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Re:The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income by nickff on Thursday December 05, 2013 @03:54PM (#6857145)
I was not talking about the disincentive effects of taxing income, (though I do believe they exist,) my reasoning was simpler, in that the rich cannot invest the money that the government took away from them.

This is why I made the comparison between what happens with the money if you have a progressive tax vs. flat tax.

Re:The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income by bencpeters on Friday December 06, 2013 @12:26AM (#6859554)
But you're assuming here that "the rich" investing money is creating more growth (and you stated earlier, helping poor people more) than the government would.

I think that's a difficult statement to back up in the best of times, although it's certainly a difficult thing to prove either way (moving this question beyond the level of anecdotes is really hard). However, when we've got a persistent demand shortage like we have right now, it's much less of a tricky question because of the multiplier effects of consumer spending.