Your apples are ripe. It is time to harvest them. What is the best way to harvest those apples . Do you pick them from the tree or do you chop down the tree . Apples are income. The trees are capital. The reason we want a socalled, consumptionbased tax because we dont want to mistreat capital. But to understand why it is so foolish, dont think about marxism, socialism, free market theories think about it this way, if you chop down the tree or more accurately what the current tax system does if you harvest apples by sawing off branches of the tree, what does that do for your longrun prosperity, your longrun income . You obviously will have fewer apples next year. It doesnt make sense to quadruple and triple tax capital. On this issue marxists and socialists are right they agree with sensible economist. You need capital for long run growth. We should have a tax system treats all income equally. No longer tax income saved and invested. You want neutrality in getting rid of all the loophol