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Couldn’t the government counter this effect with tax breaks or UBI? Like how a carbon tax along with tax offsets alleviates the burden on the poor due to an inc

Couldn’t the government counter this effect with tax breaks or UBI? Like how a carbon tax along with tax offsets alleviates the burden on the poor due to an increase in price of consumer items.

hirako2000 5y ago
The carbon tax, like vat, is a tax targeting the poor entirely. Tax offsets? Yea right.. The middle class pays nearly the entire tax income ball. Funding UBI or anything else will have to come from there. The tax offset will always be in the benefit of the upper brackets, because they can't fund such a pool of money to be redistributed anyway. Tax corporates? Oh no, that would stifle innovation and reinvestment. So, tax the middle class. But that won't work. They already spend 2/3 of their earned wealth in various taxes. Nobody is going to work to fund a UBI they can get anyway. I love the idea of UBI, but doing the math and figuring out how people think about whether producing value for others vs doing nothing should show that it just can't work.I would happily be won't and take the UBI cheque and do something productive while not really having to care about the adoption of whatever I'm producing
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The middle class pays nearly the entire tax income ball. Only because we choose to gift the capitalist class with preferential tax treatment. If we treated all income as income, the tax burden would shift from the middle class and higher-income working class to the capitalist class, where it rather self-evidently belongs
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  The Canadian carbon tax returns 90% of its revenue as a rebate. It works great -- my family gets $500 a year, more than what we pay. As far as the middle class paying for most of UBI, that's exactly what's supposed to happen. If you're an average taxpayer and UBI is $1000/month then your taxes should increase $1000/month.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    The 90% carbon tax rebate is interesting, because everybody thinks they are at least 10% better than average.

Couldn’t the government counter this effect with tax breaks or UBI? Like how a carbon tax along with tax offsets alleviates the burden on the poor due to an increase in price of consumer items.

hirako2000 5y ago

The carbon tax, like vat, is a tax targeting the poor entirely. Tax offsets? Yea right.. The middle class pays nearly the entire tax income ball. Funding UBI or anything else will have to come from there. The tax offset will always be in the benefit of the upper brackets, because they can't fund such a pool of money to be redistributed anyway. Tax corporates? Oh no, that would stifle innovation and reinvestment. So, tax the middle class. But that won't work. They already spend 2/3 of their earned wealth in various taxes. Nobody is going to work to fund a UBI they can get anyway. I love the idea of UBI, but doing the math and figuring out how people think about whether producing value for others vs doing nothing should show that it just can't work.I would happily be won't and take the UBI cheque and do something productive while not really having to care about the adoption of whatever I'm producing

dragonwriter 5y ago
> The middle class pays nearly the entire tax income ball. Only because we choose to gift the capitalist class with preferential tax treatment. If we treated all income as income, the tax burden would shift from the middle class and higher-income working class to the capitalist class, where it rather self-evidently belongs
bryanlarsen 5y ago
The Canadian carbon tax returns 90% of its revenue as a rebate. It works great -- my family gets $500 a year, more than what we pay. As far as the middle class paying for most of UBI, that's exactly what's supposed to happen. If you're an average taxpayer and UBI is $1000/month then your taxes should increase $1000/month.
- jl2718 5y ago
  The 90% carbon tax rebate is interesting, because everybody thinks they are at least 10% better than average.