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Comment by entrope | Hacker News Reader

Existing taxes are mostly on income, not wealth, and the US has one of the most progressive income tax systems in the world. Confiscating some fraction of Tesla and SpaceX will destroy lots of economic productivity for a one-time bump; it's a worse trade-off than just printing however much money and taking the value through inflation.

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It's not confiscating a fraction of Tesla, it's forcing Elon to give up some of his share of Tesla. He doesn't give it to the government, he sells it. To whoever wants to buy.

Could also take dividends, that would be more of a tax on the company itself which is what people usually object to in this discussion. Now the company basically can't grow as fast because it has to satisfy the tax burden for the owner. But that's a choice the owner makes.

"it's forcing Elon to give up some of his share of Tesla [...] But that's a choice the owner makes."

That probably seemed more coherent before you put it into words.

No, it's perfectly coherent. You just struggle with reading comprehension. The choice is how you pay the tax. The owner can choose to sell stocks or they can take dividends. Or they can take up a loan or pay themselves a salary or whatever.

Taking a bit more money from the ultra wealthy is not going to stop Tesla and SpaceX. That's just ridiculous. Particularly for those two who only exist due to government subsidies.

At this point, it will probably not stop them, just slow them down, but it will strangle other companies in the crib. How much do you plan to tax the new multimillionaire janitors at those companies?

If government subsidies are the only reason Tesla exists, why did Aptera (v1) and Fisker fail? If SpaceX only exists because of government subsidies, why are Boeing and Lockheed Martin (owners of ULA) worth so much less than SpaceX?

Blah blah excuses and lame arguments that have been rehashed a million time.

And even if it does stop them... so what? Are they actually that interesting compared to good living standards for everyone?

We've seen what happens when people decide to confiscate wealth with promises of good living standards for everyone. It has never delivered on those promises, always lowered median living standards, and usually led to lots of deaths. I can't think of a single example where recovery from a confiscatory regime has taken less than 40 years, except arguably Cambodia, and most of them are still ongoing. Do you want Democratic Kampuchea as a best-case outcome?

> We've seen what happens when people decide to confiscate wealth with promises of good living standards for everyone.

This is how taxes work. I'm not sure why you jumped from one extreme of the US to the other extreme of Cambodia, ignoring the quite normal end successful middle.

Taxes generally do not promise good living standards for everyone. Usually they come with promises of public infrastructure, some kind of safety net, and some other benefits. How did wealth taxes work out for Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Sweden? They also didn't promise good living standards for everyone, yet still found that wealth taxes were worse than not having them.

Exactly!

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