I want to see you attempt to do the math to show that.
Here's my rough math: Mean income is about $60k. If we take the extra simple option, we can increase all tax brackets by 20% and give everyone a $12k credit, and it trivially balances. The median income increases, the low end of income drastically increases, and higher incomes drop.
Such an outcome is very far from total socialization. The effective tax rate of anyone below $60k income drops, and the max marginal rate is a not-crazy 57%.
But also we can make the tax increase progressive as well. And we can include capital gains as income and lower the percents. And we can cut a good chunk of existing welfare which decreases the tax burden. This isn't a suggestion for an optimal method, it's a basic sanity check.
You are also casually applying a 20% hike, which for many people is their entire budget after taxes and housing. My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.
12k seems an absurdity low number to provide universal shelter, Healthcare, food, security, and entertainment. My newspapers are full of stories on how 100k/yr isn't a living wage in California
There’s nothing magical about exceeding a 50% marginal tax rate. (Hitting 100%, sure, that would be bad.)
There’s definitely a psychological threshold there for most people. I ran an informal survey a few years back about what tax rates people would consider fair, and there was a very strong clustering at 50%.
I have a hard time understanding it myself. The whole point of taxation is redistribution, so why would you care whether you’re “winning” versus the marginal tax rate?
It's close enough, that's for 240 million people. If I use Gross National Income I get a much higher number.
I'm not worried about children right this second.
> You are also casually applying a 20% hike, which for many people is their entire budget after taxes and housing.
Another 20%, minus 12 thousand dollars. That makes a big difference.
The median worker would pay significantly less than before.
And I already said progressive would be better. But a flat tax like that is very simple and would not be the end of the world.
> My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.
Are you taking the minus 12k into account? If so it sounds like you're making a lot more than the people you just described that can't find reasonable housing. You'll be fine.
> 12k seems an absurdity low number to provide universal shelter, Healthcare, food, security, and entertainment. My newspapers are full of stories on how 100k/yr isn't a living wage in California
The nice thing about having a guaranteed income is that you actually can move without massive risk.
Or you can adjust it based on location, idk, I'm going with the simple version first. If it only helps most people then that's enough to show the idea has merit. Nitpicking won't work!
