You could also take this further and finance a large UBI by printing money, and this would cause (more) inflation, but if you model it out it ends up doing the same sort of transfer from richer people to poorer people as progressive tax financing (people with more money are “taxed” more by inflation).
Does this really hold? I’d expect inflation to cost richer people more purchasing power on an absolute scale (because they have more cash to devalue), but less as a percentage of same (because that cash is a smaller proportion of their net worth).
You’re right, and I hadn’t thought of that. I think you’d still get the overall effect of a real transfer from richer to poorer people, but the way the tax falls on specific people would be different based on how much money they save and whether they save it in the form of dollars, plus whether they get paid in dollars.
You could also take this further and finance a large UBI by printing money, and this would cause (more) inflation, but if you model it out it ends up doing the same sort of transfer from richer people to poorer people as progressive tax financing (people with more money are “taxed” more by inflation).
Does this really hold? I’d expect inflation to cost richer people more purchasing power on an absolute scale (because they have more cash to devalue), but less as a percentage of same (because that cash is a smaller proportion of their net worth).
You’re right, and I hadn’t thought of that. I think you’d still get the overall effect of a real transfer from richer to poorer people, but the way the tax falls on specific people would be different based on how much money they save and whether they save it in the form of dollars, plus whether they get paid in dollars.