News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Self-Funding Harberger Taxes. Parent comment

Re:Self-Funding Harberger Taxes by notahacker on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @04:03PM (#42322026)
That's the sort of thing that sounds very unappealing to the average voter. "I have to pay property tax on substantially more than it's worth and keep raising it on a regular basis, otherwise some property speculator might make me homeless" is much easier to understand than notional efficiency benefits.

Same goes for the Harberger tax on copyright, which is basically "only people and corporations who are already rich deserve to extract market value from their creations"

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Funding Harberger Taxes by salynchnew on Thursday December 05, 2024 @12:51AM (#42325354)
It really reads like a fun thought experiment which in practice is really impractical for real-world use cases.

"I can make your life miserable and I have enough money to do so" is something that can happen in the real world and that the average person doesn't want to happen. Tthe Statute of Anne was created b/c previously printers could essentially publish any work that wasn't already in publication by another house... which is in some ways closer to a Harberger tax situation, but was widely hated by everyone who wasn't one of the publishers who monopolized access to the printing presses.

[ Parent | on HN ]