Black Lives Matter made a proposal for tax reform that makes the current tax code more progressive (higher taxes on high earners, reduce taxes on low earners).
It’s terrible. As in it’s an awful idea that will stifle innovation and work.
Raising taxes on wages is increasing the burden on workers – it’s modern day serfdom. Taxation of income means the government owns the fruit of my labor.
In a feudal society, serfs would work the land and the fruit of their labor would go to the kings and elites in the hierarchy. Income taxation is the modern incarnation of this exact idea.
I’m going to propose a radical idea (again): eliminate the income tax altogether.
This simple act would give the American people 6 BILLION hours and $168 MILLION of their time and money back (what would you do with extra time?).
Eliminate corporate loopholes – that means corporations will be paying a flat 40% instead of less than 20% many pay now.
People deserve their whole paycheck. Eliminating the income tax gives all workers more income – which will drive the economy in the right direction.
The answer is to drastically cut spending and raise sin taxes and estate taxes. Winning the birth lottery isn’t an accomplishment – you don’t deserve millions of dollars in inheritance. You do deserve what you worked to earn.
I propose raising the estate tax to 90% of every dollar over $1M per descendant. That’s still generous. But it means that a woman who had $10M at the day of her death would leave behind $1M to each of her 3 children and have $7M taxable at 90% = $6.3M in taxes.
Use those taxes to fund a universal basic income to feed all people.
Eliminating entire departments of government would greatly reduce the cost of government, which means we need less in taxes.
Providing universal health care paid by the very corporations that do harm to us would be very beneficial way to reform the world – it would give incentive for corporations to drive healthcare costs down so their tax burden would be less while providing healthcare to everyone.
Oh and we should just give the 19 million abandoned homes we have to people living at/below poverty line and/or in Section 8 housing. Then sell the Section 8 housing to private companies to make money for UBI.
Homelessness gone. Everyone has access to healthcare and food. Everyone who works keeps their money. It’s win-win-win-win. Yeah. That’s how I do.
When you completely shed the preconceptions of how things have been for devising solutions to our collective problems, you get better solutions.