It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
We can, and should discuss subjects without "tainting" them with general, over-discussed points when we can, especially if we want to keep HN curious and not turn into a echo-chamber.
At some point we need to stop wasting oxygen on obvious garbage.
If this domain received 1/1000th as much attention and electricity I would be with you. But until then we could do with far less waste.
Definitely not a compelling reason.
On a side note, Islam requires a 2.5% Zakat from money hoarded in your account, to be donated to charity, so there's your solution against hoarding :) We don't need the government to fake print money to prevent people from hoarding. Better that money go into charity to truly have a more equitable society, as opposed to the fake and useless proposals we keep seeing and pitting parties against each other.
Since inflation is a centralized operation and Zakat is decentralized, I would wage enforcement of inflation is much easier than enforcement of Zakat.
According to https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending_analys..., in FY2021 welfare (not including Social Security or Medicare, which are for retirees, but including Medicaid) was $2,418B across federal, state, and local, about 76.6%. Neither Zakat or US welfare spending includes discretionary charity.
Overall, US welfare spending seems to be on the same order as, albeit a little less than, a Zakat imposed on all US wealth. Also, I'm not sure if this welfare figure includes EITC, which is the logical way that additional cash benefits should be distributed (since it avoids welfare cliffs).
Bitcoin and ETH combined are over 1T USD, much more than the figure you quoted. That's 25B annually, imagine how many lives that can change. Not to mention gold, which is at 11T, so 250B annually. Insane money that can revamp the entire planet.
It's strictly superior to have a system based on Zakat than the insane income taxes that we have today.
> Neither Zakat or US welfare spending includes discretionary charity.
Zakat is the bare minimum required for Muslims to pay per year. Islam heavily encourages discretionary charity, called Sadaqah. Both approaches are complementary.
Of course. I did not want to get into such complications. This was more of a Fermi estimate to compare the amount a Zakat would raise in the US.
> It's strictly superior to have a system based on Zakat than the insane income taxes that we have today.
Maybe - remember that the US government pays for more besides bare welfare for the needy. Also the Islamic Zakat pays for more than welfare - also administration of Zakat (reasonable, but should be kept as low as possible) and Islamic missionary efforts (I don't think the US should redirect its welfare to "spreading liberty and democracy").
Even in Islam, there were more taxes than Zakat[1] - at the very least, a tax on harvests (corporate income or business reciepts tax) and a land tax - because Islamic governments also have other responsibilities besides charity. It would stand to reason that the federal and state governments would also continue to collect other taxes to support other government responsibilities. Also remember that inflation (certainly that intentionally engineered by the central bank) is effectively a wealth tax.
Which missionary efforts? If you mean paying Zakat to those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam that's something different.
> a tax on harvests
I mentioned this in my previous post. Livestock and produce have different Zakat calculations than the 2.5% of money held for a year.
If you're referring to Ushr, that's imposed on non-Muslim nations that taxed Muslims, so a tit-for-tat treatment, and it's not part of Islam per-se, but a socio-political decision.
> certainly that intentionally engineered by the central bank
Exactly what we don't want. We don't want a select few people to determine the tax rate for the entire population, affecting mainly people at the lower socioeconomic levels in society.