It's easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to admit when you do

Re:It's easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to a... by pc86 on Friday October 20, 2023 @11:59AM (#37957910)

The working poor don't have any money for the government to take. The middle and upper-middle classes have plenty of money for the government to take, but not enough to afford expensive accountants and business formations to shield their assets, or at least not enough assets to make that cheaper than just paying taxes. The wealthy have tons of money for the government to take, but can spend tens of thousands up to millions to shield it so they can't.

The natural progression of that is a cyclical squeezing of the middle classes via revenue extraction and of the working poor by cutting services.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:It's easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to a... by JumpCrisscross on Friday October 20, 2023 @12:06PM (#37957983)

> wealthy have tons of money for the government to take, but can spend tens of thousands up to millions to shield it so they can't

I used to advocate for doubling all tax brackets. A friend ran the numbers: the result is volatility. The middle class has stable earnings in a way the wealthy do not. That doesn’t mean we can’t tax them more. But there is a trade off.

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Re:It's easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to a... by pc86 on Friday October 20, 2023 @10:25PM (#37963535)

On an individual level maybe but the top two quintiles have made more money year after year regardless: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-...

It's not like the top echelons of earners have a bad year and GDP plummets or anything; I'm not sure what "volatility" means in this context as far as tax revenues but I can't imagine it results in huge variability or uncertainty.

[ Parent | on HN ]