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Comment by Bostonian | Hacker News Reader

If 99% of people vote to impose a tax paid only by 1%, that violates the spirit of "no taxation without representation". That would be universally recognized if, for example, the right-handed voted to raise taxes on the left-handed.

Related article: "Millionaires support a wealth tax — as long as they aren’t getting taxed: CNBC survey" https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/millionaires-support-a-wealt... . It found that the majority of millionaires supported a wealth tax that kicks in at $50 million, but not at $10 million -- because they fear it would hit them, now or in the future.

Using the tax code to pull people down is morally wrong.

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> no taxation without representation

On the other hand, the 1% have enough money to influence politics through lobbying and "donations"

I read a thread on /r/FatFIRE about a possible wealth tax. To my surprise, many supported it because they concluded it was impossible to accrue $50 million (specifically the Warren plan) just by saving aggressively and index-fund investing. Due to the exponential nature of wealth distribution I'd imagine there are far, far more millionaires with $5 million than there are with $50 million.

I'm confused. There are many taxes that only apply to a subset of people. Property taxes only apply to property owners, soda taxes only apply to people buying soda, gas taxes to people buying gas. Tax credits apply to certain people, too, like the EITC or mortgage credits.

What makes this qualitatively different to you?

Also, everyone can vote, so everyone in theory has equal representation. (in practice, the wealthy have a lot more time in their reps' ears than the poor, so they arguably already have a greater representation than your typical voter.)

All the taxes you listed are tied to specific things. A generic wealth tax is saying that no matter how you got your money, there should be a cap on it. It's like locality pay, but on a national scale. I don't know if it's the right idea or not, but it's application is arbitrary enough that it's different than the other taxes.

If left-handed people were way more dexterous or something and they had a huge material advantage in life over right-handed people, that might make sense.

There is no desire to take something away from a minority that the rest of us have. Just a desire to make them have a slightly lower exponential difference of money and power.

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