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Comment by brandonmenc | Hacker News Reader

> Paying someone to do worthless work (lavishing luxury on someone) does not help society much.

Tell that to the people feeding their families by working at the resort, or in the vineyard, or the tannery.

There is a demand for luxury goods, and there always will be. A tax in the consumption of those goods cuts into the wages of the non-wealthy involved in their production.

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Don't forget that those people are still going to be automated away from their jobs soon, so it's in everyone's best interest to figure out how to make society work without requiring people to slave away doing increasingly worthless and wasteful things. I.e. how to make those people feed their families without working on things that don't really need to be done.

Depends what you do with the taxes. If you use them to decrease the financial burden of just surviving for the non-wealthy population, that frees up their wealth for consumption of more reasonable items, which increases demand for those items, which creates more jobs supplying those items. So really, wouldn't this just be a matter of shifting jobs from supplying exclusive luxury items to supplying more common quality of life improving amenities?

Of course, I'm just a tech nerd with zero finance/economy training, so let me know if I'm missing something obvious.

Yes, but the tax money goes to the poor, which increases their consumption. So you should end up with fewer jobs in luxury resorts and more jobs in industries which produce necessities. The problem is that luxury goods and services tend to be labor-intensive, so you might end up with a net loss in jobs. Which is better? 10 people serving daiquiris to rich people, or 5 people producing socially beneficial things and 5 people out of a job?

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