harder with such a tax.
Depends what is being taxed. Staples could be excluded, while luxury items taxed more heavily.
My intuition says no.
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Why hasn't AI proposed the ultimate "fair" taxation scheme?
We already have expert consensus on what’s the best taxes, people just don’t like the answer: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... (“Three. Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people. Four. Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes disco…
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The goal is economic growth, which matters more than anything else. Fun fact: in 1900, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, at about 60% of US GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/argentina-was-one-o... . Today, Argentina has under 20% of the GDP per capita of the US. The difference is that the U.S. has grown at about 1.7% annually for the past century and change, while Argenti…
> The goal is economic growth, which matters more than anything else. To some people, but not everyone. It doesn't make sense to give unqualified "bests" without these kinds of caveats. I don't personally share this view. I don't think growth or wealth are inherently good.
Using GDP per capita as the metric assumes that the proceeds of economic growth “trickle down” uniformly, and this is obviously not true.
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We already have expert consensus on what’s the best taxes, people just don’t like the answer: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... (“Three. Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people. Four. Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes disco…
This approach is the perfect "the richer get richer" inequality engine that would run things even faster than our current system (which works pretty well already). Even the most consumerist of the super-rich spend that tiniest fraction on taxable consumables compared with any given salaried employee. Which means they have more to invest to increase their wealth (and gap between them and everyone else) even faster.
That’s the idea. Lawyers accustomed to the patronage of wealthy clients need more of them to maintain their lifestyle.