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Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

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opportune·

Yeah let's just get rid of income taxes and have an empty-building based economy that makes a lot of sense

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Or lower one with the revenue from the other...

I also prefer sales taxes over income taxes with cheques to counter their regressive nature.

And carbon taxes over sales and income taxes. Taxing destruction is a good thing.

That's fair but I don't think, at least with empty buildings, the revenues would be anywhere close to being able to replace a significant portion of income taxes. The scales are vastly different. But I should apologize for an overly snarky initial comment.

Depends on how much unused real estate there is, and what counts as unused. There are beautiful places out there filled with cottages that are unused 80-90% of the year, while the locals struggle.

Taxes serve as a discouragement, so let’s tax the harmful things first. Then those that can afford it without any real harm to quality of life, then lastly everyone else.

An underused property tax hits the first two really well.

While we are at it, lets tax the vacant hours of the unemployed - those evil speculators who are consipiring to restrict the supply of labor. That will encourage them to work and thereby be able to afford all that brand new housing!

We call it the opioid tax and it works pretty effectively at eliminating the unemployed.

the objective of the tax would not be to eliminate the unemployed, but rather to put them to work

Lazy athletes performing 2-3 hours a night for 75 days a year and retiring at 35.

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