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Comment by cdogl | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t it? The vast majority of people in the developed world have enough money for food and housing, and the powers that be work fiercely - if ineptly - to protect that. I’m not writing off the influence of power and wealth, but this sentiment just doesn’t seem empirical to me.

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Not in the UK it isn't. The government expect people to use food banks (run by charities, mostly churches) to make ends meet. They recently implemented a tax cut for the highest income decile in the country at a rate disproportionately larger than the tax relief for other income bands. The poorest barely got anything.

The tax rate on higher earners is higher (not to mention their absolute tax payment). The poorest people already don't pay any taxes.

You can't cut the taxes of the poor as much as for the rich, because there's not as much to cut for the former.

I have no idea whether the UK policy is any good or not. But your complaint is a weird one to make.

The complaint is that by reducing taxes for highest incomes there are fewer resources for the state to address the wellbeing of its citizens. It is not that the poorest pay less tax, it is whether social services and other government programs like education, environment, etc. are cut as a consequence of lower taxes on the rich (note the difference from raising taxes - where the wealthiest have greater capital mobility and access to professional services to shield incomes from taxation, so increasing taxes can fail to raise anticipated revenues when things go the other way.)

The only difference between an argument against a tax reduction and an argument in favour of a tax raise is what you consider to be the status quo.

The situation is more symmetric than you think.

Greater capital mobility cuts both ways: when you lower taxes you can also attract more rich people and their capital.

(I am not saying that this effect will necessarily occur, only that capital mobility comes into play both when raising and when lowering taxes.)

Oh, of course, the real solution to these problems is to tax land and not income nor capital: you can't hide land nor can it leave the country. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

In theory you could cut VAT.

Sure.

Of course, rich people pay more VAT than poor people. In absolute terms.

At my age my father supported a wife and two kids on one salary and was able to purchase a home. With 2 salaries and no kids my wife and I cannot purchase a home.

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