More often than not, such claims are often connected with not seeing hidden privilege as a competitive advantage. Of all of my successful friends, only one come from a socioeconomic environment that isn't middle class or above.

The ability to climb on the socioeconomic ladder is much harder for those without means and connections - these means and connections are almost always directly correlated to your family.

As a personal anecdote, all of my kids friends have parents which are able to support them financially and are able to work 40-hour weeks. They are all academics and their kids get the benefit from having the language and mindset of academics from an early age.

At the same time, my cousin is a couple of steps down on the same ladder. Her kids friends parents are working part time, often several jobs, and still have a hard time making ends meet.

My kids are according to studies (on phone so won't be able to reference - an easy Google away) more likely to achieve economic success, go to college and have a better chance ending up one step up on the ladder. Her kids are more likely to end up in crime, less likely to go to college, more likely to stay in the same socioeconomic class.

I'm pretty sure my work gives me more slack and ability to be able to be lazy than the part time factory worker. "Free money" would probably create more equality and a better chance for all kids. Your statement is shortsighted.

No one likes paying any taxes, but at least income tax aligns the motivations of the individual with those of the government. If you make more money, you prosper, and so the government -- which ostensibly creates a society that helps you to prosper.

Technically speaking, I guess maybe over the course of the rise and fall of a society what you're saying is true, but I don't think the government would want to wait that long to see some tax revenue.

I'm too lazy to wash my clothes and dishes so I have robotic washing boxes do it for me.

The protestant work ethic has no place in the 21st century, so lets drop it.

It is however less visible. Income tax is at least upfront about how much is taken whereas tax on spending is spread out and often invisible unless you're actively thinking about it.

Sure you can make people happier about taxation by making it less visible but I'm not sure that's a good argument for it.

If there’s a 10% sales tax, then 9.0909...% of your wealth will go to it, no matter how much you make, invest, save.

This is a spherical cow in a vaccum style argument. If you ignore estates and also ignore property and other investments that don't pay sales tax then yes, everyone pays the same sales tax. But the rich will disproportionally own investments and properties that will then be passed on to their heirs. Over any period and particarly over a few generations because of compounding this means taxing spending is indeed very regressive.

I still really don’t understand the argument, and I still sort of suspect that it’s fallacious, though I’d enjoy being proven wrong.

It seems to me that given a sales tax, a flat and identical percentage of every individual’s spending will go to the sales tax. If a person is “rich” but it doesn’t translate into spending or their estate, then what does that mean?

Investing isn't just neutral storing of value. Owning capital confers a benefit to its owner while they own it. The line between investment and spending is arguably quite blurry, so if you tax just "consumer spending" you hit those who live paycheck to paycheck much harder relative to the benefit they derive from their money.

> Compounding means that since you only pay sales tax at consumption rich people will pay much less as they will invest before the tax and have gains on all that pre-tax money.

doesn't really make much sense. Of course investments are pre-sales tax. The sales tax applies after the investments are liquidated to cash and the cash is used to purchase stuff.

Let's say our hypothetical person is "rich", but it doesn't translate into extra consumption spending, then what's the point of being rich? It's not like he's getting anything out of it.

You do have a point about estate taxes not affecting the majority of people, but estate taxes do affect estates with value greater than $5MM, and I'm working with the assumption that you and I are discussing "rich" people. The marginal estate tax in the U.S. ranges from 18% to 40%, which is higher than any sales tax.

Say you have 100$ and you're rich. You invest that in the markets, compound for 40 years and end up with 4500$. You then get to pay sales tax on that after you've gotten your capital out multiple times over. If you're poor though you spend all the 100$ and pay tax right at the beginning, so you don't get to benefit from the compounding of your earnings because you have to use the money right away and thus have to pay the sales tax right away. Compounding is extremely important over even a single lifetime and rich people get to use it over generations.

>Let's say our hypothetical person is "rich", but it doesn't translate into extra consumption spending, then what's the point of being rich? It's not like he's getting anything out of it.

People put a very high value on aquiring wealth to pass on to their heirs. And even without that if what you buy is property there is no sales tax and you get to use that property throughout your life. If what you buy is investments you get to defer consumption till later and thus get much higher incomes through capital gains and thus pay all your sales taxes from investment gains of the pre-tax money you don't need to spend on day to day spending.

>You do have a point about estate taxes not affecting the majority of people, but estate taxes do affect estates with value greater than $5MM, and I'm working with the assumption that you and I are discussing "rich" people. The marginal estate tax in the U.S. ranges from 18% to 40%, which is higher than any sales tax.

The estimate from Wikipedia is that estate taxes apply to 0.2% of estates. That's what I mean by estate taxes being completely irrelevant for this discussion. The 0.2% of cases where your argument apply get to use all sorts of other tricks to avoid taxation, this is just about the difference between the people living paycheck to paycheck, the ones that get to put a little away and the affluent middle class. For all those 99,8% of the population estate taxes are irrelevant and sales taxes are extremely regressive.

Did you lose track of the topic of conversation? It looks like you're just detailing the ways that it's better to be rich than poor.

I was responding to ChrisSD's specific point many comments ago that: "Taxing spending tends to be regressive." To the contrary, it looks like it's neither regressive nor progressive. (I don't know the word for that. "Neutral", maybe?)

But lets classify that investment gain as income as well and ignore that bit. Do you actually have any doubt that poor people spend a higher percentage of their yearly income on things where sales tax applies? That they buy less properties, invest less and then pass on less of a percentage of their lifetime earnings to their children?

Why do you think that working hard will make you rich? For the vast majority of people, this isn't the case at all.

Let's not revere the rich. Most of them acquired their wealth through a mixture of luck, unethical behaviour, and corruption.

I started off poor. I worked very hard. I'm much richer now as a result of it. Nobody will ever take that away from me.

The vast majority of the rich people I know started out poor. I believe this is the case for the majority of the wealthy in the western world too.

I've seen rich people with baby soft hands that never worked hard. And I've seen dirt poor people with a broken body because of all the work. It's disgusting how you invoke fairness and justice.