Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

How about: you're committing fraud if you bury a jar of gold coins in your back yard. What business is it of anyone elses' what you do in your own home? This idea of 'you have something; give it to us!!!' is very disturbing at some level.

Its different from other taxes, that tax an interchange with another person or entity. That is supported by society and its mechanisms, for which government (e.g. all of us) have some responsibility.

But just to start taking what I have simply because I have it, is upsetting at a very fundamental level.

View on HN

Interestingly, what you see as completely normal (other taxes) was once as disturbing as capital tax seems to be:

> Window tax was a property tax based on the number of windows in a house.

> At that time, many people in Britain opposed income tax, on principle, because the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable governmental intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to personal liberty. In fact the first permanent British income tax was not introduced until 1842 [note by me: not until 1914 in France!], and the issue remained intensely controversial well into the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax

I don't think it's normal, and the bits were right, it is a direct threat to liberty.

How interesting. Gold has been seen as a miraculous material for ages because it never tarnishes and is scarce enough to retain some allure.

But a wealth tax could cause gold to begin to "tarnish" like anything else.

> Its different from other taxes, that tax an interchange with another person or entity.

yes, taxing transactions between entities makes sense, because transactions is where wealth (or value) is generated.

Taxing accumulated wealth does not make for a good policy, since this erodes stored wealth. Unless it's somehow paired with a reduction in other taxes (and thus defeat the point of the wealth tax in the first place as a way to levy more revenue to the gov't).

This is why a consumption tax is, in my opinion, the best kind of tax.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com