The bottom tax rate is highly negative in the US.

Think of an abstract poor family from New York State (outside New York City): two adults working for minimum wage (roughly $11), two kids.

Assuming 48 weeks in a year (allowing four weeks for vacations, seek days and such) total family salary will be about $41 000.

From that they will pay:

- $1700 of federal tax

- $1000 of state tax

- $4000 of sales and excise tax (assuming the rate for both is about 10%)

... while receiving back (all numbers are approximate)

- $5000 of federal earned income tax credit

- $4000 of federal child credit

- $1600 of state earned income credit

- $1300 of state child credit

Which gives a net credit of $5300.

That's not counting food stamps, free school meals and medical insurance subsidies.

If this is not a progressive tax system, then I don't know what is.

Payroll taxes are both regressive, substantial and non-refundable: 7.65% on each of the employer and employee totaling 15.3%, which stops when you make too much money. This accounts for a further $6273 if you haven’t taken the employee amount into consideration (I didn’t see it in your breakdown) and $3136 if you did but neglected that this is paid on your behalf by your employer and you never see it. This alone zeros out the net credit you mentioned.

Then of course since we’re comparing the rest of the world to the US, you need to add a couple hundred dollars per person per month - easily $10K for a family per year - for health insurance that gives them a $5K out of pocket maximum per year they can’t afford so they don’t die of cancer (but can’t afford an early diagnosis) and can’t afford their insulin. All of which is included in the tax burden and covered in Europe and Canada and Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan, to name a few. This amounts to a regressive 25% tax if you’re comparing directly (as good health insurance costs rich and poor the same, but represents a disproportionately higher amount of take-home pay for the poor).

I never understood the “freeloader” narrative, payroll taxes easily cancel it all out.

I guess what I would say is that "best in class" clearly isn't good enough given the results and the environment in which these decisions are made. Looking at the results, I'd say it's not working. Either we need to turn up the dials, regardless of what everyone else is doing, or find some new dials, but the status quo won't do.