Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that part of the problem in the US is that the wealthy pay an outsized portion of the taxes (top 1% nearly half the income taxes at both State and Federal levels).

Other OECD countries are able to fund more progressive spending by (counterintuitively) taxing more regressively via broad-tax-base middle class taxes and VAT.

View on HN

How is that a problem? The top 1% (0.1% and 0.01%, really) have an outsize excess income.

It’s a problem because it raises less revenue, since the tax base is narrower. It’s also more precarious, because the tax base happens to be the most mobile. To give you a sense, New York State’s tax brackets are structured similarly to the Federal government’s: the top 1% pay ~50% of the state budget. That means that if just a small handful of highly mobile people leave NY, the State loses half its revenue.

In contrast, taxing the middle class raises more money, which allows the government to spend more progressively.

It's a lot easier to move state-to-state than to move out of the country and renounce American citizenship.

High federal brackets make sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com