There is no evidence supporting this assertion. A massive swath of people currently support raising taxes on the wealthy solely to take their money away (“reducing income equality”) without having a particularly sound way to spend it or one that even makes mathematical sense.
https://twitter.com/iamscottenglish/status/12358062448179159...
There's a way to look at this non-vindictively.
Every penny is useful.
The government randomly spending money in bits here in there is not productive.
>even jobs
The last thing you want is the government to add 10 million jobs for only 12 weeks during normal employment.
> infrastructure
Expanding infrastructure that isn’t needed is just more maintenance cost and a waste of money. You need concrete plans for infrastructure that isn’t just a maintenance burden.
> public transportation
Again, this needs actual plans and should provide value. You want HSR from Ely, NV to Portland, OR?
Vague hand-waving of “the government should just spend X billion on Y” is just a perfect way to promote boondoggles.
That's not even mentioning those that are successful and wealthy in part because of government subsidies and support (e.g. green credits for Tesla).
They already contribute more than proportionally. Proportionally is a flat tax rate and the rich already contribute far in excess of that.
We could pull the plug on that system, but only by driving ourselves into utter poverty, so in some sense we are hostages of the system that we created. On the other hand, if that system fails to serve an agreeable social purpose, it's our prerogative to moderate it.
Let’s go for broke and make them 100% then?
What I'm saying is that when applying first-order thinking, it sounds like "more tax" would hurt. Therefore people who ask for more tax are most likely thinking a bit farther than the tip of their nose.
But perhaps that idea is further than the tip of one’s nose.
I'd propose, simplistically, that people who demand tax cuts have in common the following characteristics:
- they may be confused about the role(s) of taxation
- they may not have sat down with pen and paper to try and figure out how to work a government's finances
- they may not be aware that a lot of the information they're demanding is public, or may not know where to find it
- they may not have a clear idea of which services to cut, or might not fully appreciate the importance of the services they'd like to cut
Conversely, it is highly probable that the people who support tax hikes:
- have a clear understanding of at least some of the roles of taxation
- have a specific idea what budget item they would like to see it spent on