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Progressive taxation has always been something of a hack: it's easier to get a greater proportion of someone's money when they're relatively well off than when
by scarmig 13y ago
Progressive taxation has always been something of a hack: it's easier to get a greater proportion of someone's money when they're relatively well off than when they can barely pay for food and housing.
Perhaps for good reason. But one of the compelling parts of a basic income is that it cuts away the moral argument for progressive taxation: the basic income amount people are provided is enough to pay for the necessities of life, which is what progressive taxation tries to allow for. Replacing the progressive income tax with a basic income funded by a flat tax on all earned income combines the respective moral appeals of progressive and flat taxation while also being more economically efficient.
- keithnoizu 13y agoThe premise for the progressive tax is that those that have benefited the most from the infrastructure provided by the government should repay the most. I don't think that tenant disappears the second you include a basic income allotment.
- scarmig 13y agoIn my experience, most educated proponents of progressive taxation believe in something like "the marginal utility per dollar for poor people is higher than that of rich people, and the government should attempt to tax toward some concept of equi-utility," though I'm certainly open to hearing that that's not what most believe. In other words, taxing $1 from a poor person takes food out of their mouth while taxing $1 from a rich person delays the purchase of a new yacht by 1 second, so we should take that money from the person who'll lose less utility by its taking. We also don't realistically attempt to tax people according to some abstract conception of who has benefited the most from government infrastructure.
- keithnoizu 13y agoAlso true, and equally applicable even if a base income were provided.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoBut if that were the case, then we would have a progressive consumption tax, not a progressive income tax. Consumption is the benefit received from society. Income is merely potential consumption. And the rich tend not to consume to their full potential - rather, they tend to reinvest significant chunks of their income in society instead.
- fulafel 13y ago> one of the compelling parts of a basic income is that it cuts away the moral argument for progressive taxation: the basic income amount people are provided is enough to pay for the necessities of life It doesn't provide for necessities in many (most?) of the basic income proposals. Many proposals still leave a lot of the circumstance dependent benefits in place (eg providing for kids if you have them) so the basic income can be kept fairly low. But yes, tax progression it does replace.