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The thing is poor people have to spend all their income, wealthy people don't. So poor people have all their income taxed, while wealthy people surely aren't spending their last dollar on yachts for the most part. Wealthy people have lots of leftover income to invest and make yet even more money instead. At least with an income tax you can ensure no one pays taxes on their first $x and such.

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Still doesn’t jive. Taxes are there to fund government, not punish success. Whether or not you have a large income or a small one, your consumption is what it is and to a degree can be controlled.

Why not only tax finite resources like land & oil or sin taxes only or something else instead? Main differences that come to mind are tax collecting efficiency and value judgement. Is it better to punish the poor by having all their income effectively taxed so that we can avoid punishing the rich? Someone has to have the burden, and every additional dollar is worth less to someone with lots of dollars. But there's also the effects. Consumption taxes make a lot of sense in touristy areas, but do large swaths of society want a tax system that reduces class mobility? There are always discussions how to get around it, like give everyone a monthly payment to make up the difference, don't apply the tax to certain things, etc., but they're work arounds.

How does it reduce class mobility?

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