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> taxes should be payments of the debt to the society, debt is not determined by utility in any way. Yes, exactly. Consumption taxes are a tax on utility.

• throwaway11460 3y ago
  No, that doesn't make any sense. Nobody owes their wealth to anybody. People should pay for what they use/cause, not just because they exist. Consumption taxes are not taxing utility, they are taxing consumption - it's a very direct relationship of usage->payment, regardless of whether it was completely useless, for laughs, or helped something. Again, how do you even objectively determine utility? Is having fun enough to claim utility? What if we rephrase it as "mental health"? If I can make my wealth without causing any effect on society, there's no reason my debt should increase - my debt doesn't scale linearly with my wealth, it scales with whatever the society provided to me. If I make my wealth by selling an app on the internet, there's no reason I should pay as much as someone who polluted the environment in the process by shipping stuff all around the world and used fossil fuels to make the products. And if I make my wealth by selling stuff in Europe, there's no reason it should be taxed in US just because I live there. At the very least, it should be taxed at the place where the society actually provided something that led to earning it. Because otherwise I'd just move to a nice tropical island with no wealth tax.