I think that a 4% hit would be a lot for people making significantly less money.
The utility of each dollar drops the more you have. $1000 would be a massive amount of money to someone making minimum wage. $10000 in a single check might seem like a life changing amount of money for some people. At higher levels of wealth and income, those values would be far less significant. If you were to raise or reduce the salary of a typical Bay Area software developer by $1000, for instance, they probably wouldn’t even notice. And they’re not making $1M per year, either.
The reason we have things like a progressive income is that we can tax someone making $1M per year an extra $40k - as much or more than many individuals make - and it’s not going to seriously affect their spending or saving habits. If we tax someone making $50k an extra $2k, they would feel it.
You could probably increase it to 4.5% and have the same effect. People making above median are still working class. That also doesn’t take into account cost of living in different areas
I’m pro jacking it way the fuck up as we move through income tiers. We could just have such nice things if we raised taxes.
Ideally I’d like to see federal incentives tied to states tying their minimum wage to local COL, and significantly higher progressively-increasing taxes on everyone from the third quintile up.
Then just change all welfare that isn’t a training/education program to straight cash and we are cooking with gas.
I’d say fourth quintile but I’m personally biased and I do agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. It’s wild to me that we have a flat constant as the minimum wage and not a formula that takes into consideration your district’s cost of living. Ideally we’d have:
Min Wage for District A = Federal Constant + k*Cost of Living in A
It would need to be coupled with some sort of gerrymandering prevention so that districts were more representative of state areas. You’d need large cities to be their own district in this scheme.
It’s the best way I can think of defining an area for CoL without screwing someone over. On the state level it would be heavily skewed still. Maybe counties?
Imagine if they expanded the tax to everyone making over median income!
A man can dream.
I think that a 4% hit would be a lot for people making significantly less money.
The utility of each dollar drops the more you have. $1000 would be a massive amount of money to someone making minimum wage. $10000 in a single check might seem like a life changing amount of money for some people. At higher levels of wealth and income, those values would be far less significant. If you were to raise or reduce the salary of a typical Bay Area software developer by $1000, for instance, they probably wouldn’t even notice. And they’re not making $1M per year, either.
The reason we have things like a progressive income is that we can tax someone making $1M per year an extra $40k - as much or more than many individuals make - and it’s not going to seriously affect their spending or saving habits. If we tax someone making $50k an extra $2k, they would feel it.
I’m aware, but Americans are also dramatically under-taxed, and as a result most of our support structures are dramatically underfunded.
50k is below the third quintile so wouldn’t really be touched. Third quintiles starts at 61k.
You could probably increase it to 4.5% and have the same effect. People making above median are still working class. That also doesn’t take into account cost of living in different areas
I’m pro jacking it way the fuck up as we move through income tiers. We could just have such nice things if we raised taxes.
Ideally I’d like to see federal incentives tied to states tying their minimum wage to local COL, and significantly higher progressively-increasing taxes on everyone from the third quintile up.
Then just change all welfare that isn’t a training/education program to straight cash and we are cooking with gas.
I’d say fourth quintile but I’m personally biased and I do agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. It’s wild to me that we have a flat constant as the minimum wage and not a formula that takes into consideration your district’s cost of living. Ideally we’d have:
Min Wage for District A = Federal Constant + k*Cost of Living in A
It would need to be coupled with some sort of gerrymandering prevention so that districts were more representative of state areas. You’d need large cities to be their own district in this scheme.
I don’t think voting districts and localized COL need to be tied together, but I’d sell a kidney to fix the gerrymandering shit so yeah, still agreed.
It’s the best way I can think of defining an area for CoL without screwing someone over. On the state level it would be heavily skewed still. Maybe counties?
Note that we already pay 5% tax on income. This is effectively a second bracket for higher income