You could probably increase it to 4.5% and have the same effect. People making above median are still working class. That also doesn’t take into account cost of living in different areas
I’m pro jacking it way the fuck up as we move through income tiers. We could just have such nice things if we raised taxes.
Ideally I’d like to see federal incentives tied to states tying their minimum wage to local COL, and significantly higher progressively-increasing taxes on everyone from the third quintile up.
Then just change all welfare that isn’t a training/education program to straight cash and we are cooking with gas.
I’d say fourth quintile but I’m personally biased and I do agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. It’s wild to me that we have a flat constant as the minimum wage and not a formula that takes into consideration your district’s cost of living. Ideally we’d have:
Min Wage for District A = Federal Constant + k*Cost of Living in A
It would need to be coupled with some sort of gerrymandering prevention so that districts were more representative of state areas. You’d need large cities to be their own district in this scheme.
It’s the best way I can think of defining an area for CoL without screwing someone over. On the state level it would be heavily skewed still. Maybe counties?
I think that a 4% hit would be a lot for people making significantly less money.
The utility of each dollar drops the more you have. $1000 would be a massive amount of money to someone making minimum wage. $10000 in a single check might seem like a life changing amount of money for some people. At higher levels of wealth and income, those values would be far less significant. If you were to raise or reduce the salary of a typical Bay Area software developer by $1000, for instance, they probably wouldn’t even notice. And they’re not making $1M per year, either.
The reason we have things like a progressive income is that we can tax someone making $1M per year an extra $40k - as much or more than many individuals make - and it’s not going to seriously affect their spending or saving habits. If we tax someone making $50k an extra $2k, they would feel it.
Americans are not under taxed, our federal government has plenty of money for whatever social programs it might want to provide. Our money is spent instead on a bloated military and pointless pet projects. How many health insurance plans could you buy for the price of one submarine or drone?
Healthcare is privately bought and one of the things I’d like to shift to taxes.
It’s so much worse than just paying more than other countries - we leave something like 30% total comp on the table. Most people would literally make more money paying health care with taxes.
I’m not talking about salary. I’m talking about corporate profits. If you can’t envision that then I feel sorry for you. We already have 501c hospitals.
Imagine if they expanded the tax to everyone making over median income!
A man can dream.
You could probably increase it to 4.5% and have the same effect. People making above median are still working class. That also doesn’t take into account cost of living in different areas
I’m pro jacking it way the fuck up as we move through income tiers. We could just have such nice things if we raised taxes.
Ideally I’d like to see federal incentives tied to states tying their minimum wage to local COL, and significantly higher progressively-increasing taxes on everyone from the third quintile up.
Then just change all welfare that isn’t a training/education program to straight cash and we are cooking with gas.
I’d say fourth quintile but I’m personally biased and I do agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. It’s wild to me that we have a flat constant as the minimum wage and not a formula that takes into consideration your district’s cost of living. Ideally we’d have:
Min Wage for District A = Federal Constant + k*Cost of Living in A
It would need to be coupled with some sort of gerrymandering prevention so that districts were more representative of state areas. You’d need large cities to be their own district in this scheme.
I don’t think voting districts and localized COL need to be tied together, but I’d sell a kidney to fix the gerrymandering shit so yeah, still agreed.
It’s the best way I can think of defining an area for CoL without screwing someone over. On the state level it would be heavily skewed still. Maybe counties?
County is def how I would do it. They’re more localized and self-governing and can more quickly make adjustments as needed.
I think that a 4% hit would be a lot for people making significantly less money.
The utility of each dollar drops the more you have. $1000 would be a massive amount of money to someone making minimum wage. $10000 in a single check might seem like a life changing amount of money for some people. At higher levels of wealth and income, those values would be far less significant. If you were to raise or reduce the salary of a typical Bay Area software developer by $1000, for instance, they probably wouldn’t even notice. And they’re not making $1M per year, either.
The reason we have things like a progressive income is that we can tax someone making $1M per year an extra $40k - as much or more than many individuals make - and it’s not going to seriously affect their spending or saving habits. If we tax someone making $50k an extra $2k, they would feel it.
I’m aware, but Americans are also dramatically under-taxed, and as a result most of our support structures are dramatically underfunded.
50k is below the third quintile so wouldn’t really be touched. Third quintiles starts at 61k.
Americans are not under taxed, our federal government has plenty of money for whatever social programs it might want to provide. Our money is spent instead on a bloated military and pointless pet projects. How many health insurance plans could you buy for the price of one submarine or drone?
We are very under-taxed as well as wasting money at most levels of government.
We have enough to pay for all the social programs you could ever want, how is that “under taxed”?
No we don’t.
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Healthcare is privately bought and one of the things I’d like to shift to taxes.
It’s so much worse than just paying more than other countries - we leave something like 30% total comp on the table. Most people would literally make more money paying health care with taxes.
Take it a step further and outlaw profiting off the sick and the problem takes care of itself.
The profit motive is the enemy of the people. It’s institutionalized greed and disgusting behavior that we reward.
“profiting off the sick” doesn’t make any sense. So we should ban doctors because they get paid? No medical device companies should exist?
Not sure I can support that concept.
I’m not talking about salary. I’m talking about corporate profits. If you can’t envision that then I feel sorry for you. We already have 501c hospitals.
What do you mean by “corporate profits?” Who is allowed to profit vs not?
Note that we already pay 5% tax on income. This is effectively a second bracket for higher income