[xvedejas]

But why raise income or wealth taxes when you can raise land value taxes or carbon/pollution taxes instead? My income does not harm anyone else, nor does being wealthy. But my hoarding of land does exclude land from others. My release of carbon / pollution into the atmosphere even more obviously harms other people. I think we're doing a huge disservice taxing the wrong things, when there are things that are useful to tax (apart from the government revenue).

This is why I think we should lower (or remove) income taxes -- because we could raise the same amount in more useful ways. I think there are also economic reasons to believe income taxes make the labor market less efficient. If your goal is to tackle inequality, why insist on doing it in a sub-optimal way? It absolutely matters not just how much you tax and who you tax, but also what you're taxing (and therefore discouraging). Let's start with some revenue-neutral changes to the tax structure. We might see both a stronger economy and less pollution because of it, for free.

[jelliclesfarm]

By the same logic, should we tax having babies too? Especially multiple babies. Large carbon foot print for a bonded set of genes.

[xvedejas]

No, this would be a double-tax. We should tax carbon as it is emitted. Anything else is prediction and is a much harder, unnecessary problem.

[antisthenes]

Given the current state of AGW and Climate Change, taxing babies beyond replacement rate (2.1) is not a bad idea.

I mean it's political suicide, but I don't see anything morally wrong with it.

After all, we already subsidize babies with our taxing scheme. So you wouldn't even need to tax babies. You would just cut off the subsidy after 2 kids.

[jelliclesfarm]

That would work too.

If we incentivize those who are childless and have shrunk their carbon foot print, that would also encourage people to make thoughtful decisions about baby making. Example: If someone didn’t have any children at all, then they should get tax free status or reduced premiums etc.

A woman increases her carbon foot print 10-20 times with every child. Medical costs and food and transport and pretty much everything is borne by the rest of us. Suspend benefits. Tax excess children and give tax breaks or retirement benefits to those who didn’t have children.

I suspect that retirement benefits would be a better incentive than tax free status. Most people hope that children would take care of them when they get older. It’s not worth the true cost of over population.

[youareawesome]

This is not an income tax, this is a wealth tax. Very different. You're taxed on money you are simply holding.

[JackFr]

> You're taxed on money you are simply holding.

Exactly, and that is why it's such an abysmal idea. Wealth is capital and how capital is allocated to a large extent how fast an economy will grow. To take private capital, which presumably was invested where it could find the greatest risk adjusted return, and move it to another enterprise (presumably a darling of some vested interest) or worse to consumption leaves the overall economy worse off.

Taxing income, which is a flow rather than a stock, has distorts incentives on the economy as well but much more gently.

[xvedejas]

My comment still applies. Most wealth is invested. Investing is a good thing; it allows long-term thinking. Taxing investment, like taxing income, has a negative effect.