[s1k3b8]

> Problems occur when the spent money is vacuumed up by mega companies that do not invest into the communities they operate in thereby depriving communities of the cash flow they need to survive.

Feels like this is where government should come in and increases taxes on these corporations/wealthy and funnel money to the lower income. Which will incentivize corporations/wealthy to provide services to get the money from the low income.

> Companies are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in liquid currency. That stagnant money has a massive negative effect on the world

Shouldn't we start thinking about taxing wealth? Why tax sales, property (house) and income only?

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

I can support increasingly expensive taxes on vacant and underutilized property. Piles of corporate cash in safe investments should also be taxed to force economic movement. I also support profit, compensation, ownership, and stake value limits that force sell offs early and often in successful companies. I'd also support minimum wages that reflect the cost of living. If a company can't pay a livable wage it should be taxpayer funded or cease to exist. If the costs of living are to high then progressively harsher measures should be taken to rapidly fill demand or shift demand to other cities.

These measures should feel more painful the wealthier one is to spur action, capital utilization, and change for the betterment of all, not for ones vanity or expensive habits.

[chillacy]

Some countries do have a wealth tax. But in practice it hasn't worked nearly as well as it should in theory, and a lot of European countries ended up canning their wealth taxes.

[s1k3b8]

The difference between US and "a lot of European countries" is that we have global financial power and they don't. If the US truly wanted to have a wealth tax, we can make it globally binding for US companies/citizens. Meaning you can't offshore it or hide it "legally" in foreign nations because we'd sanction both the individual and the nation. No tax haven or nation can afford to risk being banned from US markets and the international financial system which the US created and controls. But the US is a captive nation controlled by the wealthy, so I won't be holding my breath for a wealth tax.

[chillacy]

Even ignoring people offshoring wealth, it's still fairly expensive for the IRS to audit assets for the wealthy, especially things like art (how many expensive paintings do you have and what are they worth now?), private equity (how will series-A startup founders pay their tax?), or intellectual property (how much are Rihanna's songs worth?).

Ultimately I'm skeptical, because there isn't a good model of it working well anywhere else, or even at smaller scales. If the argument is that it only works at the largest scales with 100% buy-in... that's an awfully risky policy.

And among economists it's basically Saez and Zucman vs everyone else, not particularly promising. This is at least the most reasonable position I found, which is that it might work but we shouldn't rely on it to raise as much as we expect: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/elizabeth-warre...