Finance/econonomics question: Can we all (mostly) live on dividends?

[El_Machinae]

Wealth taxes force you to produce to stay afloat. I don't like that. Income taxes merely force you to share the success your society helped you achieve.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wealth taxes force you to produce to stay afloat. I don't like that. Income taxes merely force you to share the success your society helped you achieve.

It takes money to make money...so if you have money all you need to do is use it to make enough to cover the taxes. And no, 20 or 30% is not an appropriate rate.

 

[Narz]

How expandable is this? Can a clear majority of citizens do this?

I'm asking if it's scalable, if only in theory.

The majority of humans will have to create some kind of value until we find some other non-human source to create the value for us.

At present almost every activity (probably every) must either be performed by or supervised by humans. Even bots must be supervised.

A world totally controlled by non-humans is a little scary to be honest. We'd be like lifestock. Not having to do anything but lacking any control also.

Whatever output we create, we can distribute however we can. If we make a system in which we have enough automation that peoples needs can be met without labor, and we choose to finance it with accumulated financial assets, then that's how we do it.

We'd have to have either perfect AI (and totally selfless AI that loved us like a debutante loves her ugly little purse dog) or some alien race controlling everything for us to live without labor.

And how do you define labor? Even filling out forms to state our preferences (so the bots or aliens know which type of lettuce to grow for us) could be considered labor, no?

Also, some people enjoy work & would continue to do it forever regardless of what kind of society we lived in. The people who continued to work & tweak the AI or aliens or whatever would have a HUGE advantage over everyone else & could easily force some of them back to work (under them if they so chose) if they wanted to.

I think a laborless society is both an impossibility & would be a huge nightmare if it actually happened. People are complacent enough as is.

 

[El_Machinae]

It takes money to make money...so if you have money all you need to do is use it to make enough to cover the taxes. And no, 20 or 30% is not an appropriate rate.

You didn't say money earlier, you'd said wealth. I'd assumed you'd meant the market value of your assets, where you'd need to need earning new income in order to stay afloat. The problem with wealth taxes is that they discourage the making of nice things that don't generate returns. "Oh, your neighbours manicured their lawns, your property values have now gone up. Pay more."

We already tax money itself, in nations that have a target inflation rate.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The wealth gap is a major contributor to misery around the world. I think that $100 million in assets is sufficient for anyone. I'd like to discourage accumulations over that. A high tax rate would help do that.