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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Taxes are a fixed percentage of whatever is sold, ubless taxes are raised (didn't happen yet) or new taxes are introduced (didn't happen neither), taxes have zero impact on prices.

The money we threw at the pandemic, like everyone else in the developed world, avoided an economic crash worse than 2008. It resulted in inflation so, among other causes. The high energy prices were temporary and caused by the war in Ukraine, green energy policiies had nothing to do with that (if you want to thank someone that would be Putin).

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I agree with your point in general, and disagree with the OP's sentiment. However, seigniorage via central bank Interest Rates is considered a tax by most economists (or at least most economists would reasonably accept an argument that it was tax as legitimate), and does materially impact prices.

As a result, it's not entirely correct to say that tax rates haven't increased in Europe over the last 2 years.

Interest rates were raised, across the board after inflation hit post covid, those hikes were a counter measure. I am no economist so, but the take that all taxes are bad, all governments are incompetent that all wouod be good if we had just done some super easy thing is at best lazy and worse case really dangerous. Easy answers to comolex questions is what gives us populists.

Money printing didnt stop all the small businesses from closing down, its very easy to see the upward transfer of wealth that occured during the pandemic, it was the largest in history.

>> The largest in history

When do you think history started?

5000 years ago when jesus buried the dinosaur bones. Can you name a larger upward transfer of wealth?

Let me see: The Great Recession in the 40s including hyperinflation in various countries. The settling of the American West. The colonisation of India. The Opium Wars. That list quite long actuallx. But of course everything we experuenced ourselves is worse than anything else that ever happened, right?

I dont think any of those would qualify as an upward transfer of wealth at a magnitude close to the response to covid, but at least you pointed out some really mean stuff thats happened, same same?

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