Quote of the Day: Care about the Future? Reduce Capital Taxes

There are only three things you and I can do to make the future world a better place.

First, we can consume less, leaving more resources behind. Second, we can work harder, planting trees, building factories and writing poems that will live on after we’re gone. Third, we can innovate, advancing science and technology so that our children’s children’s children can make better use of the resources they inherit.

As it happens, there’s one key policy variable that drives all three of these things, and that’s the tax rate on capital income (which includes interest, dividends, corporate income and capital gains). Capital taxes are a disincentive to save, and when people don’t save they consume instead. Capital taxes are a disincentive to work and a disincentive to innovate.

This is not a plea for lowering taxes in general, and it’s not a plea for making the tax system either more or less progressive. (If you want to soak the rich, there are plenty of things to tax besides capital.) As a matter of fact, this isn’t even a plea for lowering taxes on capital. It’s simply an observation that if your goal is to leave a better world for our descendants, then your best bet is to support lower capital taxes.

This is from author and professor Steven Landsburg at the business.time.com.

Professor Landsburg is being coy or attempting to be apolitical at this. Let me improvise: ABOLISHI capital taxes, if your goal is to leave a better world for our descendants.

One more thing to make a better place, spread the truth or educate the public about the political economic inequality between the repressive state and the oppressed individuals.