> The exasperated/condescending tone of your comment is really inappropriate, given the number of specious and economically fallacious arguments contained in it

> The exasperated/condescending tone of your comment is really inappropriate, given the number of specious and economically fallacious arguments contained in it. Your own comment is considerably more condescending. As for speciousness... > There's a negative correlation between government spending levels as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth rates. Your implication, that society is better off with high levels of taxation, is not supported by the science on the matter. That correlation is disputed, to say the least. Even if it weren't, economic growth rates, while important, are not the be-all and end-all of society being "better", especially when a large amount of the wealth is concentrated in a few hands. >>Fourth, this effectively ignores that wealth is a thing that grows and compounds. If your wealth is increasing at 4% a year (very attainable for the class of people a wealth tax would affect) a 1% wealth tax really doesn't have as big an impact on your long term wealth as this makes it seem. > Wrong. The losses also have to be compounded. That 1%, had it remained invested, would have grown at a compounding rate as well. So you lose the 1% and all compounded gains on it. Perhaps. But a 4% rate of increase would still belie the contention in pg's post that "by 5% [the threshold at which the tax starts] is getting close to being an upper bound on how much of the company you get to keep". It seems probable that pg simply did not take interest into account. > Government spending as a percentage of GDP has increased from 25% in the 1950s to 40% today. Social welfare spending increased by an average of 4.8%, EVERY YEAR, between 1972 and 2010. Over the same period, the share of income going to the top 1% doubled. > How much more do you think government spending should increase? What share of private economic output should be non-consensually redistributed for social welfare programs in your mind? > Will there ever reach a stage where you think the negative effects on capital formation, from further tax hikes, will outweigh the positive effects of a greater share of economic output being available to the poor in the form of cash payments and social services? Ever? Certainly, if you keep cranking up the number. But the United States isn't necessarily at or even near that stage, considering that several large European countries have strong economies despite much higher government spending as a percentage of GDP.