How the United States built a welfare state for the wealthy

Many people reading this would bristle at the idea that tax breaks can be equated to welfare. The former reduces the tax bill that you need to give the government, while the latter gives you free money/services that you never had to pay for yourself. Depending on your perception, the 2 can seem wildly different and to say they are equivalent would be a hard sell.

However, the article does touch on 2 very important ideas:

1) Redistribution of wealth is an innate part of government. The term has such a bad connotation, but so many immensely popular government programs basically come down to redistribution of wealth. An increase in welfare redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. The 401k tax subsidy redistributes wealth from the middle-class to the rich. The mortgage-interest-deduction redistributes wealth from renters to home-owners, and especially, multiple-home-owners. People associated "redistribution of wealth" with robbing the rich, but in reality, a huge number of tax deductions have the opposite effect of redistributing money from those with less money, to those with more money.

2) Instead of boldly owning up to the above, politicians try to get around the "redistribution" stigma by sticking in tax deductions/expenditures instead. These tax expenditures seem more politically palatable, but in reality, have the effect of distorting the market and picking coincidental winners and losers. HSA plans? You just rewarded people with predictable medical expenditures over those with unpredictable medical expenditures. Mortgage interest deductions? You just rewarded people who prefer to invest in real-estate, and not those who prefer to invest in stocks. What you end up with are certain people, who undeservedly benefit greatly from these tax programs, and others who are just as deserving, but don't get the benefits.

Using tax deductions to enforce "fairness" is simply not a good idea. Issues of fairness should be managed at a macro scale, by adjusting the overall tax rates, and through the public safety net. Tax deductions should be used as a very specifically targeted tool, aimed at discouraging negative externalities, and encouraging positive externalities. For everything else, we would be better off scrapping them entirely, and adjusting the overall tax rates downward instead.

This takes such a short-sighted, illogical view of the underlying mechanics that tax expenditures and tax breaks rely on.

In the case of SNAP, you are eligible for those benefits if you are below a certain % of the federal poverty limit (FPL) based on your household size. If you earn more than a certain amount, you no longer qualify because presumably you should be able to pay for food on your own. This very directly says, "We will give you something of monetary value, if you remain poor."

In the case of a tax break, like contributing to your HSA or IRA, you don't have to pay taxes on that income (or at least not now). You can contribute up to a certain amount each year but beyond that you no longer receive that benefit. This very directly says, "We will give something of monetary value, if you save money."

Both are using government funds to encourage behavior "We will give you something of monetary value, if you [perform some behavior]." I would suggest that the intended behavior is fundamentally different and is where the real difference in these two lie.

Perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions based on the tone of the article, but the author seems to indicate that both scenarios are equally problematic, when I think there is a very logical difference. Both achieve a similar short-term net output - $X in potential taxes not remaining in the government. The difference is about whether the $X creates long-term value that exceeds that value and she seems to gloss over that to drum up a controversial article.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that either breaks of expenses are inherently better than the other. For example, an earned income credit, to me, seems to encourage a behavior that would be in line with the motives behind a tax break. I just think this is a very short-sighted analysis of both ideas and serves only to create controversy.

The same thing could in some way be said about Denmark a country who have free healthcare, free education (including university), free roads, free almost everything (but high taxes)

Denmark have more people hired in the public sector than China relatively to their size and many of these people have long education and function as managers and is part of the problematic New Public Management philosophy which has spread throughout the western countries as their legislation and society in general apparently becomes harder and harder to understand.

Now how can a country with free healthcare, free education etc. be a wellfare state for the wealthy?

It can because those who are highly educated knows how the system works, can speak the "language" and are able to be treated better than the rest. Heck you don't even have to be wealthy to be treated better you just need to be higher educated.

Of course the US is more extreme but still the underlying patterns are still there. That the welfare system is built by those who need it the least. But how to fix it, now thats a discussion in itself.

For those making Google and Facebook software developer salaries what are you legally doing to keep more money in your pocket and away from the government?

When you make a middle class salary taxes taken feel like a fair share yet when jump up into other tax brackets the view of fairness gets weaker.

The guy is totally off. I happen to know this bit and therefore find everything else rather specious.

All countries allow one to contribute tax-free to their pension OR contribute with after-tax income but withdraw without paying tax. US happens to use the former system. You are basically allowed to contribute a certain amount of your income before paying tax - but will pay tax when you receive the pension.

The idea is that people have lower income during retirement and allowing them to shift tax burden to retirement will induce them to save more.

I don't see anything favoring the rich about this system (only inasmuch as people who make more money benefit more from paying less tax - which I have no problem with).

> In 2015, the federal government spent over $1 trillion via tax breaks and the majority of that money went to social welfare programs.

> Q: So because I have an employer-sponsored 401K and health care plan, take the home mortgage interest deduction on my tax return, and save money for my kids’ college education in 529 accounts... Yes, you are a welfare queen

Just wow. I would expect this sort of stuff from Marxist professor, not from Washington Post.

Love the framing in this article.

Letting someone keep an extra portion of their own income, but only if used for savings or healthcare, is referred to as "tax expenditure". This person - again we're only talking about them being allowed to keep a slightly larger fraction of his/her own income - is a "welfare queen".

Audacious!

I still don't understand my own taxes, let alone how tax breaks work.

I suspect a lot of us secretly have no idea why we get a check when we file our taxes. Can we get a few articles about how it already works, please?

Stealing less money is not "welfare". The need to twist words like this is Owrellian-- and revealing.

"In 2015, the average household in the top 1 percent received pensions subsidies worth over $13,000 while the average benefit for a middle-class family was only $1,000."

The reason is that the top 1% made and contributed probably 10 or 20 or 30 times more than any middle-class family.

In addition to this, they all pay employees, which contribute even more tax money to the system (which is never discussed in articles like this).

This article paints the false narrative that the 1% aren't paying their 'fair share'. In fact, they pay the majority of federal taxes every year and corporate taxes are some of the highest in the world...and you want them to pay more?!

The majority of stories I see about companies paying $0 in taxes, etc are nearly all reporters purposely preying on the ignorance of the average person that has no idea how corporate taxes work.

For instance, I got back thousands of dollars last year and if you took it out of context, you might think that I paid no taxes that year. However, it's only because corporations have to pay estimated quarterly taxes, and if your sales are down and you don't make as much, you get the extra money back (that you over-estimated based on current sales).

So we could change the system, where the government takes way more, in an effort to be 'fair'. But the problem is it won't be the same. The government doesn't create anything.

The 1% will leave the country well before this happened, and the middle class will be be the next one in line.