4 ms·

Oddly enough, I think in the US you would get more support for increasing taxes on wealth and decreasing taxes on income, at least at the lower ends of income.

• baddox 12y ago
  That's essentially the idea behind Georgism, which has slightly influenced more mainstream political economic thought. In Georgism, natural resources (namely, land) are the only thing that is taxed, because natural resources are not created by human effort or ingenuity and thus should be taxed to avoid the land holders earning economic rent. Proponents argue that it is the only tax that is economically efficient. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
• curun1r 12y ago
  That's because wealth, particularly land and other limited resources that provide a benefit to the owner without any effort on their part, should be taxed. If you don't tax it, that's what leads to monied elites that sit on their asses without providing any benefit to society. Untaxed property leads to property owners that mooch their existence off the rest of society. I've seen excellent arguments for taxing only those specific types of wealth because it maximizes the amount of productivity that each member of society is contributing to the group whereas taxing income has the effect of deterring productivity...granted, at the levels that we currently tax income, the deterrence factor is very small, but it's still there.