>Making yourself wealthy doesn't necessarily make everyone better off. The social welfare cost of wealth creation is not always the same.
No dispute there, but if people are engaging in counterproductive wealth transfers, there's a case for intervention and we don't need to amend the tax code for that.
>If you couldn't trade money for interesting machines, then you'd likely do something else with it.
Not really, I'm not super interested in luxury / the simple pleasures in life are often enough for me. I would work to make sure I could afford hamburgers, but I'm not the sort of person who would put in additional effort to eat steak. If I couldn't play with machines, I would play with my mind and recreational drugs.
Taxation isn't the only thing that discourages work - regulations on what we can buy and how we can use it discourage as much. If supersonic flight were more legal, I can promise you that I'd buy a jet, but since that's not an option, I'm saving the money for early retirement.
If we're trying to design a policy that encourages people to do productive things, we can have a rock talk. However, if we're simply trying to eliminate wealth gradients in a way that makes materially poor people better off, understand that's a one time event. And there's usually a reason poor people are poor, if they squander their one-time redistribution money, you're really going to wish people were out there working and producing surplus value for you to redistribute to those who can't take care of themselves.
3. Again, I don't dispute the ROI of this investment. My point is that we have more investment opportunities than we have money. Malaria nets, childhood nutrition, primary schooling for girls, etc - there are great places for us to park money. How would you prioritize?
4. Why stop at precious metal toilet seats and houses? Why not redistribute everything owned by above-median wealth holders to below-median wealth holders and erase any gradient of material well-being?
Again, my concern is redistributionists tend to offer no limits on what they want to distribute. This is the same line of attack that incels use to advocate for redistribution of sexual access.
No dispute there, but if people are engaging in counterproductive wealth transfers, there's a case for intervention and we don't need to amend the tax code for that.
>If you couldn't trade money for interesting machines, then you'd likely do something else with it.
Not really, I'm not super interested in luxury / the simple pleasures in life are often enough for me. I would work to make sure I could afford hamburgers, but I'm not the sort of person who would put in additional effort to eat steak. If I couldn't play with machines, I would play with my mind and recreational drugs.
Taxation isn't the only thing that discourages work - regulations on what we can buy and how we can use it discourage as much. If supersonic flight were more legal, I can promise you that I'd buy a jet, but since that's not an option, I'm saving the money for early retirement.
If we're trying to design a policy that encourages people to do productive things, we can have a rock talk. However, if we're simply trying to eliminate wealth gradients in a way that makes materially poor people better off, understand that's a one time event. And there's usually a reason poor people are poor, if they squander their one-time redistribution money, you're really going to wish people were out there working and producing surplus value for you to redistribute to those who can't take care of themselves.
3. Again, I don't dispute the ROI of this investment. My point is that we have more investment opportunities than we have money. Malaria nets, childhood nutrition, primary schooling for girls, etc - there are great places for us to park money. How would you prioritize?
4. Why stop at precious metal toilet seats and houses? Why not redistribute everything owned by above-median wealth holders to below-median wealth holders and erase any gradient of material well-being?
Again, my concern is redistributionists tend to offer no limits on what they want to distribute. This is the same line of attack that incels use to advocate for redistribution of sexual access.