On average, educated people contribute more value to the functioning of society. I can drive myself around. I can't perform my own heart surgery.
The argument that all humans are inherently equally valuable is specious reasoning. I can come up with all sorts of trolly car conundrums that if you were forced to choose, you'd make a value judgement about which person to save because they have more value.
Some things are scarce resources and should be priced accordingly.
Maybe if we stopped thinking of employees/contractors as "labor" and thought of them as people it would be easier to empathize with their needs. Do you think that your friends, family, and loved ones deserve a wage that meets their basic needs? Why shouldn't all humans deserve the same?
The primary purpose of a business is to maximize profits for its stakeholders.
There are many ways to cover your basic needs that don't require you to live on your own in a one-bedroom apartment and three square meals a day. In fact, most of humanity survived by pooling resources. The ability to live entirely on your own being common is a very recent phenomena as is three square meals a day.
All your stating is that people shouldn't have options where they can pool resources. As someone supporting two older adults in my household, you're saying that if they can't get hold a livable wage jobs (unlikely given that one has Parkinson's) but still still could earn money and contribute to the household. You've not made my circumstances harder by legislating away opportunities for them to contribute.
Healthcare should be provided to all by the government for free, but until then we must live under the system.
Does the pizza owner also deserve an adequate return on investment to make his risk worthwhile or should he also work for minimum wage at a larger corporation?
Also, how do you classify “the rich”? People in the 90th percentile of household income? That would be approximately $130K a year.
Finally, only 15% of federal spending goes to the military. Most of our spending is already for social security, Medicare, education, retirement benefits, etc.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-w...
Social security and Medicare are funded directly via payroll taxes, they are not part of he general fund and you pay for them separately. Comparing them is like comparing medical insurance premiums or 401k savings to military spending.
No, they never had. In fact, 47% of the population doesn’t pay income taxes at all, just payroll taxes, which are capped rather than progressive (anti progressive, actually).
The government does borrow money via IOUs to fund things like military mostly, but they also borrow money via treasuries, are you saying China’s export surplus should be mixed with regular income taxes as well?
Once the tide turns and social security is running at a deficit, regular income tax will have to pay for social security. It’s all the same money.
It reduces the incentive to sacrifice other things for additional income once you've already reached the level at which the increased tax kicks in, yes.
Why is this a bad thing?
I reject both the concept and it's relevance; no marginal tax rate below 100% is an income ceiling, and setting marginal tax rates at particular levels neither requires nor implies that a single such “fair” amount exists.
> I bet the people living in the Midwest would love to tax the “liberal west coast elite” living in Silicon Valley 90%
I bet most of the low income population of the West Coast (and Bay Area in particular) would like that—and benefit from it, in terms of effects on local cost of living—more than anyone in the Midwest.
> Should 90% start at $150K? $200K?
I didn't actually endorse a 90% marginal rate for federal income tax; disagreeing with a particular argument against a thing isn't endorsing it.
If I were to propose rewriting marginal rates, I'd probably do something like drop the 32% bracket down to start at about the 90th individual income percentile (instead of about the 95th, where it is currently), and drop the existing higher brackets in favor of adding additional +8% brackets at the 95th, 97th, 98th, and 99th percentiles, topping out at a 64% rate.
But more important, I'd tax capital gains as normal income, with options for both advance recognition and deferment to handle irregular streams (whether from capital events or otherwise.)