4 ms·

this. And the question is how do we get to that acceptable level. One option is a progressive income tax with a universal basic income, or (equivalently) havi

• dools 11y ago
  I'm more of the opinion that a broad based consumption tax with offsets given to people on a sliding scale would be more effective (after all, people are way less likely to refuse money than they are to try and get out of paying it ... ) This would cause a (once off) inflationary bump as wages adjusted to the price increase but this could be contained with effective fiscal policy. Taxing consumption makes more sense since ideally we want less of it, but taxing income makes less sense because we want people to work more. I like Randall Wray's idea of taxing the volume of people's houses, too[1] :) He also talks about abolishing all company and payroll taxes, because as soon as you let go of the notion that taxes pay for things, and that the role of taxation is actually to drive demand for currency and control aggregate demand/income inequality, your fiscal policy can get pretty wild. It's funny how MMT can seem quite "conservative" at times because of things like abolishing company tax, but when you accept the basic tenets of MMT you can see that such things can be quite progressive (and good for society)! [1] http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/tax-bads-goods.html http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/tax-bads-goods.ht...