- I think wealth can be created and isn't always a zero sum transfer
- I think we want to incentivize wealth creation
- I think economic growth constrained by protection for human rights and environmental destruction is the best way to improve the quality of life for the most people the fastest.
- I think wealth taxes disincentivize a lot of these things with knock on effects (forcing people to liquidate their company equity, etc.). It's also repeatedly taxing the same money every year eventually down to whatever the cap is.
I'd rather set taxes/caps at generational wealth transfer if you're going to try and incentivize something - might as well go after dynastic wealth and the children that benefit from it without creating anything. I think focusing on housing and land use/zoning would also directly benefit more people by fixing existing perverse incentives.
PG writes about some of this in essays, Tyler Cowen's book Stubborn Attachments was also interesting on the growth aspect (though wealth taxes aren't specifically mentioned).
Why do we think wealth will be better allocated by a government? This money is largely already taxed either via capital gains or income. I'd suspect a lot of our problems are problems of incentives and competing priorities, not of available cash flow for government programs.
That's my take anyway, I suspect a 'hate the rich' motivated reasoning position pushing the idea of a wealth tax more than any serious thinking about incentives and what it might do. It seems political.
(I am nowhere near the level where the proposed tax would start and probably never will be.)
- I think wealth can be created and isn't always a zero sum transfer
- I think we want to incentivize wealth creation
- I think economic growth constrained by protection for human rights and environmental destruction is the best way to improve the quality of life for the most people the fastest.
- I think wealth taxes disincentivize a lot of these things with knock on effects (forcing people to liquidate their company equity, etc.). It's also repeatedly taxing the same money every year eventually down to whatever the cap is.
I'd rather set taxes/caps at generational wealth transfer if you're going to try and incentivize something - might as well go after dynastic wealth and the children that benefit from it without creating anything. I think focusing on housing and land use/zoning would also directly benefit more people by fixing existing perverse incentives.
PG writes about some of this in essays, Tyler Cowen's book Stubborn Attachments was also interesting on the growth aspect (though wealth taxes aren't specifically mentioned).
Why do we think wealth will be better allocated by a government? This money is largely already taxed either via capital gains or income. I'd suspect a lot of our problems are problems of incentives and competing priorities, not of available cash flow for government programs.
That's my take anyway, I suspect a 'hate the rich' motivated reasoning position pushing the idea of a wealth tax more than any serious thinking about incentives and what it might do. It seems political.
(I am nowhere near the level where the proposed tax would start and probably never will be.)