Tag Archives: wealth tax

(Photo via Flickr) Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action I realized after I posted it last week that it was my 200th links, which is a nice occasion to acknowledge and thank my colleague Cara Vu, who, despite being one of the busiest people I know, edits them and saves me from self-humiliation on a weekly basis. She catches between 8 and 200 mistakes in every one.And also thanks for reading. I really do appreciate the occasional emails, twitter shout outs, and...

A wealth tax is not needed to "pay for" anything, since the US funds itself directly using currency issuance. That is, the US is a currency issuer rather than a user of currency.  The purpose of taxation is to: control for inflation  discourage taxed behavior  address social needs A wealth tax would address 2 and 3. Regarding 2, the negative behavior being discouraged is rent-seeking and a wealth tax would serve to preempt rent extraction. Regarding 3,  the social need being addressed...