Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH
No, they won’t. Not unless you apply a sales tax to investments. The wealthy don’t spend their whole income like lower income people. They invest much of it. They also spend a lot more of their money outside of the USA.
Last year my wife and I paid 22% in total taxes, invested 51%, and lived on 27%. We are comfortable within the top 10% of households but nowhere near the top 1%.
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If the wealthy are investing, then it benefits everyone because investments are what build everything. When they finally do spend the money they've invested, it will be taxed. Most wealth doesn't survive more than 1 generation of descendants; evidence that it gets spent.
The sales tax would need to apply to all sales including foreign transactions. I don't know how to accomplish this, but I'm sure there's ways.
Probably the government should develop an official (traceable) distributed ledger currency that all transactions must be made in. People could still trade in gold and other valuable goods, but it at least makes laundering money more difficult.