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Lots of poor people have more than zero income. If you live in $1000 a month, 10% of that is $100. $100 can make an enormous difference if you have no savings.
by dale_glass 4y ago
Lots of poor people have more than zero income. If you live in $1000 a month, 10% of that is $100. $100 can make an enormous difference if you have no savings. Eg, easily the difference between being able to drive/take the train to work or not.
Meanwhile if you earn $1M/month, then it's absolutely trivial to live in a way that $100K more or less makes no practical difference.
Or if you do odd jobs and managed to scrounge up $100, you now have to do the paperwork to pay the $10 you owe, which seems like an odd thing for a government to bother with taking care of and enforcing.
Now here comes the logical thought of "what if we set a minimum", and you have the beginnings of tax brackets.
- dahfizz 4y agoThe easy solution is a single, general deduction. Everyone's first $25k or so is tax free. Everyone pays 10% on every subsequent dollar. Mathematically, this is equivalent to a small UBI.
- dale_glass 4y agoWhy? If you earn $1M/month you can contribute a lot more than that and not notice it.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> Mathematically, this is equivalent to a small UBI. Or vice versa. UBI requires lots of people to implement it. A simpler income tax rate doesn't. What's nice about it is you could basically just get paid post-tax from every income source, and they all know to subtract 10%, and the government would just need a simple web portal for you to claim back your first 25k.