Progressive proposal for wealth taxes--why not just do this?

[Hellestal]

@iamthewalrus_3

Real estate provides “income” in the form of imputed rent, but lots of other untaxed wealth also provides a flow of services, but is untaxed.

I specified paper wealth.

@iamthewalrus_3

If you own fine art, you get the benefit of looking at it whenever you like, something that poorer museum-goers pay lots of money to do. But we don’t tax art.

If you own a yacht, you can go sail whenever you want. Poorer people have to rent boats. But we don’t tax boats.

We could. And it wouldn’t be nearly as bad an idea as taxing paper wealth.

@iamthewalrus_3

Property was taxed because that’s where the money was .

No.

Property was taxed because that’s where the resources were.

This is a completely different thing. This is not “argument”. This is not theory but factual observation.

The yardstick that we use to measure a thing is not the same as what is being measured.

It is absolutely necessary to distinguish between money as the yardstick (unit of account) compared to money, or financial securities, as paper wealth (store of value), compared to the actual flow of services that exist. I’ve already linked to a somewhat longer version of this explanation.

I can continue to flesh this out, but none of this is “argument”. It is pure observation. And it is absolutely necessary to have this foundation of observation before discussing taxation.