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Taxing savings encourages spending and helps the economy flow. When money is held outside of the economy it (say under your bed) it kills any benefit and creat

by wolco 7y ago

Taxing savings encourages spending and helps the economy flow. When money is held outside of the economy it (say under your bed) it kills any benefit and creates depressions. Taxing savings makes sense over income. Why tax someone producing, removing the tax encourages more work performed. We tax income because it is easier. We tax the estate in death because everything is collected and recorded. In Roman times they sent a tax collector who would go through the home to find valuable objects to pay taxes (tax on savings). It is not as wierd as it sounds. It's impossible to implement in our society before death and taxing payrolls and self reported income is a lot easier.

roenxi 7y ago
> Taxing savings encourages spending and helps the economy flow. When money is held outside of the economy it (say under your bed) it kills any benefit and creates depressions. But that is a bad goal - we don't want to optimise economic flows, we want to optimise quality of life and standards of living. The goal in this era of plenty shouldn't tend towards everyone teetering towards bankruptcy and wage slavery so that the politicians can talk about how the GDP is 2% higher. Everyone should have a reserve of real wealth in case they fall on hard times and the bigger the reserve the better as far as I'm concerned. In my lifetime there have been a constant stream of inflationary collapses and a noticeable lack of problems caused by deflation. That theory is very popular with governments because it justifies the creation of money on a grand scale, but it has a certain lack of evidence. We've seen communism tried more often than deflation.
- whateveracct 7y ago
  > But that is a bad goal - we don't want to optimise economic flows, we want to optimise quality of life and standards of living. Heh it's a great idea for the powers collecting that spending though ;)
AdrianB1 7y ago
It helps wasting resources; why save and pay it to the government when you can buy more than you need, producing more CO2 in the process and wasting limited resources? Long live the waste.

by wolco 7y ago

roenxi 7y ago

> Taxing savings encourages spending and helps the economy flow. When money is held outside of the economy it (say under your bed) it kills any benefit and creates depressions. But that is a bad goal - we don't want to optimise economic flows, we want to optimise quality of life and standards of living. The goal in this era of plenty shouldn't tend towards everyone teetering towards bankruptcy and wage slavery so that the politicians can talk about how the GDP is 2% higher. Everyone should have a reserve of real wealth in case they fall on hard times and the bigger the reserve the better as far as I'm concerned. In my lifetime there have been a constant stream of inflationary collapses and a noticeable lack of problems caused by deflation. That theory is very popular with governments because it justifies the creation of money on a grand scale, but it has a certain lack of evidence. We've seen communism tried more often than deflation.

whateveracct 7y ago
> But that is a bad goal - we don't want to optimise economic flows, we want to optimise quality of life and standards of living. Heh it's a great idea for the powers collecting that spending though ;)

AdrianB1 7y ago

It helps wasting resources; why save and pay it to the government when you can buy more than you need, producing more CO2 in the process and wasting limited resources? Long live the waste.