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Comment by cperciva

9 years ago

In the long run, every dollar of wealth gets spent.

As a practical matter, consumption taxes can be made progressive by combining them with a low-income tax credit or a universal basic income.

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cperciva

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toomuchtodo  9 years ago

> In the long run, every dollar of wealth gets spent.

Not necessarily.

"Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Oracle (ORCL) are sitting on $504 billion, or 30%, of the $1.7 trillion in cash and cash equivalents held by U.S. non-financial companies in 2015, according to an analysis released Friday by ratings agency Moody's Investors Service. That's even more cash concentration than in previous years, as these five companies held 27% of cash in 2014 and 25% in 2013. Apple alone is holding more cash and investments than eight of the 10 entire industry sectors." [1]

Also, the top 1 percent owns 90 percent of wealth in the US [2].

"First, economic inequality has worsened significantly in the United States and some other countries. The richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Oxfam estimates that the richest 85 people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity.

The situation might be tolerable if a rising tide were lifting all boats. But it’s lifting mostly the yachts. In 2010, 93 percent of the additional income created in America went to the top 1 percent."

> As a practical matter, consumption taxes can be made progressive by combining them with a low-income tax credit or a universal basic income.

I agree that a consumption tax can be combined with other policy to prevent the regressive nature of a consumption tax alone. This requires wealth be taxed in various forms (ownership of investments, land, etc).

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/05/20/thir...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/opinion/nicholas-kristof-...

  • WalterBright  9 years ago

    > Not necessarily

    Nobody has a Scrooge McDuck cash vault, not Apple, Microsoft, nor anyone else. It's all invested - even money in a checking account isn't actually there, it's loaned out to someone who spends it.

    > the top 1 percent owns 90 percent of wealth in the US

    No, the government owns/controls most of it.

    • heylook  9 years ago

      Not to be a dick, but the above cited sources and you made assertions without anything pointing to anything to back them up. What reason do any of us have to put any stock in what you've written?

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  • cperciva  9 years ago

    Those dollars are going to get spent eventually; you just haven't waited long enough.

    But the foreign assets issue is a peculiarly US problem, resulting from the US being almost unique in the world in the extent to which it imposes taxes on income earned in other countries. (The other such country is Eritrea, and the US voted in favour of a UN security council resolution condemning the Eritrean tax regime.)