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Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

Consumption does not scale like that. If I consume 30% of my salary under the median income, there’s no way wealthy people making say, $10 million a year are spending 30% of that on consumption. Sure, some might, but many recent 1st generation wealthy are savers and would tend to invest income, not consume it.

VAT is regressive without some kind of subsidy or UBI.

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Again you have your head around that all money should be taxed. And the government owns a percentage, or it’s not “fair“.

As long as the rich dude is investing it in businesses and things that push the economy forward, I see no issue with it. And of course that rich dude one day is going to wanna buy the Lambo, boats, and boob jobs for the girlfriend … and that’s when we tax him.

And by the way you’d be shocked at how much is rich people spend. I literally know guys making 10 million a year, with virtually no savings.

There's a lot of the middle ground between "median income" and "$10 million per year". There are stories in the web about people who struggle to make ends meet on $400-500k income, because of "lifestyle inflation": big house, expensive clothes, eating out in fancy restaurants, exotic vacations - those people would pay tons of VAT tax :)

For people who actually make $10 million per year, and do not pay much in VAT, there are still better ways to tax them than the income tax (which they can avoid with some tax optimization scheme), like property taxes, or capital gain tax.

In eat the same food amount than my friends, but make a lot more money. 25% vat on pasta means nothing to me. Heck, I don't even look at food price.

But it means a lot to some of my friends with minimal wage.

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