This is a VERY well known and well defined mechanism. It’s called a luxury tax and you tax luxuries at a higher rate. Yachts, expensive cars, expensive bottles of wine, expensive artwork, etc...

Sure but that seems quite different from a tax on consumption generally? The idea was that the guy spending $1M/yr should pay progressively more than the guy spending $100k/yr. Are you just assuming that rich people compulsively buy certain products?

Didn't we already destroy the US boat and plane industries this way in the 80s/90s, without generating significant tax revenue? This WaPo article from 1993 seems to mirror my recollection:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/h...

Not saying that luxury taxes are bad, but luxuries tend to be optional and rich people can just not buy them. Or buy them abroad. I know people with 8 and 9 figure net worths and they have the same phones I do and drink (mostly) the same wine I do. Their houses are nice, but real estate taxes are already massively progressive given that they buy expensive homes in the first place.

If you really want to soak the rich you need to tax things like "luxury vacations abroad" - which has jurisdictional issues and also screws all us poor schmucks who have to save up for our travel.

I'm not seeing how this is easy.

Read the Bill Gates post in full. It is utterly simple. You have a consumption tax AND an estate tax.

You don’t want to overly tax the creation of new wealth. I think history has shown that to be counterproductive. It slows innovation down drastically since it disincentivizes innovation and investment and therefore the pie as a whole doesn’t grow as fast. See the growth in the US and China vs Europe.

In NY if you buy clothing items less than $100, they are tax free. If you buy 3 items of $50 each on the same ticket, you pay no tax. Using the same technology (already deployed in tons of stores), you could add rules per ranges and at least big companies will have to comply. i.e. items more than $1k get sales tax of 5%, items more than $10k get sales tax of %10, etc

Technically that would be either a luxury or high value item tax as opposed to a consumption tax because of the itemization of it.

If it was applied across the board to everything a high value item tax would be an absolutely terrible component to competitiveness however given that large capital outlays are how first world industry stays competitive and produces large real utility returns on investment. It would encourage more 'sweatshop' style production instead of a mechanized line let alone automated production lines.

What is preventing them from selling a $99 suit with 36 monthly $99 'Wearing licenses' or other such shenanigans?

Wouldn’t it work just like a standard VAT? That’s what the rest of the world do, it’s a solved problem and doesn’t imply anything about cash.

How is a VAT progressive?