https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1qfrxw9/the_rich_do_not_fund_our_public_services_we_do/

https://xcancel.com/jasonhickel/status/2012145902589268111?s=46

We need a better, more ambitious message when it comes to taxation. The rich do not fund our public services. We do. My latest for New Internationalist.

"Now, once we understand that the main fiscal purpose of taxation is not to fund public services but to reduce excess demand, we can have a clear view of who should be taxed: the rich.

The problem with the rich is that they demand too much of our productive capacities. Their money translates into massive purchasing power (and also enables them to increase their investments and ownership of production). So we are then required to use our labour and resources to produce things like mansions, private jets, sports cars, estates, luxury goods and so on. This facilitates elite consumption and accumulation but it does not benefit society – it is wasteful, ecologically destructive, and it should be curtailed so that we can undertake production that does benefit society.

Taxation can be used to help achieve this in two ways: a) tax income and wealth over a certain threshold, and b) tax damaging and unnecessary goods.

Ultimately, we do not need to tax wage labour at all.

If a key purpose of taxation is to reduce excess demand and consumption, then it is reasonable to implement a very simple and straightforward tax rule. All income below a certain minimum threshold (the level needed to acquire goods and services necessary to live a good life) should be taxed at zero per cent, and all income above a certain maximum threshold (a level beyond which additional consumption is clearly unnecessary and destructive) should be taxed at 100 per cent.

The response from some on the right might be that under such a tax system the working classes would be contributing nothing whereas the rich would be contributing everything. But remember, taxation does not fund public services. The rich are not ‘contributing’ at all. Rather, we are preventing them from using too much of our productive capacity so that we can use it ourselves, for other purposes. So who is contributing? We are, in the form of our labour."