Re:Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old
by xcklo on Thursday June 20, 2019 @06:09PM
(#20237893)
That universalism leads to less social stratification is essentially the idea behind the social democratic welfare state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Three_worlds_of_...
Re:Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old
by smallnamespace on Thursday June 20, 2019 @07:17PM
(#20238407)
We already have a good solution to avoid ghettoisation or traps called progressive taxation.
However, it doesn't go far enough because the tax rate doesn't take benefits into account, so even though you're getting >$0.80 of every dollar earned, after adjusting for benefits it may instead be $0.20 or even negative. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is an especially large contributor to this situation [1].
To avoid a trap, marginal income after taxes and benefits should start high and fall monotonically. It should probably also be concave up (the amount of income to bump you into the next 'adjusted tax' bracket gets bigger and bigger).
[1] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publicati... (page 767, Figure 2)
Re:Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old
by freewilly1040 on Thursday June 20, 2019 @11:58PM
(#20239761)
The issue of capital gains getting preferential tax treatment over wage labor is a much bigger problem than any lack of benefits taxes.
Otherwise we get welfare traps, ghettoisation or just poor quality (like buses in places where only the poor use em). It doesn't mean everyone has to use it, just that they can. This is common sense in services like health or education, where we're used to it.