Those deduction in no way change the basics of income (and sales) tax, which is on revenue, not profit. A person that has a good wage will pay a significant amount in tax even if at the end of a year they have no more wealth than before it; i.e. no profit. And while of course there _exist_ places that don't work this way or don't tax real estate that doesn't diminish the fact that there exist places that _do_ work this way - which demonstrates the fact that there's no broad agreement that taxation must be limited to and occur after profits. Norwegian self-proclaimed entrepreneurs aren't unique in their "victimhood", which seems to be the angle of the original article.

Consider a though experiment: In a fast-growing world, taxation limited to profits when honestly applied and without exploitable loopholes (not an obviously satisfied precondition) might be able to cover costs of shared concerns, i.e. government's primary business. But imagine for a moment that that growth were to significantly slow or even stop - without profits, taxation could fall to a trickle (limited to those niches that have zero-sum profits yet lack the ability to amortize over loss making periods and lack the ability to strike a deal to fiscally merge with a loss-making business for tax purposes). Clearly, that's not sustainable. I think it's hard to imagine that the the only "just" way to tax is one that is fundamentally dependent on permanent significant growth, even if we've been lucky enough to live in such a world for quite a while, at least on paper. Given how some costs (e.g. depletion of natural resources and pollution) aren't on the fiscal books, and that from an idealistic free market stance one might prefer to include those costs on the books, the true global growth is surely already lower than it looks on paper, even if it's still hopefully positive.

Yes, well credit and other mechanisms keep the ledger balanced. Do you think you're the first person who thought of that criticism or that none of the economics professionals though to address it? What arrogance.

in many places you can claim the last few years worth of losses as offset on your profits before taxes.

The unpolluted definition of socialism is about public (e.g. social) ownership of the means of production. Technically, it’s not mutually exclusive of market systems, simply that participants are socially owned in some form. To be more specific about what I said, the roots of socialism called for the “seizing of the means of production” if governments and capital would not voluntarily convert to some form of social ownership

Communism differs in that it takes this a step further advocating not only for social ownership but also the dissolution of of all private property ownership and its corresponding economic role, and distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need.

For the record, I think communism is a dead end as it flys in the face of human nature. Market socialism might have legs though.

I was being a bit tongue in cheek but taxes aren’t inherently socialism. Taxation has been levied under multiple periods of economic philosophy like in feudal Europe or during the age of mercantilism for example. Seems to be a hallmark of highly organized civilizations

Something like an employee owned co-op is a valid socialist concept, for example. Social doesn’t automatically mean government.

Though communists like Marx believed in revolutionary uprising and those tend to be inherently violent. It’s a shame that the only exposure people have to any form of socialist ideas is via Marx.