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Comment by orange_joe | Hacker News Reader

The societies of North America have totally abandoned the middle class and its ambitions. Instead of staying true to their goals of education, libraries have become daytime homeless shelters driving away their original patrons. So have busses, and trains. Schools have opted out of their obligations to provide the best educations to the public instead tailoring the education to the least capable. Ultimately this will lead to the further hollowing of our civil society as the middle class realizes the bureaucratic core does not have their best interests at heart. But Brutus is an honorable man.

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What? My town has three libraries alone, all of which are large, spacious, extremely clean, super quiet, full of great material, and are constantly full of well behaved citizens. You're not describing a feature of modern libraries. You're describing a local problem.

> My town

i think GP is talking about big cities. My library ( heart of chicago) is def fits the description.

streetview : https://www.google.com/local/place/fid/0x880e2d00ee6fbd09:0x...

This is outside my libary from st view: https://imgur.com/a/CE51r2v

There is usually a huge congregation of homeless there by afternoon. And its even worse inside the library. You get hit with stench as soon as you open the library door. Sucks because libarians have exceptional knowledge that any book lover would enjoy talking to.

> You're describing a local problem.

Unless you are suggesting middle class can only exist in the burbs and small towns.

I 've lived in pilsen chicago for over 25 yrs, this is my home. Hate to relocate in next few yrs because now i have newborn.

It's an incredibly common local problem that you find across a great deal of the US.

Agreed. I live in a city with a noticeable homeless problem, but our extensive system of libraries is perfectly safe.

Now, ten or twenty years ago, the main branch downtown was in what certain conservative commentators might have called a "no-go zone"—but really the neighborhood around the library was fine. It seemed to me that the drug gangs in the area back then had some kind of unspoken agreement that the library was neutral (dare I say sacred?) ground.

> conservative commentators

you know there are actual no go zones like austin area in chicago. Why are you hiding behind 'conservative commentators' as a cover for your statement.

Odd choice to fixate on a clause buried in a hypothetical and ignore the thrust of the sentence, but I support your hermeneutical decisions.

I do not live in Chicago and have said nothing here about it.

I don't know what you're talking about, but I spend about 60 minutes in Austin (the Chicago neighborhood) every day, and live across a street from it. Austin is not a "no go zone". Residents of one of the wealthiest suburbs in Chicago routinely bike through it on their way to work in the Loop.

> Austin is not a "no go zone".

maybe your definition is different.

From last few weeks,

> Man, 38, shot in the face in Austin. > The 38-year-old was walking on the sidewalk when someone started shooting around 10:20 p.m. in the 4900 block of West Hubbard Street, according to police.

https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/man-38-shot-in-the-face-in...

> 7 Shot, 1 Fatally, in Austin as Group Gathered to Honor Life of Man Killed in Car Accident

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/7-shot-1-fatally-in-au...

> Boy, 15, injured after shooting in Austin overnight

https://wgntv.com/news/chicagocrime/boy-15-injured-after-sho...

> Austin Neighbors Are Helping Each Other Get Mental Health Care After Shootings Near Preschool

> Some kids said they were too scared to play outside after hearing gunfire, a preschool leader said. A 20-year-old woman was killed and two men were wounded in two shootings days apart.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/04/27/austin-neighbors-are...

> Devout 'God-fearing' woman killed by stray bullet in front of Austin home, blocks away from church

https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-crime-woman-killed-...

With respect, your argument is poorly informed and seems extrapolated from media stories. I don't know if you live in Chicagoland or not --- the belief you're expounding on is prevalent in suburban Chicago as well. It's false.

Once again: one of the wealthiest suburbs in Chicago is directly adjacent to Austin. I live in that suburb, across a street (that street would be Austin) from the neighborhood. People in Oak Park commute, on bicycles, through Austin. Notably, in the ~20 years I've lived here, I haven't heard a single story about any of those people being shot. Austin residents patronize our businesses. Much of Austin is middle class.

Austin is a troubled neighborhood (it is literally ground zero for US housing segregation), but it is absolutely not a "no-go zone". Words mean things. Ironically, people who "go" to Austin are probably much safer (essentially they _are_ safe there) than young male Black residents, who are the exclusive targets of the gang violence that occurs there.

You get the same weird arguments about the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Hyde Park on the south side, and the same rebuttals apply.

its not "argument" though, i don't see what 'wealthiest suburbs' have to do with shootings in austin. Yes suburbs including the one you live in are safer. Not sure what that has to do with anything. CabriniGreen used to be next to rivernorth.

> I don't know if you live in Chicagoland or not

I've lived in pilsen for last 25 years and grew up here. I don't live in the burbs. I know what 'no go zones' mean, the block i grew up on in west pilsen used to be one ( but not anymore) . I now live on the edge of 'no go zone' in pilsen ( east of western ) . My wife works for charter school in englewood where i do weekly drop off and pickup. Englewood is a 'no go' zone for us, meaning we won't go there if we have no business being there, we never make a stop in that neighborhood ( like the cyclists you mention) .

you choose live white majority suburb with double the median income but not in austin. That revealed preference proves that Austin was a 'no go' zone for you? Going to coffeshop once in a while doesn't really count, imo.

> is absolutely not a "no-go zone". Words mean things.

You said austin is not a no go zone, can you give me an example of an area considered no go zone. Perhaps that will clarify.

> Notably, in the ~20 years I've lived here, I haven't heard a single story about any of those people being shot.

I just gave you two examples from last 2 months of ppl getting shot by stray bullets. What does you personally hearing about cyclists have to do with anything? This type of statement is really hard to respond to.

We considered Oak Park and Lincoln Square in the city proper for aesthetic reasons, and chose Oak Park for the schools (I'm retrospectively unhappy we did that, since we contributed to school segregation by opting into a de facto private school system, but whatever).

But even if we hadn't, and we'd simply chosen Oak Park over Austin, that wouldn't be a "revealing" preference. Austin is troubled and disinvested, again by dint of being the literal ground zero for post-redlining US housing segregation. At the beginning of the 1970s Austin was majority white; by the end it was over 90% Black, because of panic selling and white flight. There aren't that many restaurants, few grocery stores, &c, all as a result (if you're a middle class family in Austin, chances are you shop in Oak Park).

I think Austin is pretty neat; wide tree-lined blocks with some great, big houses. But I'm not arguing that it's unproblematic. It certainly is.

As for the definition of "no-go zone", Wikipedia's will suffice. Austin compares with literally none of the many examples given. You can go to Austin; you will be just fine.

Incidentally: people in Chicago have generally the same feelings about Auburn and Grand Crossing as they do about Englewood, but people still go to Lem's. It's true: I have no reason to go to Englewood. I also know less about it than I know about Austin. But Austin is simply not a no-go zone.

ok yea there are no 'no go zones' in USA per wikipedia.

I don't know if there are or there aren't, but none of the descriptions of "no-go zones" anywhere in the world on Wikipedia apply to Austin. I'm not arguing "it's not a no-go zone because Wikipedia doesn't list it as one"; I'm saying the definition simply doesn't apply. You can go there. You will be fine. People go there constantly.

Cabrini Green, by the way? Never a no-go zone. I went to high school across the street from the old ABLA high-rises. Housing projects do not equate to "no-go zones".

yea for sure if you are using wikipedia definition ( but you mentioned something about cyclists and stray bullets) . No city or town in USA qualifies that definition. We use 'don't take your kids to the park there' definition in our neighborhood ( maybe what you are referring to as 'problematic') . I wouldn't take my kids to austin parks where stray bullets are flying around. Maybe we are more aware of this stuff than ppl in burbs because our neighborhood in pilsen is not completely safe even now. We have to be extra caution going out with kids . https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/02/15/facing-spike-in-murd...

Woman, 40, hit by stray bullet while driving in Austin ( https://chicago.suntimes.com/2017/2/7/18389033/woman-40-hit-... )

13-year-old boy hit by stray bullet in South Austin, hospitalized (https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/13-year-old-boy-critically...)

pretty sure this stuff never happened in oak park where you live for safety of your family.

'Its not no a go zone , its a problematic area' is not a very useful distinction for me.

Totally false. It happened just last weekend in Oak Park, and a few months earlier at a gas station in Oak Park (that resulted in us, idiotically, banning 24/7 gas stations).

If you'd just said "places like Austin have high crime" or something, we wouldn't be on this thread. But you said it was a "no-go zone", doubled down, then walked the definition back to "places I'd be comfortable hanging out with my kid in the park".

We can be done with the thread now; I'm happy with what it says about our respective arguments. My suggestion is maybe strike the term "no-go zone" from your vocabulary. It's mostly politically charged bullshit. But in any of its reasonable definitions, it doesn't apply to Austin, and didn't apply to Cabrini.

Look. This is an exceedingly stupid thread and I should know better than to comment on it. But clearly you 2 are arguing about the definition of a “no-go” zone, which is not rigorously defined.

But you’ve posited in this comment that one criteria is the count of people getting shot in the last month. By that argument River North[0] is a no go zone. Which, perhaps it is for you, but thats not an interesting social commentary because it means that effectively all urban US neighborhoods are. Just say you won’t go to US urban environments. We get it.

At the end of the day, in Chicago, the tragic gun violence problem is real. But counter-intuitively its not real for people that _visit_ neighborhoods. Its real for the young men that live there. And by invoking “no-go” rhetoric you hide the real problem. That years of public policy have made certain neighborhoods extremely dangerous for those that live there, but ironically, not for those that visit.

[0] https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-river-north-crime-c...

> Just say you won’t go to US urban environments. We get it.

I grew up in pilsen which was gang controlled 'no go zone' until it got gentrified over last 1-2 decades on the east side. We knew which gangs controlled which areas, we are only a few blocks away from El Chapo's 'The Pilsen twins' family home ( never saw them though) . People who live here and raise families here know where 'no go zones' are and stay away from. If you visit any local here for a few you will get a lecture about which areas are 'no go' gang controlled zones ( south of cermak and west of western).

Ofcouse, you can 'go' to gentrified restaurants and coffee shops on 18th st/Thalia hall and get 'the experience' for outsiders and suburbanites. Doesn't mean there aren't no go zones in pilsen.

It frustrating to me that people who chose live in white segregated suburbs ( 'for aesthetic reasons', code for not too many non whites ) and send their kids to segregated schools are lecturing us what words to use and what to call ourselves. I personally detest these white ppl more than Tucker Carlson types. Yes they are 'no go zones' and govt/community should fix it, calling them 'problematic areas' instead isn't a fix.

I didn't invoke any 'rhetoric'. you link shows which areas are no go zones. https://abc7chicago.com/feature/tracking-crime-and-safety-in...

> By that argument River North[0] is a no go zone.

you posted one solitary example. Argument isn't 'one shooting' makes no-go zone. Try to finding other examples and you'll see.

Dude, don't call parts of Chicago "no-go zones" and then try to high-horse residential segregation. I'm up front about how my decisions have fed into our pathologies. Try to be more honest about yours.

> you know there are actual no go zones like austin area in chicago

This claim presupposes an objective definition of “no go zone” supporting the existence of actual examples.

Please provide the objective definition (ideally, with sourcing) and the evidence supporting the claim that “austin area in chicago” meets it.

What town is that? As I go through my life experiences, every affluent place I've lived in my state, NC, has had decent libraries. They are used mostly by kids and old people, anecdotally.

I laughed on the inside a bit when I considered the fact that a public library existed just a few blocks down from the library of a large public university. But this was my youthful ignorance. Anyone could walk in the university library and open a book (well, you could at that time, not so sure about anymore) but you had to have a school ID card to check out a book or access the computer system.

Before cell phones, I visited libraries traveling around the coast. The computers were 100% taken. There was a line to get one, and the librarian directed us to a scheduling system. These were people who needed to use a computer and the internet to apply to a job. Access was scarce, low-quality, and competency to use those tools were lacking.

Nowadays, cell phones have mostly taken away that niche of the past. I'm not sure if or why the people there still need the libraries.

Ive tried making a resume or applying for jobs on a phone, it’s doable but much easier and more pleasant to do for two hours on a desktop. Fewer people have up to date desktop computers so I see the need for this continuing.

I live in a smaller city / large town and the local libraries are pretty dangerous-feeling with lots of cops & homeless folks. My anecdata doesn't match yours; actual data may be more useful.

You live in a bubble. America also doesn't have a gun violence problem if you live in Montana. Lots of us don't live in Montana, unfortunately.

This is only true in big cities. Definitely true in LA and NYC.

I was astounded to find that the small east-coast college town where I now live has a clean, bright, pleasant library that serves as a community educational space for all (not just the homeless or teenagers.) The bathrooms are usually spotless.

I wonder: how have massive cities like LA and NYC allowed their libraries defacto homeless shelters? It's a shame that public libraries in these cities are essentially unusable to the average taxpayer.

> I wonder: how have massive cities like LA and NYC allowed their libraries defacto homeless shelters? It's a shame that public libraries in these cities are essentially unusable to the average taxpayer.

Somehow I doubt that all of the branch libraries of those systems are "homeless shelters." More likely the it's just the larger libraries near the actual shelters. Where "the average taxpayer" wouldn't spend time anyway.

> the small east-coast college town where I now live has a clean, bright, pleasant library that serves as a community educational space for all

Small college towns have a couple of real advantages over big cities in this regard. First, they're small, which helps a lot. Second, they tend to have more funding available per-capita than large cities do.

That has definitely not been my experience in NYC. I've lived in 3 neighborhoods in Queens, and all of them have had great local libraries that were clean and had friendly staff.

I agree that borough libraries are very useable. The LIC library is wonderful, for example. But Manhattan libraries are pretty difficult.

It's just one of the few places where you can hang. Read, watch movies, and nobody is expecting you to spend money. It's air conditioned in the summer, heated in the winter.

Also in the burbs, it's not a trivial task for homeless to even get to a place like the library, where in NYC it's pretty easy to get around.

I still use the library in NYC, but I agree that some locations aren't exactly great places to spend the day studying, but it very much depends on the branch. "unusable" feels like a stretch. I can still pickup books and get help from librarians if I need it.

Not in my opinion, those smaller towns have largely (but not universally) abandoned the middle class ambition of home ownership through exclusionary land policy, despite not degrading their basic services.

How popular was your small east coast college library?

I have a theory about this. Which is that the upper/upper-mid class in particular cares more about the image of a pristine library than they do the actual effectiveness/reach of that library. This theory shows itself quite a lot through how people talk about libraries: not in how many students find what they're looking for, how happy librarians are, how many grades or careers have been improved. It's bathrooms and walls.

Since when are public libraries responsible for improving the grades of students? I relied on the public library for computer/Internet access and of course reading for most of my childhood and never had that expectation... no doubt it helped me indirectly because I read a lot and I had no consistent access to the Internet otherwise, but how do you define "effectiveness/reach"? Can a filthy library occupied by homeless people be effective? My thoughts: it's largely up to parents to bring their kids to public libraries and encourage them to read. And that's not going to happen if it's not a comfortable place to spend time (i.e. clean and quiet). What's in the collection is of secondary importance.

I'm in a very progressive and educated town. The library here serves as a community education center. It's very well used, well loved, and well resourced, with tons of free classes for the community. There are three colleges in this town, so it's a more educated populace than the average town.

I agree on principle, but in the details I have some quibbles. The core of a library is the books (the root of library is the Latin for book). For me, all I really want from a library is to loan me all the books I want for as long as I need them. I’m not particularly interested in the librarians’ happiness or grades or careers.

NYC libraries aren’t defacto shelters for the unhoused. When I visit them they have robust children’s sections and the adult section is filled with a cross section of the community, which does include people with a large bag who are just resting but also includes twenty something’s with designer closet hung and MacBooks.

> libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

My library looks nothing like this. You're painting all libraries with a broad brush, generalizing from a very small number of libraries in the downtown core of a handful of cities.

But yeah. Our view of homelessness as a personal failure of the homeless person, rather than a societal failure to care for its people, is not working. More punishment and less services only exacerbates the problem.

Except that it’s cities which prioritize services that have this problem — eg, Seattle.

It's also the cities for which housing is most unaffordable.

Seattle has a levy on the ballot for a massive increase in property taxes in order to make housing more affordable.

I am not making this up.

I don't think property tax factors much at all into land price. Else wouldn't land price be relatively consistent across locations with same tax systems

It factors very much into the rent price. Lots of people think the property tax is paid by the landlord, and think increasing it sticks it to the landlord, but it is paid by the renters.

See also California in 2009 had a proposal in their budget for a $1.2 million commission to promote the blueberry industry- paid for by a new tax specifically on blueberries.

A levy of 45 cents per $1000, which according to the seattle times:

> The bulk of money raised from the new levy, $707 million, would go toward the construction of new subsidized rental homes and improvements to aging affordable apartments. Those programs are focused on housing for people making 60% of area median income or less, about $74,000 a year for a family of three. Nearly two-thirds of the funding would fund housing for those making even less, 30% of area median income or $37,000 for a family of three.

The current levy (passed in 2016) is 25 cents per $1000. A tax of a few hundred dollars per year on a million dollar home isn't making an impact on housing affordability. Expanding the availability of affordable housing might. I'm skeptical that $707M is enough to make a dent.

The total Seattle property tax is $8.29 per $1000. $.20 is a massive 2% increase.

$707 million is a massive amount of money.

That's projected over 7 years, so $101 million per year. The city's annual budget is nearly 6 billion dollars. While $707 million sounds big, it's quite small relatively speaking.

If you'd rather criminalize homelessness, build prisons and courts, employ more cops and prosecutors and prison guards, and defense lawyers for the inevitable lawsuits that arise from inhumane treatment, you might want to work up a budget for all that. And tell me where the money is going to come from, in a state with no income tax.

The state gets plenty of money in taxes. So does the city - nearly 6 billion dollars.

Define "plenty." So far your argument has taken the form "this is a big number." It isn't convincing.

The tax is $970 million over 7 years, with $707 million for buying and maintaining housing. Remember that each apartment costs something like $200K. That covers acquiring the estimated 3400 apartments plus maintenance for existing ones.

The levy is an order of magnitude too small to fix problem. King County has 40,000 homeless. Also, I don't think the levy is for chronic homeless since it doesn't have programs to help them. The problem may be too big for local government and needs federal government to help out.

When you buy a house, what you pay for it is determined by the mortgage you can afford.

If interest rates go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go up, house prices go down.

In the long term, it's a net wash. That and the people on the boundary of homelessness are renters, not homeowners. Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property.

> Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property.

If landlords cannot make a reasonable rate of return, they will not enter the market, and existing ones will exit. This will reduce the supply, and then the rents will rise.

Logically this would increase ownership rates (since the landlords exiting the market will over-supply houses, lowering the price), which will remove pressure from the renting market, lowering the price.

Landlords leaving the market reduces supply, which will increase price.

A landlord leaving the market doesn't take the house with him.

Landlords leaving the market sell to people who previously had to rent and can now own their own house. Since many landlords leave at once, people can buy houses cheaply. Where is the problem in my logic?

And are they going to take their existing houses and beam them up to the Starship Enterprise? Or are they going to let them rot empty, while paying those same taxes and maintenance on them?

... Or do you think they will let them out for whatever they can get?

Houses aren't a soccer ball, you can't pack them up and leave if you don't like the playing field.

It's weird how whenever houses are the topic of discussion, people seem to think that economics should only work in one direction.

For existing buildings, landlords who lose money on them will stop doing maintenance and repairs, and they'll eventually become slums or will be abandoned. Look what happened to Detroit.

Additionally, no new housing will be built.

> For existing buildings, landlords who lose money on them will stop doing maintenance and repairs, and they'll eventually become slums or will be abandoned.

Ah, so because expenses temporarily exceed revenue on your million-dollar investment, you'll just let it rot down to zero?

What happened in Detroit was a collapse in demand of housing, caused by a collapse in employment. That collapse and reduction in the tax base lead to a death spiral, as a city's infrastructure costs are fixed - which pushed further marginal demand out.

You know what didn't happen in Detroit? A housing collapse because of a 20-cent-per-thousand-dollar property tax levy.

No town can survive a collapse in employment. The coastal cities with 11 job openings for 10 people who are fighting over 9 apartments aren't suffering from that problem, and it's ridiculous to point at Detroit as a comparison.

And if you think a 3% tax increase for landlords is 'massive', how would you describe the 20-40% increase in rents? If the poor landlords shouldn't be subjected to such a horrific thing, shouldn't the tenants be protected from ballooning rents?

> Additionally, no new housing will be built.

If only the city could step in and ensure that new housing would be built. Oh wait, that's the purpose of the housing levy.

Investors vacating the housing market is exactly what we need to stop the runaway inflation of house prices.

Housing investors still either live in the house themselves or rent it out to people who live in them. Getting rid of them won't change the price. The price is driven by the supply and the people who want to live there (demand).

They are the cities that have to make up the slack for the rest of the country not pulling its weight, and exporting its poverty and problems to them.

Or they are the cities with the worst housing affordability problems.

Or they are just the cities that have these public services. Not a lot of people complaining about homeless people riding the subway in rural Texas, because rural Texas doesn't have a subway.

----

Seattle, by the way, got a 'prosecute everything and restart the war on drugs' city attourney and a 'sweep the homeless away' mayor.

Strangely enough, neither policy has done shit to resolve any of the problems. Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone...

It took the state legislature to fix the city's problem (by banning SFH zoning, and hitting NIMBYs over the head with a stick), and maaaaybe we'll see the fruits of that policy ripen in a decade or two.

Seattle ended up changing to those policies because of their previous “let vagrants do whatever and spend endless amounts on services” failures — and people who pay taxes were understandably upset that negative results were produced for huge sums of money. The situation improved for average people after those changes.

> Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone

Yes, everyone is better off when parks are drug vagrant free and possible to be enjoyed by everyone — even if that policy doesn’t solve every problem.

Toxic empathy is saying you should destroy society and afflict everyone with suffering because you haven’t yet created Utopia — and I think the responses to me show why excluding other voices under the guise of “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG” failed in cities like Seattle.

You need both law and order and compassion for society to flourish. The only part we agree on is that cleaning up the mess is a decade scale challenge — especially now that toxic empathy has taken Seattle down the wrong path for the past decade.

> “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG”

If you're going to make fun of people like this, you shouldn't expect thoughtful responses.

So in Seattle you house the homeless in a giant Rem Koolhaas terrarium. There are worse things.

When I lived there, I didn't know many other software folks who used the public library system at all. Not because of smelly homeless people. It was just more convenient for them to buy anything they wanted to read/watch/listen to.

And there were lots of convenient branch libraries for kids - better than trekking to the terrarium downtown anyway.

The vast bulk of books are available used on Amazon for a couple dollars & shipping. I buy a lot that way. The local public library doesn't have the books I want to read. But the library does have DVDs I can borrow and watch, and music CDs I can borrow and see if I like. Netflix will parcel out a miniseries one disk at a time, while I can borrow the box set from the library and binge it.

> Instead of staying true to their goals of education, libraries have become daytime homeless shelters driving away their original patrons.

Previously, there had been private libraries for the elite. Carnegie libraries, making public libraries widespread across the country, were known by uppity folks for attracting "undesirables." People of all races, genders, and social statuses were welcome there. Those were the original patrons. That was Carnegie's goal.

https://www.npr.org/2013/08/01/207272849/how-andrew-carnegie...

> Schools have opted out of their obligations to provide the best educations to the public instead tailoring the education to the least capable

Our current school system was designed to create compliant factory workers. They're still making an uncreative, docile workforce, but where are the jobs?

https://qz.com/1314814/universal-education-was-first-promote...

> The societies of North America have totally abandoned the middle class and

They've totally abandoned the the middle class and the lower class. That's why we're having these problems. Pitting middle class against lower class allows the upper class to get away with sucking every last penny out of society and abandoning the greater good.

How does that reconcile with Washington State just passing a 7% tax on capital gains exceeding $250,000?

Comes far from even closing the gap on the net favorable tax treatment of capital gains which itself favors the wealthy, but, sure, “totally abandoned” the classes below the haut bourgeoisie may be a slight exaggeration; there is some concern which occasionally manifest is some small policy measures.

Income is not taxed in Washington, so there is no favorable treatment of capital gains. Quite the reverse.

Washington is not separate from the United States, and income is taxed in the United States, and 7% at $250k plus doesn’t close the gap between it and normal (or, a fortiori, specifically labor, which has additional taxes on top of general income tax) income.

The fact that Washington wasn’t further widening that gap between labor capital taxes by taxing regular income before adopting its capital gains tax is tangential.

The top 1% pay 42.3 percent of federal income tax receipts.

So what?

“federal income tax” is only about 2/3 of federal taxes on income, and the other 1/3 is the much more bottom-weighted payroll tax.

And in any case, yes, high end earners of normal income (which can include some of the top 1%, ~$700k non-capital income isn’t unheard of) get heavily taxed; capital income is favored, not high non-capital income.

Payroll taxes are dedicated to pay for Medicare and Social Security programs. The amount you get in old age is directly proportional to how much you paid in (with a formula that favors lower earners via “bend points”), so its disingenuous to just lump it all in with regular federal income taxes.

> Payroll taxes are dedicated to pay for Medicare and Social Security programs.

Yes, and doing that as a dedicated levy on labor rather than general revenue is a policy choice. It doesn't somehow not count as a tax.

> The amount you get in old age is directly proportional to how much you paid in

No, its not. Especially not for Medicare.

Yes, sure, for both the benefits are weighted more towards lower-income earners (in other words, they get back much more, on average, than they paid in). I don’t know how that supports the thesis that those with lower income are overtaxed compared to those with higher incomes.

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