Great work! I think too many get caught up in concerns about the "income" of wealthy people while also admitting that income tax won't capture it. The only way to "capture" the wealth of the superwealthy in any meaningful way would be to tax unrealized gains.
That's a double-edged sword though and would likely backfire badly in the long term. I will have to look further into this automated transaction tax. Other suggestions worth looking into might be an estate tax, or a distributed gains tax....a tax only on dividends and stock buybacks (this is done in Estonia).
Still, if we aim to have a simple tax code (<5 pages) that efficiently generates significant revenue, I still vote for Land Value Tax + Value Added Tax. Both are relatively easy and cheap to administer, extremely difficult to evade, provide stable revenue, do not harmfully distort the economy, and are proportional, if not progressive.
Well - everyone being exactly equal is a fools errand of course - but extreme inequality is democracy skewing. One’s wealth in the extreme is a ticket to more influence to bend democracy to your agenda. It’s so culturally ingrained we hardly notice it. The most visible is SuperPacs.
Income tax is a scandal. Should not exist. It’s historically new and discourages the very thing we want to encourage -work!
There should be no debates about ‘who’ pays - it’s ‘what’ pays (the economy). Either the economy can afford it or it can’t.
I’m aware of the Georgist movement and have nothing against an LVT. At system level there may be some issues but some modelling might tell us what they are.
VAT - got it.
Automated Transaction Tax - it’s a natural inflation stabiliser but it’s regressive without a UBI to at least the tax threshold - here’s a short explainer video I made to set you up with basic concept: https://youtu.be/5DQxJ2GZxS4
The ATT? Economists that prefer the status quo (and have livelihoods connected to it) don’t like it because it challenges the fiction that taxes pay for anything (you can’t have a currency without taxes but that’s a different story).
Others don’t like the political optics shifting the focus from the usual suspects (I have some sympathy).
Great work! I think too many get caught up in concerns about the "income" of wealthy people while also admitting that income tax won't capture it. The only way to "capture" the wealth of the superwealthy in any meaningful way would be to tax unrealized gains.
That's a double-edged sword though and would likely backfire badly in the long term. I will have to look further into this automated transaction tax. Other suggestions worth looking into might be an estate tax, or a distributed gains tax....a tax only on dividends and stock buybacks (this is done in Estonia).
Still, if we aim to have a simple tax code (<5 pages) that efficiently generates significant revenue, I still vote for Land Value Tax + Value Added Tax. Both are relatively easy and cheap to administer, extremely difficult to evade, provide stable revenue, do not harmfully distort the economy, and are proportional, if not progressive.
Primer on LVT: https://www.lianeon.org/p/just-tax-the-land
Primer on VAT: https://www.lianeon.org/p/rethinking-taxation
Thank you :)
Well - everyone being exactly equal is a fools errand of course - but extreme inequality is democracy skewing. One’s wealth in the extreme is a ticket to more influence to bend democracy to your agenda. It’s so culturally ingrained we hardly notice it. The most visible is SuperPacs.
Income tax is a scandal. Should not exist. It’s historically new and discourages the very thing we want to encourage -work!
There should be no debates about ‘who’ pays - it’s ‘what’ pays (the economy). Either the economy can afford it or it can’t.
I’m aware of the Georgist movement and have nothing against an LVT. At system level there may be some issues but some modelling might tell us what they are.
VAT - got it.
Automated Transaction Tax - it’s a natural inflation stabiliser but it’s regressive without a UBI to at least the tax threshold - here’s a short explainer video I made to set you up with basic concept: https://youtu.be/5DQxJ2GZxS4
I think I may have seen this but read somewhere the economists don't like it. Cannot remember why.
The ATT? Economists that prefer the status quo (and have livelihoods connected to it) don’t like it because it challenges the fiction that taxes pay for anything (you can’t have a currency without taxes but that’s a different story).
Others don’t like the political optics shifting the focus from the usual suspects (I have some sympathy).
Heterodox economist Steve Keen - whose livestream I host - has covered it. The problem to him was political not economic: https://shows.acast.com/debunkingeconomics/episodes/feiges-automated-transaction-tax-the-simple-answer
I didn't know you host live streams. Neat.
Well - just that one. I’m there to ask actual economists the dumb questions we all want to ask them lol. And a podcast on AI & culture on my Substack.