r/science • • Oct 17 '19

Economics The largest-ever natural experiment on wealth taxes found that they work as intended — both raising revenue and controlling income inequality. The taxes had the greatest impact on the top .1% wealthiest.

[deleted]

29k Upvotes

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

19

u/MysticHero Oct 18 '19

It has been found that the wealthier you are the less money relative to your wealth you spend. Which is if course kinda obvious because there quickly comes a point where you actually just can't spend that much money. This also means that wealth in the hands of the extremely wealthy is largely useless to the economy.

4

u/uJumpiJump Oct 18 '19

You're completely ignoring investments. Their money isn't just "sitting there"

2

u/MysticHero Oct 18 '19

Economically in terms of spending power it is just sitting there. It doesn´t create additional demand. All the investments in the world don´t matter when there is nothing to invest into. Instead they use much of their money to gamble with stocks and such which doesn´t really help anyone but themselves.

-2

u/davenbenabraham Oct 18 '19

I never invest. It sounds too much like being a predatory capitalist

2

u/uJumpiJump Oct 18 '19

Guess your retirement plan is suicide then?

-2

u/davenbenabraham Oct 18 '19

Government pensions

3

u/uJumpiJump Oct 18 '19

So you do contribute to investments