Agree, but nothing will happen so long as people like Hamilton distract with phony ideas like an income tax can solve the wealth gap. It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that cannot work.

Sure, it encourages saving. And that savings goes into negative real rates or even nominally negative rates in some places, which encourage spending.

Good, because you are not debating anything.

Haven’t thought much about how it would actually be structured, considering this will never happen so long as we focus on non-solutions like an income tax, but theoretically it would have to be done quickly and by surprise. Capital is too mobile.

And that’s a good thing. Consumption is a lot like income. As a percentage of their total worth, the people that have mountains of assets consume very little.

Correct. And I am calling that a tax, because a tax is confiscation regardless of whether the money is en route or not. Not going to debate that in case you wanted to, fyi.

I’m really not sure how you are this confused, and I’m not trying to insult you when I say that. Maybe you did not see that I mentioned a threshold under which assets would not be taxed. Maybe I did not mention that threshold would be well above the median net worth of the upper middle class.

Your inability to grasp income vs asset taxing and its effects is your deficiency, not mine.

Not if you set the threshold under which your assets are not taxed at, say, $75 million.

Hmmm... sounds legit. It is obviously a loaded question when I am discussing a pretty basic concept and you are demanding details. It looks like addressing the actual problem rather than hyping up a phony solution.

No. There would obviously be a threshold under which you would not be taxed, right??? We are talking about actual redistribution, not fairy-tale income tax redistribution.

Details. The point is that the tax addresses the actual issue which is not income inequality but wealth inequality. The majority of wealth is in assets. It is an equity issue, not an income issue.

Or maybe we should be talking about an asset tax and not an income tax, considering most people are reliant on their incomes while the real wealth is stored in assets.

I bounce between Hamilton genuinely not understanding the business of economics insofar as the career goals of actual economists are concerned and that he understands he writes a lot of bullshit, but such is the job of a professional troll. As a troll of leisure, I understand the latter, but more often than not…

What you refuse to understand is that proposed redistributive tax policies come from INCOME not ASSETS. Actual redistributive tax policy, by nature of the type of wealth inequality we now face, must come from assets.

I know. I’m just saying he looks a lot like John Lewis.

His prediction about Trump getting ass kicked by Hillary was much less fun.

This sounds pretty familiar.

Yeah, because NFL fans are basically Nazis.

What? No. Definitely not.