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Actually its doesn’t matter as any dollar spent by the rich will filter down through the economy and ultimately end up with a near identical carbon footprint.
by danieltillett 7y ago
Actually its doesn’t matter as any dollar spent by the rich will filter down through the economy and ultimately end up with a near identical carbon footprint.
It would only be if the rich spent their money directly on subsiding fossil fuels would it make any difference.
- onion2k 7y agoActually its doesn’t matter as any dollar spent by the rich will filter down through the economy and ultimately end up with a near identical carbon footprint. Imagine two billionaires buying a painting from one another, and just swapping it back and forth between their mansions. How does that dollar spent leave that closed system? It doesn't. They might pay people to move their precious painting, pay for insurance, and alarms, but the painting itself is a fixed store of value. That value is never doing to trickle down. Large amounts of wealth will never leave the pockets of rich people unless they spend on investing or buying newly created assets (like Gulfstreams). Rich people buy investment art because it keeps their money in their own pockets.
- yeahitslikethat 7y agoAsset tax? Why don't we have that?
- teh_infallible 7y agoBecause it would necessarily involve tracking everything everyone owns?
- kkarakk 7y agoa usecase where blockchain makes sense? what? <surprised pikachu face>
- nutjob2 7y agoIncome taxes don't require tracking income, so why would it be necessary for assets?
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y agoOr just the insured stuff, from the horse's mouth - insurance companies can spit out database reports to the tax authority. They could even add the tax amount to the premium and collect both.
- simonh 7y agoAside from the tracking issue, many assets are extremely difficult to price at market value. Even if you could suppose the value goes up, they pay tax, then the value goes down? There would be horrendous market distortions from a scheme like this, and a flight of capital from the jurisdiction implementing it.
- nutjob2 7y agoThe Netherlands has an asset tax, and it doesn't seem to have that much difficulty with it economically. I suspect your difficulties are overstated and it's roughly no more bothersome than other forms of taxes.
- simonh 7y agoInteresting, it seems to only include fairly easily valued assets which can generate an income such as property and equity. Actually art works under such a scheme would be even more attractive as stores of value, not less, which could be seen as one of the market distortions I was talking about.
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y agoJust use the insurance value. Make insurance companies report it, done.
- simonh 7y agoThe Billionair example is no different if it's a company stock being bought and sold back and forth, in terms of exchange of value. Like any other investment class it's a leaky system. When a collector bought Girl With Baloon/Love is in the Bin for £1m at auction that money went to Banksy, to be spent on whatever Banksy spends money on.
- onion2k 7y agoWhen a collector bought Girl With Baloon/Love is in the Bin for £1m at auction that money went to Banksy, to be spent on whatever Banksy spends money on. This is exactly the point I was making - when someone buys a new thing the money circulates in the economy. They (sort of, in the case of Banksy) paid for it to be made. They created work. When it's just two rich people buying existing things from one another the money doesn't leave that loop, no additional work is done, and there's no real benefit to the economy. To be honest I'm just making a pedantic point about Daniel's post where he said every purchase trickles down eventually. That's just not true in a small number of very high value purchases like art. If you've got buckets of cash it's better for the economy to buy a shiny new yacht instead of a painting. Nice problem to have I guess.
- danieltillett 7y agoIn practice, inflation of an asset class like art always leaks out into the general economy, but let's say the dollars that go into art stay in art and never leave. This is equivalent to just pulling the dollars out of the economy which is deflationary. In an economy where new dollars can be created at will the dollars removed will be replaced by new government dollars and spent.