> Except you had

No, you benefited from sitting on that productive asset. Getting a free stock option is still a meaningful benefit even if you never case it in.

Further assuming the asset kept up with inflation you’re better off after the sale vs holding cash for that same period.

> by taking on new debt to buy food

The money you got from that loan is an asset you’re not investing in that hypothetical. As to “spend all of your assets and have nothing left” yes I mentioned going broke was an option repeating what I already said isn’t an argument here.

> Suppose you …

Ignoring the possibility to just spend more today and also spend the same amount in 10 years is disingenuous here. Especially as assuming consistent rules you also benefit 10 years from now, so you get to spend more today and also spend more in 10 years.

Really free money lets you spend more, there’s no way around that. Further with the US tax code nothing says investments need to be in the US or capital gains ever get taxed this often is a pure dead loss for US taxpayer.

> No, you benefited from sitting on that productive asset. Getting a free stock option is still a meaningful benefit even if you never case it in.

If you buy a ton of steel with no intention of ever doing anything other than selling it for the same value as you paid for it in a while, you haven't benefited from it and have in fact cost yourself value in opportunity cost because other investments return more than that.

If you get a free stock option and then there is a 30% chance it turns out to be worth something, the government benefits from the same 30% chance that you'll get money from it which will then be taxable income.

> The money you got from that loan is an asset you’re not investing in that hypothetical.

Loan principal doesn't create net assets. You get new money and new debt at the same time and they cancel.

> As to “spend all of your assets and have nothing left” yes I mentioned going broke was an option repeating what I already said isn’t an argument here.

I took your implication to be that it was something bad and so nobody would purposely do that. But people purposely do it all the time. They have some money and then choose to spend all of it instead of investing any of it.

> Ignoring the possibility to just spend more today and also spend the same amount in 10 years is disingenuous here.

Even that scenario still requires the amount of investment to increase. What you'd be doing is spending some but not all of the taxes deferred on the amount you initially invested, e.g. instead of spending $33 and investing $33 you invest $37 and spend $42, and you had ~$12 extra because of the taxes deferred on the $37. But now you're investing $37 instead of $33, and that's the minimum you could invest to get the same after-tax amount in ten years because now you haven't paid the taxes yet.

Doing that is also more disfavored because you get better returns from diverting more money to investment but the benefits of immediate spending haven't increased.