> you want people to buy stuff from each other, don't discourage this! Yes, you do, but the goal of politicians is to convince the populace that their proposed

> you want people to buy stuff from each other, don't discourage this! Yes, you do, but the goal of politicians is to convince the populace that their proposed larger collective reinvestments will be more valuable to taxpayers than the taxpayer's individual conspicuous consumption. You want both consumption by individuals and investment by (1) companies, (2) the government and (3) individuals. Investment in the future always comes from foregoing consumption in the present. When you tax private investment to make a public investment, you're not getting more investment, you're actually getting less investment since the amount you collect to reinvest is diminished by the cost of the bureaucracy used to collect that tax money and divert those tax dollars to other investments. It wasteful massively wasteful to tax investments to make investments.