This is one of those "does not compute" statements that's sort of like dividing by zero. Money buys time, and time has value (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/timevalueofmoney.asp), which is measured in money.
It's why we try to incentivize long term investment, because without such an incentive, consumption now is better than consumption 5-10 years from now. We saw this happen before "long term" carve outs began proliferating in various states' tax codes.
Only when you look at it from the business owner perspective, who can simply buy more labor (time) to make more money.
For individuals, the only thing we have in this world is time, and it's finite. When it's all gone, it's all over for us. That means time is the most valuable thing possible to individuals.
If and when we choose we can sell some of that time for money. But money in not what we want, and it doesn't give us direct value. Time is what we all want, because sooner or later it runs out.
So the value of time very much depends on your stage in life and your finances and your goals. Spending your time working or doing things yourself can be a good trade if you have the time and need the money.
But this is a difference in degree, not kind. When the average individual buys something online, some individuals may choose to pay a little more for expedited shipping. It's the same principle. More abstractly, if I were to pose an individual looking to purchase Nike shoes 2 options: $100 to get the shoes today, or $1 to get the same shoes a year from now, the majority of individuals would choose the former, rather than the latter. Again, that's because of the time-value of money.
Now, you're correct that not everybody has the means to be able to buy time like this, but one can't conclude from this reality that time is "more valuable than" money.
> Time is what we all want, because sooner or later it runs out.
Yes, this is correct, and it reinforces the argument that time and money are just two currencies that are interchangeable. Money is just a proxy for value, and time is undeniably valuable. Not everybody has enough money to buy 70+ years of "free time", which is why the median person typically trades labor instead of money for future "free time" (retirement). In most countries that offer social security, that's the underlying mechanism: convert mass labor into money (taxes/contribution) which can then be converted into long term investment (sovereign wealth funds, SS trust funds), which is then converted to equally distributed "future free time" for everyone involved.
The “can’t work more hours” piece actually works towards your argument for finite time: why would you want to spend any of your outside-of-salary time doing stuff you don’t want to do that could pay someone less to do?
I understand the sentiment, but it literally isnt true. If it were, then noone would accept a job since they'd rather have the time instead. At the very least, there is more nuance to be observed here.
So, if we value air more than food, should we stop eating so we can breathe more?
Be warned though, you won't make the same batshit insane US salary here.
- Two employees at 50% salary and time are not equivalent to a single employee at 100% of salary. They're strictly worse if always run in series, all else being equal. Alice starts project X on Monday and Tuesday, and hands it off to Bob on Wednesday because it's urgent. There's some inefficiency there. Good management could help avoid it, but would be hard-pressed to prevent it in all cases. At best, it's one more thing to worry about.
- There are benefits outside of your salary that are more difficult to cut in half. Health plans, headcount taxes, etc.
I'm actually planning to cut my time in half, but keep the same pay. My story was discussed here on HN yesterday/today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27133376
Long story short: As the startup I'm working at doesn't have enough money to raise my hourly price, I'm now proposing to cut my hours in half, but keep the pay. So I'm working half the time, but keep the pay. It's summer now, so I'm happy to spend more time with friends and family.
And while we're talking about working less, another thing that's interesting I think is "4-day work weeks". There are remote companies who work 32h per week. I even made a list of the ones I know, but I'm sure there are more: https://remotehunt.com/remote-companies-with-4-day-work-week...
I wrote about this a while back: https://www.growwiser.com/2011/11/27/less-work-for-less-pay-...
The person you're responding to wants 100% of their current healthcare plan but only half the salary/expected hours, for example.
I would conjecture people don't always work for rational reasons -> Billionaires going to the office must piss off everyone like dude, you've won the game, go buy an island or something. So work is a useful habit. Useful in that it's a source of revenue for the government. Which is good and I agree with. But that makes unemployment a wholly irrational thing. Can our economic models even include unemployment as a variable? Surely government must hear those unemployment stats like a cat scratching a board.
Should people have to lie, cheat, beg so that they can become tax paying citizens?
Or imagine the extreme, where capital gains was taxed 100%. No one would invest, we would all be essentially hunter gatherers. There would be no capital appreciation allowed so you would not be able to invest in anything in hopes of making a profit.
Capital is how you build a better future
Which is it? Are corporations sitting on huge piles of cash or are they using the cash for stock buy backs?
US has relatively low savings that has gone down from about 10% in the 70s to a low of ~3% in mid 2000s to ~7% today (ignoring 2020 which shot up savings to 30+%). Compare that to China which has much higher growth which regularly saves ~36%
This will likely never happen unless we have a true existential/societal collapse so why entertain this thought?
If you accept the fact that 100% capital gains tax would result in no investment and a 0% capital gains tax would mean a lot of investment, surely there is a link between cap gains and someone's willingness to investment. Especially considering that capital holders tend to be sophisticated and highly sensitive to incentives.
So increasing the capital gains tax would lead to less investment.
So if someone prices out a project where they can expect 10% return but now you tell them they are only going to get 9%, then the risk may not be worth it.
You may not think like this, but I guarantee you the people in charge of allocating capital do think this way.
The point of the OP was that work is generally more valuable to society than capital gains, but is taxed higher so there is a mismatch between the worth and how we tax it. Saying if we tax capital gains 100% nobody invests, does not add anything to the discussion as the same argument applies to work.
Is it though? Capital build a better future. It's more forward thinking than just working.
For instance, I want my children to forgo working and build capital for their future by getting an education. The foregone income would pay back more in the long run.
Labor should be tax free or low and capital gain should be taxed high. Time is more valuable than money and taxes should reflect that.