Under your proposal, the roughly 50% of Americans with zero net wealth would pay nothing. That’s fine on paper, but it would actually incent people to stay in d

Under your proposal, the roughly 50% of Americans with zero net wealth would pay nothing. That’s fine on paper, but it would actually incent people to stay in debt and dis-incent the accumulation of savings. Look at it this way, I can either buy a bigger house with more debt whenever I have some extra money laying around, or I can save that cash and have the government take some of it every year. You also incent people to spend money on non-material things like travel and entertainment, rather than spending cash on a reasonable car (because leasing the car and blowing the other $20k in Vegas sounds like more fun). There’s a simple maxim in taxes and economics - do not tax activities you want to encourage, and tax those which you want to curtail.