It’s a different thing to take your time to rethink work when you are doing that on other tax payers money.
This may or may not be a 100% return, but I’m happy to invest in my fellow citizens who didn’t have a chair when the music stopped.
You're mixing up two different groups of people: those who lost their job and want a new one but can't find one, with those who just decided they don't feel like working anymore. I'm happy to invest in the former but not the latter.
Why should I care whether they toiled miserably in order to be able to buy my thing? Maybe it would be better if they were leisurely, the better to go and search out the best things, allowing me to devote my efforts to MAKING said best things. Let 'em be thing-mavens, sipping lattes. They can compete over who is the coolest thing-maven.
You're not thinking creatively enough.
If they’re living off the taxpayer dime, enjoying their life, while I work to make something for them to buy, then turn around and, as the taxpayer, give them the money to buy my thing, that’s substantially less awesome.
"living off their own resources" generally equals, for many people: "living in active exploitation in a ruthless work environment destroying their mental and physical health, because they literally need money to live, like anyone"
Whereas:
"living off the taxpayer dime" generally equals, for many people: "living free to do whatever they wish, for the most part" [and you find this absolutely abhorrent]
Still seems like you're not quite grasping how this works.
I'm not going to dig up concrete numbers at this point, but it's not difficult to take a look at what the top wealth-holders and income-earners have, and what the people at the bottom need, and reconcile the two.
When you means test, you require more bureaucracy while less effectively covering the people who need support.
Cf. Arguments about the financialization of the economy and correlation of per capita lawyers in a society with that society's impending doom.
Edit: oh, also healthcare in America. Very much healthcare in america.
Put another way, is the cost of administering a system that can tell the difference worth the savings?
- childcare
- eldercare
- homemaking (cooking, cleaning)
- educating (homeschooling)
- creating art
- open source coding
- volunteering
Etc.
We should absolutely invest in these people. Their work goes unpaid because it is not immediately profitable, but make no mistake it is absolutely necessary to society.
Walmart costs you the tax payer more money every time they open a store.
If you can't pay someone a living wage, then you shouldn't be in business.
The time out from that high schoolers life is not valueless. If the employer wants to swear up and down the work is "unskilled" then they can pay everyone the unskilled labor rate which should still be a living wage.
The high schooler working part time isn't doing so because it's fun, they're doing it most likely because their family is not wealthy and it's helping put food on the table or pay bills or buy textbooks.
Correct. You pay your employees according to the value they produce. And if they don't yet have the skills to produce much value, then either you can't pay them much, or you can't hire them at all. Which is better?
I specifically chose high schoolers because they usually aren't trying to fully support themselves financially, and so most living wage arguments don't apply.
Because that means you can afford to pay that employee more, and instead are pocketing the difference.
In fact, if any employee is on an income-based form of government assistance to provide them a living wage, and any other employee is being paid more then that, then you are still stealing from me because the business is fully capable of supporting these people (who are apparently necessary because they are being employed) and instead using my money to subsidize yourself.
If a job produces so little value that it doesn't justify a living wage, then I don't want anyone doing it because we've just established that even the experience or expertise which might develop from it is not worth anything. My taxes are to support my fellow citizens, not keep worthless jobs and worthless businesses in existence.
If people want these programs, do the hard work and start championing for large tax increases.
My wife likes to work, yet contributes nothing due to taxes. Accounting for extra expenses.
I don't really believe you're actually paying a 50% tax rate. Unless you mean a _marginal_ tax rate.
Property tax, sales tax, car tabs, usage fees, gas tax, sin taxes, etc. These all add up, and depending on your lifestyle can easily go well above 50% in California. (The highest federal + California tax rate is already around 50%.)
To get to a 50% tax burden, the remaining 66% of our income would have been taxed at a ~24% rate. Of course that didn't happen since we spent on things like our 401(k) and food (both of which are not taxed), plus our cash savings.
I stand by my statement that any high-income earner paying 50%+ in taxes needs to get a better accountant.
If they did get consideration, wouldn’t we want to reconsider a market-based economic system that destroys the natural systems they’ll be stuck with? That seems far more destructive to me than some human created currency numbers.
But that doesn’t make it sound economic policy for the country as a whole. Far from it.
https://heterodox.economicblogs.org/multiplier-effect/2018/b...
If people go from exploitative, miserable jobs to better paying jobs, they are going to pay more taxes. Effectively the later them is paying for the earlier them. An actuary could probably estimate how much support is likely to produce a positive value. Perhaps our society should be giving everyone a sabbatical year ever decade or something like that?
This is also why doing it as a public insurance system is better than via private savings. Private savings can only go one direction in term and are subject to large deviations, the same way health insurance costs are.