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Comment by nickpp | Hacker News Reader

During COVID governments spent and spent. Now the check must be paid. By us, as always. Since income is already taxed at about 50% pretty much everywhere in the developed world, it is time to tax the existing wealth.

These articles are meant to prepare the public for it. They influence but also measure the public support for a wealth tax. It could be an all wealth or only a unrealized capital gains tax, similar to property taxes. They could start with executives and entrepreneurs who are mostly paid in stock. We will see.

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During COVID governments spent and spent. Now the check must be paid. By us.

The already wealthy benefitted immensely from the pandemic [0]. Hopefully, governments understand this and by "us", they realize they need to tax based on that, and not some scheme where the people already most negatively impacted have to bear the brunt of it.

0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/30/america...

>During COVID governments spent and spent. Now the check must be paid. By us, as always

It doesn't. The US is the deficit black hole of the entire world. All the trade surplus nations are suckers that give you free stuff. Germany wants to run an export surplus for all eternity. How are importing nations supposed to pay their debts back if Germany never reverses positions and starts a buying spree to balance its selling spree? Here is the thing. Germany never planned on its debtors ever repaying their debts because that is incompatible with an export surplus. They are giving out real goods for promises that they themselves consider worthless.

Consider Greece as an extreme example. Germany had a trade surplus with Greece and handed out loans. The debt to GDP ratio of Greece rose as a result. The 2008 crisis caused people to panic when they saw that Greece had rampant corruption but it was growing 5% despite the corruption. So what did they do? Germany forced austerity in the most idiotic way. Greece cut domestic spending but not foreign spending. The German trade surplus remained and thus the debt could never be repaid in the first place. The only way the Greek debt can disappear is if Germany imports Greek goods as this represents a flow of euros into Greece which then immediately flow back to repay the loans.

Thus the only logical solution to the regressive German export addiction is to not honor their debts and let them realize what they have done. Germany was voluntarily giving away its wealth at the expensive of its citizens. Export surpluses are something countries grow out of once they are developed. Only developing nations get to do it to kick start their economy.

So you're basically saying that Germany's a sucker and Greece benefited from Germany's generosity. Sounds great in theory, but my impression was that despite all the debt haircuts, it was much less fun to be in Greece than Germany at the time.

If you win at (maintaining) debt, aren't you supposed to improve your lot in life? Just being a "deficit black hole" doesn't necessarily give you an edge, just like credit card debtors and beggars on the street always run the risk of getting hit hard at the slightest surprise, and often are. Whereas not being in debt is perhaps the nominally less efficient way, but it prevents you from getting messed up by your loan sharks again and again. In that sense, trade surpluses are a risk avoidance strategy and as such, make a good match for traditionally risk-averse Germany.

Are you suggesting that governments are colluding with journalists to deliver a particular narrative?

Or are you saying that journalists and their editors believe there's a need for wealth taxes and so they're pushing that line?

I rarely see any news these days which are not pushing an agenda or another.

Politicians, journalists, governments, they all have their plans, ideas, biases and interests.

I am taking no position on this specific instance, but it is clear that government officials intentionally leak inside information to journalists with a particular worldview to push narratives into the public consciousness.

It's pretty clear that the British government over the last 12+ months have been doing just this with leaking Covid related announcements to the press prior to them being official announced.

Probably some of both. A wealth tax would discourage investment and encourage consumer spending, and would hit the middle class the hardest. As usual - these things are always sold as being targeted at the "rich."

Though, it would be interesting to see how people would try to game/avoid it. Instead of investing in stocks, a middle class person looking to preserve some wealth could buy things like physical gold/silver from local dealers with cash, hide it under the floorboards, and definitely NOT report it on their taxes.

Do you define middle class as having wealth above $50M?

Or it's time to cut government payroll by 50%, shouldn't we at least explore this ?

Definitely. But considering that our only way to influence the government is by voting, I guess we can only vote politicians proposing a reduction in size and cost of the government. Sadly, not many like that left these days, as it simply isn't in their own interest.

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