[jgord]

Australia is proposing a CGT tax of 30% on "capital gains" .. essentially taxing the _income_ from wealth.

This is more of a fair comparable to reason about when comparing taxing wealth and taxing wages.

In nerd-speak, taxing the Derivative of Wealth is comparable to taxing Income.

You could argue that a fair comparison of wages and wealth would first subtract the minimum cost of living, so that wage tax is effectively a tax on the growing wealth of wage-earners. This would arguably be a fairer tax comparison - in both cases it is the derivative of wealth that is being taxed.

If a large portion of the populace spends all their income on basic food, rent and petrol then they have no chance of wealth increase, and perhaps should fairly be charged 30% of their $0 growth in annual wealth.