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Comment by Kliment | Hacker News Reader

Ideally, the funds don't primarily come from other people's income, they come from corporate wealth and income (currently severely undertaxed), taxes on natural resource use (currently severely undertaxed), taxes on things we don't want like carbon emissions and other pollution (currently severely undertaxed) taxes on nonrenewable limited resources like radio spectrum usage or land usage (currently not taxed at all or nowhere near proportional to value most places), and direct wealth generation from nation-level investments (sovereign funds, resource funds). The "taxes come from people" is a common way to paint UBI as a self-defeating cycle of redistribution, but that's not how it is. Human income is a dropping fraction of total income, and human wealth is a dropping fraction of total wealth.

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Taxes on corporations are paid by people. Every dollar taxed from a company is a dollar less the company is worth. For mom and pop companies, it's directly less value they have. For larger private companies, it taxes owners. For large public companies, it taxes everyone with any investment exposure, which is the vast majority of people by retirement time.

It lowers returns on pensions, which is a hidden tax on nearly everyone.

Lower capital in companies causes them to raise prices sometimes, hire less sometimes, fire more quickly in bad times, etc.

Just because you don't see how it taxes you doesn't mean you're not paying.

You expressed it better than I did. At the end it is people, but apparently we two have fundamental disagreements with OP (Kliment).

Thank you for your comment, Kliment. I am currently trying to see my error in thinking and fix it.

> currently severely undertaxed

Is it because companies such as Amazon are good at avoiding taxes?

> they come from corporate wealth and income

Hmm... I think this is what I don't really understand. Aren't corporations owned by a few people? So at the end the owners are paying the taxes? Can companies exist without owners (people)? (They change, I know, but can they exist without people?) I am probably to fixated on people, and perhaps I need to see companies as an own entity.

> taxes on things we don't want like carbon emissions and other pollution

Okay, so somebody and a "company" is also a somebody here, needs to pay for that? (So it is the owner at the end?)

> direct wealth generation from nation-level investments (sovereign funds, resource funds)

Okay, that makes sense. A stock is bought and sold by people, and its value increases and decreases depending on the decisions of people. However, you are right, the government owns that stock. So it belongs to all of us.

Okay, so my question essentially boils down to: Why is the owner of a company like Jeff Bezos irrelevant here? I can see this for the sovereign funds, resource funds part. However, I have trouble with the CEO part. What am I missing here? My understanding of government and taxes is wrong, perhaps. That's why I cannot see it, probably.

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