
It is surprising how many countries used to have relatively high wealth taxes - baybal2
I&#x27;m reading stuff on history of taxation. I was surprised that property and financial assets were taxed left and right at the break of 20th century, but went nearly extinct after WWII.<p>It was an even bigger surprise that the shift from capital taxation to income taxation was driven on a pretext of &quot;stimulating the industry&quot;
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miguelrochefort
Not many things surprise me anymore.

That said, I do believe that taxing property (and wealth, to some degrees)
makes a lot more sense than taxing income.

As a geolibertarianist, I'm generally opposed to taxation, but I recognize the
need for preventing people to board finite resources (particularly land).
Taxing the ownership of finite resources forces people to put them to good
use. You could think of it as renting finite resources (such as land).

That said, inflation sort of serves the same purpose as a wealth tax, if only
to a small degree.

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Gustomaximus
> inflation sort of serves the same purpose as a wealth tax, if only to a
> small degree.

Isn't this the opposite? Sure cash this may happen but most large fortunes are
held in assets like property, funds and businesses that out grow inflation.

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baybal2
> but went nearly extinct after WWII

I mean that such taxes went extinct after WWII

