If it's less than 63%, you "unilaterally extend benefits to a whole bunch of people who don't currently get them".

Let's say benefits for the unemployed are £1,000 a month (chosen to be an easy number to work with). You lose 63p of benefits per extra pound you earn. The government gives you (some) benefits up to the first £1,587 you earn. If you go to 50%, the government gives people earning up to £2,000 a month benefits, and so on, which probably includes a bunch of people who don't currently get any.

You can't change 63% without either paying much more in the way of benefits overall, or without reducing the benefits of those who can't do any work.

> It would technically bring more people into the system, but they'd be at the top end, and therefore only be receiving a small fraction of the current levels of benefits

That's not how the maths works. Assuming an even distribution of people at each wage level, changing this to 30% effectively doubles overall spend.

So your solution is "spend a lot of extra money on social security", which is fine, but it doesn't satisfy the constraints.

But even so, smoothing out the curve some might be better overall even if the max amount drops.

Also you could extend the curve so that 'benefits' go negative at the high end. Now your budget is fine...

> Also you could extend the curve so that 'benefits' go negative at the high end

You've just invented tax, congratulations.

You have a very different definition of 'massively' than I do.

> You've just invented tax, congratulations.

Positive taxes can balance out negative taxes, ~tada~.

The original constraint was not a $0 increase. I did not violate the original constraint.

And even if you did take it to be $0, it said you can't "just afford to" increase. Proposing a tax to make up the difference meets that critera.

But even inside a hard "no more spending" constraint, it's not nearly as unsolvable as you make it out to be. It's quite possible that giving less money to people mildly below the old cliff edge, while giving more money to people mildly above it, is a net positive. That doesn't screw over people at the bottom, and it doesn't increase total cost.

Going from a hard cliff to a 90% marginal rate was obviously better, right? And going from 90% marginal rate to 85% was obviously better, right? They decided to stop at 63%. It doesn't mean that going further is a priori wrong.

And on top of all of that, smoothing out the curve to 50% very likely motivates more people in the range to work, reducing the amount of benefits they use.

I surveyed opinions on tax brackets a while back, and it seemed like there was a big psychological barrier at the 50% rate.

Most high earners would be willing to pay a 50% marginal tax rate (albeit some very grudgingly) but almost nobody was willing to go over 50%.

What’s good enough for the rich should do for the poor as well. The benefit drop off rate (effectively a marginal tax rate) should be 50% at the very most.

“For each dollar earned, I get to keep more than I give away in tax/benefits” is a cliff edge, but I think a reasonably justifiable one.

Some people want higher taxes and some want lower; what I’m saying is, 50% stood out as an arbitrary threshold that many people seemed possibly willing to agree on.

Some complained that rich people shouldn’t be expected to prop up the rest of society, but conceded that progressive tax bands might be okay as long as the top rate was no more than 50%. Others felt that highly progressive taxes were essential; they wanted at least 50% as the top rate.

Fiscal policy comprises both borrowing and taxing; the two are fungible as far as spending is concerned.

What are you replying to?

To be clear, I easily understand how a high marginal rate is demoralizing and unfair at the low end. I'm not convinced it's a problem if tax brackets at the high end go to some number above 50%.

Edit to clarify: if your salary is £100K and you get a £10K raise, you see almost none of it in your payslip. But if you’re on £120K and get the same raise you get to take a good chunk of it home. That’s what seems silly to me.

This 63% thing is the replacement for "working tax credits" -- it's a top-up of wages for people on low paid work. People get their wages, and then on top of that they get extra money.

In the past this would have been working tax credits.

The advantages are that claimants do not need to ask for permission before starting work. They can just do the work and then declare it. The disadvantages are that the system can't cope well with zero-hour contracts or self-employment, and this is leaving people in severe financial hardship.

As an example, you can reword this just as accurately to say that for every dollar less the person makes, they actually only make $0.27 less because benefits kick in for $0.63 of it. You can reduce that 63%, but when phrased that way, do you want to?