[iamatologist]

I don’t understand why individuals make posts about grand topics like overhauling a whole tax system. It’s not like anyone is going to listen to them.

In any case. It seems to me that tax systems are complex (if they are) because you can use money (the thing that is ultimately being taxed) in order to get around regulation. If you can pay some people 10,000 USD in order to save yourself 200,000 USD, then obviously you are gonna want to do that. So then if you already have high wealth inequality you would have to device ever more clever schemes in order to truley tax the rich more than the poor.

So can you really create a simple tax system under these conditions?

I don’t know if overconsumption is really what should be disincentivized, if the author wants a good economy. It’s a consumption-driven economy. Does the “economy” want every household to get a vacuum cleaner, a television set, a washing machine, a stove, and not much else? Probably not since that creates less economic activity. Sure, that leads to environmental problems and to “poor people hating us” (though I don’t see how that matters), but those are “externalities”.

[clairity]

> “It’s a consumption-driven economy. Does the ‘economy’ want every household to get a vacuum cleaner, a television set, a washing machine, a stove, and not much else? Probably not since that creates less economic activity.”

that conclusion doesn’t follow. for instance, prices could rise to result in the same level of economic activity (this is unlikely to be the sole response however). the amount of money and the velocity of the economy is correlated to human output (leveraged in various ways), so it’s not that elastic (at least in ways that matters). the money then has to find different routes, nooks, and crannies to fill, and it will.

the last 100+ years has been about how to advantage capital and capital holders. it’s time to retire that poor paradigm (re, the inequalities it’s produced) and focus on work and workers as the core economic engine it is.