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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

Currently less than 4% of Americans save any money. To assume that any would save enough to compound instead of spend in the absence of taxes is naive.

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That logic seems a bit circular. I don't endorse the 90% figure because I haven't thought about it, but for the sake of argument if you were faced with a choice where 90% of your income would be redirected away from you vs not saving it'd be expected that nobody would save.

So you can't argue that lack of savings under the current system implies no savings under a low-tax system. It is pretty reasonable to suggest that a big contributing factor to the lack of savings is precisely what the tax system does to savers.

So you think the hardworking 4% should suffer like the rest of them? Even though they pay more taxes? Taxation is supposed to be fair, but your approach isn't.

It seems like you're assuming motivation where it doesn't exist. I'm simply stating that your belief that paid taxes would be compounded to 99% of income is quite a fantastic claim. Besides, there's no proof that the "hardworking" are necessarily more saving than those who aren't. Sometimes the highest earning have the highest rates of debt, ie, they don't save.

Do you think that the minority of the population which saves money works harder than the majority that does not save money?

* I think that the 4% number is dubious but it's not material to the question.

I'm just going off of the documented personal savings rate.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

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