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Separating currencies into machine money and people money won't make any difference - People will just create exchanges on which they will be able to trade betw

Separating currencies into machine money and people money won't make any difference - People will just create exchanges on which they will be able to trade between the two and it will basically reach an equilibrium - Same as before, except more complicated (and more wasteful). The real solution to inequality is to introduce a tax on capital holdings. The more assets are owned by an entity in terms of total dollar value, the higher the tax bracket should be. You could have 0% tax per year for asset holdings below $1 million and the % would progressively increase to 100% tax for companies with a capital worth of $10 trillion or above. That would make sure that corporations don't get too big and will encourage people to invest their money in smaller companies. This would also encourage large corporations to break themselves up into smaller parts (to avoid taxes) - But that will be a good thing, there will be more CEO/executive jobs available and it would be more interesting for investors since they will now be able to be more selective about which specific parts of a previously huge corporation you want to invest in and stock price would move independenty. Extremely wealthy individuals (billionaires) will be incentivized to give away large parts of their wealth to charity in order to reduce their taxes down and bring their asset holdings to an equilibrium. This policy needs to be enforced globally (E.g. a UN resolution/international treaty) to avoid flight of capital. But I think even with flight of capital factored in, countries that enforce this tax will be much better off economically due to the massive inefficiencies of large corporations.

thomasahle 10y ago
As you say, tax should be asymptotic. Something like "You keep $a n^b$ of what you earn", for some b < 1. For example, say you keep n^.9, then a 40% pay increase will be a 36% increase after tax. No worries about what tax brackets you may be in or be about to enter. This way the 'tax percentage' naturally converges from 0% for people who earn little, to 100% for people who earn a lot. While still basically letting everyone have asymptoticly all their money. Hell, even paying n(1-1/logn) would make more sense than what we have now.
Ntrails 10y ago
I will never understand why people think answers to things like this are simple and can be resolved with a single magic bullet sans unintended consequence. > This policy needs to be enforced globally (E.g. a UN resolution/international treaty) to avoid flight of capital. The UN does not have the mandate to impose tax laws on independent nations. If it did, you have to re-write the entire legal framework countries to deal with pensions, trusts etc. Oh, and that's before you find interesting new kinds of charities being set up in various domiciles with different laws for qualification... So we now need to impose our version of those laws too. Basically your solution is to have a global dictatorship where everyone does what you say, which is for their own good anyway - because your vision of what is right and proper is the only valid one. We're going to impose these laws and we're going to back it up with this Gun borrowed from the UN. Democratic governments controlling their own tax laws? Psssh. Sod that eh? And since we have this power, let's get everyone on the same page in some other important things. Police powers, information gathering and sharing, biometrics, so on and so forth. It's for the best right? >But I think even with flight of capital factored in, countries that enforce this tax will be much better off economically due to the massive inefficiencies of large corporations. What inefficiencies are these? All you've now done is move all the money off shore, and agreed to collect less tax because the subsidiary in your country has no assets to tax. They're all leased. No profits are made due to IP costs going to offshore companies (or a million subsidiaries or some other soln that doesn't involve paying stupid tax rates).

thomasahle 10y ago

As you say, tax should be asymptotic. Something like "You keep $a n^b$ of what you earn", for some b < 1. For example, say you keep n^.9, then a 40% pay increase will be a 36% increase after tax. No worries about what tax brackets you may be in or be about to enter. This way the 'tax percentage' naturally converges from 0% for people who earn little, to 100% for people who earn a lot. While still basically letting everyone have asymptoticly all their money. Hell, even paying n(1-1/logn) would make more sense than what we have now.

Ntrails 10y ago

I will never understand why people think answers to things like this are simple and can be resolved with a single magic bullet sans unintended consequence. > This policy needs to be enforced globally (E.g. a UN resolution/international treaty) to avoid flight of capital. The UN does not have the mandate to impose tax laws on independent nations. If it did, you have to re-write the entire legal framework countries to deal with pensions, trusts etc. Oh, and that's before you find interesting new kinds of charities being set up in various domiciles with different laws for qualification... So we now need to impose our version of those laws too. Basically your solution is to have a global dictatorship where everyone does what you say, which is for their own good anyway - because your vision of what is right and proper is the only valid one. We're going to impose these laws and we're going to back it up with this Gun borrowed from the UN. Democratic governments controlling their own tax laws? Psssh. Sod that eh? And since we have this power, let's get everyone on the same page in some other important things. Police powers, information gathering and sharing, biometrics, so on and so forth. It's for the best right? >But I think even with flight of capital factored in, countries that enforce this tax will be much better off economically due to the massive inefficiencies of large corporations. What inefficiencies are these? All you've now done is move all the money off shore, and agreed to collect less tax because the subsidiary in your country has no assets to tax. They're all leased. No profits are made due to IP costs going to offshore companies (or a million subsidiaries or some other soln that doesn't involve paying stupid tax rates).