>The amount of willingness I have to pay more represented as an integer is a very large negative one until capital gains, corporate profits, etc. are taxed at a

>The amount of willingness I have to pay more represented as an integer is a very large negative one until capital gains, corporate profits, etc. are taxed at a rate similar to the money I make. I agree. There needs to be reform in multiple dimensions. You also bring up the point about governments being inefficient. That needs fixing. I think it calls into question how much our elected representatives are choosing to look away from the problem. Adding to your point about how inefficient jobs are just welfare programs, the welfare programs themselves are more inefficient than what it seems. It takes way lesser money to push the people at the bottom 10th percent onto the next tier, say, the 20th or even the 30th percent in terms of income than what it takes to push the middle class to upper middle class. The leap is also more significant for someone who cannot afford 3 meals a day to become someone who'd able to afford that, compared to say a family of 4 that makes median income to be able to afford a vacation. To significantly improve the condition of the middle class, it requires way more resources than compared to those that are required to improve the conditions of the poor. If you channel the latter toward the former, almost all the resources go to waste. The problem seems to be that the middle class is a very broad spectrum. Anyone who isn't going through abject poverty or doesn't consider themselves rich is going to consider themselves middle class. This leads to the government pandering to this broad spectrum as part of their vote bank politics. The result is wasted resources and an illusion of efforts spent to bring up the middle class.