[epistasis]

> A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most.

This doesn't really follow at all, and is directly in contradiction with your desire to get rid of Prop 13. Property taxes are the most common wealth tax!

[zozbot234]

Wrong. Property taxes mostly bear on land, not capital. Especially in heavily urbanized areas with lots of land value, as we see in CA. Landed property is not "wealth", it's just undue appropriation of something that is created by the community. Land taxes reverse this undue appropriation and let the community that actually created that wealth benefit from it, as it should. It's like the opposite of a wealth tax!

[maxerickson]

I mean, lots of billionaires also essentially got lucky.

DOS and Windows weren't the most glorious software to ever stalk the Earth, they were the operating systems that happened to get popular on cheap hardware. Arguing that Bill Gates created all that wealth that comes with the network effect inherent in software and a homeowner is unduly appropriating community value is really something or other.

[perl4ever]

Some nobody told Gates exactly how to get rich with computers. I read it (the specific advice) in an old issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia. The key is that out of millions of people saying millions of things, Gates was the one to pick up on the important one.

So, sure, he was lucky in a way, to be around and read it, but it seems unfair to say he merely appropriated value that belonged to everyone. The advice was worthless to the person giving it away, and everyone else.

[maxerickson]

That Gates is the one that succeeded is not evidence that no one else followed the advice.

I mean, there is actual historical evidence of other cheap operating systems for cheap computers and so on.

[cartoonworld]

Well said. The taxes on the value created by the labor of those involved in the production and consumption of the product of said labor(s) is indeed a fair and just re-appropriation.

Likewise, the results of hoarding the vast wealth in the forms of property, land, legal entities that operate and depend on these same communities which generated them is damagingly extractive.

We should, too, somewhat reverse the hoarding of vast wealth and let our communities reap some benefit from the treasures they are capable of producing.