Re:Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in...
by crgwbr on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @07:48PM
(#19101883)
From a purely theoretical standpoint, I’m terribly curious what would happen if we incentivized spending like that. I’m sure it’d be terrible in the long run, but it’d also have definite macroeconomic stimulus effects.
Re:Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in...
by angus-prune on Thursday February 07, 2019 @08:41AM
(#19105101)
There is a short scifi story from the 50s called the Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl which deals with this in a very silly way.
It's available through archive.org https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-04/Galaxy_195...
As you indicated above, so much of our personal expenses are "discretionary" in the sense that we could increase or lower them by choice. That's exactly the difference between business investment spending (required to produce the revenue that's taxed) vs. personal income/spending, which is based strongly on preferences. Hard to justify taxing frugal individuals more than lavish spenders just because they save a larger percentage of their income...