> Is that assuming the tax money is going into the void?
It assumes that it's going somewhere else, which, if it wasn't, would cause it to have no purpose or effect.
> shouldn't someone be getting the money and potentially using it to buy Apple stock?
Going from "predominantly what happens" to "it's theoretically possible occasionally" is a question of magnitude rather than direction.
> Most of them may waste it on silly things like food and rent, but some might end up with a surplus and become investors.
Or their spending it on food and rent results in an increase in rents, even for the people who didn't get any, which rents go in part to foreign investors who remove it from the jurisdiction, and then domestic people have even less to invest than before.
Compare this to the thing where you e.g. relax zoning rules to reduce housing scarcity so that rents come down and then domestic people have that money to invest.
> Same effect if say the income tax is lowered to make the wealth tax revenue-neutral.
Which is to say, same problem -- you've now created a preference for spending rather than saving/investing while increasing your reliance on the taxation of saving/investing.
> It's hard to for me to imagine a way to spend taxes that doesn't help someone. Even if the money is used on war—a net destruction of value and lives—there are some people selling missiles better off a result.
Things have both opportunity costs and externalities. If you take a billion dollars from a company building grid battery storage whose investors would will the profits to a malaria charity then the grid burns more fossil fuels, consumers pay more for electricity, more people get malaria, the pointless war kills innocent people, those populations get pissed off and commit acts of terrorism, and the defense contractor gets a billion dollars (this is supposed to be the benefit) which it uses to bribe the government to increase the amount of bombings. This is obviously a massive overall net loss and would be better off not happening notwithstanding that the defense contractor likes it.
> Going from "predominantly what happens" to "it's theoretically possible occasionally" is a question of magnitude rather than direction.
Okay, fair enough. I took "without adding any new buyers" literally but yes, I can imagine this creating some downward pressure on stock prices.
> Or their spending it on food and rent results in an increase in rents, even for the people who didn't get any, which rents go in part to foreign investors who remove it from the jurisdiction, and then domestic people have even less to invest than before. ... Compare this to the thing where you e.g. relax zoning rules to reduce housing scarcity so that rents come down and then domestic people have that money to invest.
Are these mutually exclusive? I concede that people being unable to afford rent limits rent to some extent, but it's not my preferred price control. Giving them more money that they could use on rent might make it more clear we need to make other changes, and I can live with that.
> you've now created a preference for spending rather than saving/investing while increasing your reliance on the taxation of saving/investing.
Yes. Is that worse than the status quo? There's a lot of spending now that should be happening and is not—people literally dying from inability to afford medical treatment. You'll probably say—just as with the rent example—that people being more able to pay will cause medical costs to increase further, and I agree that should be addressed, but again I think people being flat-out unable to afford it is not the best way to control medical spending.
> [...pointless wars are a massive overall net loss...]
I think you understand this, but just to be clear in case anyone was wondering: I also hate pointless wars, just was making the point that even in the stupidest use of the tax money I can imagine there's still someone getting money to buy Apple stock, even though as a whole we're worse off.