Quote:
Originally Posted by tweetiepooh
Taxing wealth sounds like a typical leftist mechanism on success. I think the focus maybe should be on ensuring that the very high earners pay the proper tax on income, against that of course is if too draconian they just move elsewhere.
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The problem is that increasingly people just accumulate huge amounts of wealth and they don't have an easily defined income stream to tax that is proportional to their wealth. An alternative would be brutally high inheritance tax over a certain amount but that wouldn't be popular either.
I also think lower income taxes but higher wealth taxes would incentivise people to earn money rather than hoard it and make it easier for people who are just starting to build wealth to do so. For example, it's probably not fair that someone who has no assets but has just started to earn a high income is taxed at the same rate as someone who is already loaded.
Land is the obvious issue here as well. It isn't 'success' if you were born early enough to get lower prices or if you inherited it.
The main argument against is it's probably really hard to implement.