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Comment by paulluuk | Hacker News Reader

That's also a really weird way to describe it. It's just a form of wealth tax, nothing related to the government disapproving of your choices.

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Seems like a strange way to implement a wealth tax since it only applies to a single type of wealth (cash) and not equity, real estate, commodities, etc.

There are actually a lot of different forms of wealth tax in the Netherlands.

What are you referring to? If anything I know the Netherlands as having a comparatively few forms of wealth tax compared to other countries, the main wealth tax is mostly based on 'one form' that is completely undifferentiated (i.e., any net wealth, as part of box 3)

That's the point though: large amounts of cash should not be sitting there, they should be circulating through investment. It's not a tax as much as an incentive. Inflation functions the same way by making holding on to cash a losing proposition.

There is just SO MUCH cash right now in the hands of the wealthy classes and it's just sitting there in bank accounts not being circulated.

Low interest rates rather increase wealth than decrease it. Except for cash, almost all other assets increase with low interests such as stocks, real estate etc. So the wealthy generally get more with low interest rates and not the other way around. Probably also one of the reasons why it is so difficult for central banks and politicians to decide to increase the interest rates although it's most likely badly needed.

It’s not a tax (the governments are not getting any money from this). If it were, it would be terrible, because outrageous wealth is not in cash on bank accounts. It’s in things like real estate or stocks, which don’t lose any value because of negative interest rates.

> If it were, it would be terrible, because outrageous wealth is not in cash on bank accounts.

The only outrageous wealth you listed was real estate because of the land component. Nobody gets hurt by stocks. People get hurt if money ceases to circulate because money is needed to pay incomes, taxes and debts. If all the money piles up in one bank account everyone stops working. Meanwhile if one person owns all the stocks people can still work and be happy.

> Meanwhile if one person owns all the stocks people can still work and be happy.

I know you didn't mean it quite so literally, but this paints a rather dystopian picture: a single person holding effectively all the material wealth while everyone else happily shows up every day to work for them

You can have an outrageous amount of something that is not intrinsically bad. Money, or wealth in general, is not a bad thing in itself, but its distribution can be outrageous.

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