But that is a bad goal - we don't want to optimise economic flows, we want to optimise quality of life and standards of living.
The goal in this era of plenty shouldn't tend towards everyone teetering towards bankruptcy and wage slavery so that the politicians can talk about how the GDP is 2% higher. Everyone should have a reserve of real wealth in case they fall on hard times and the bigger the reserve the better as far as I'm concerned.
In my lifetime there have been a constant stream of inflationary collapses and a noticeable lack of problems caused by deflation. That theory is very popular with governments because it justifies the creation of money on a grand scale, but it has a certain lack of evidence. We've seen communism tried more often than deflation.
Heh it's a great idea for the powers collecting that spending though ;)
Taxing savings makes sense over income. Why tax someone producing, removing the tax encourages more work performed. We tax income because it is easier. We tax the estate in death because everything is collected and recorded. In Roman times they sent a tax collector who would go through the home to find valuable objects to pay taxes (tax on savings).
It is not as wierd as it sounds. It's impossible to implement in our society before death and taxing payrolls and self reported income is a lot easier.