Because the taxi driver could keep all of his money and still wouldn't make very much.
In my country, from the customer to the persons net paycheck, a bit over half goes to the government (vat, 2x different benefits, income tax).
Every time someone mentiones taxes, the rich and the poor over here, the average (ie. people earning around average income) get taxed more, the rich on paper earn nothing, and the poor get taxed the same (because there's nothing more to take).
I'd much prefer a system where an average joe would pay a lower percantage of taxes (ie. a tax break), and people like bezos would actually get taxed at the same rate instead of paying zero throug loopholes).
The US’s CGT base cost uplift on death is insane, and only does not get repealed because it enables the super rich to never pay tax via the ‘buy borrow die’ strategy.
The US’s carried interest rules for hedge funds and private equity partners are insane and only exist because the affected individuals bribe lawmakers and presidents.
Personally I think LTCG should be taxed as income and not at a flat 20%, but because that might actually work nobody proposes it and our lefties want a "wealth tax" instead.
To be specific: let's say that you own $1.1B worth of stock, $1B of which is unrealized long term capital gains. If you sold it all today, you'd owe $200M. Let's say that you're 40, you spend $5M a year, and you die at 80. So, you need $200M to finance your lifestyle, and then the remainder is a part of your estate. If you just sold $240M today, you'd pay $40M in tax, and had $200M after tax cash in your checking account to spend over the next 40 years. If you instead borrow $5M a year against your stock at very attractive terms like interest rate of 5%, and no payments until your death, you'll owe $200M on interest over these 40 years. Just paying the tax would have saved you $160M! It's even worse if you get more realistic terms, because 5% rate on a personal loan is too good to be true, and you'll need to borrow even more to make the regular payments.
What about the remainder of your estate? Depending on whether you just sell as you go, or borrow to finance your spending, your estate is left with something between $500M and $800M. Guess what, now they owe estate tax, which is 40% of this sum (minus $30M exemption). Oops!
You can avoid the estate tax, though, but the kicker is that all of the ways of doing that do not allow you to step up the basis upon death: they just allow you to avoid the gift tax, but they do little to escape the capital gains income tax. No free lunch here either.
So what does this have to do with income inequality? If you try to make a living from a business and the revenue you get from it is not enough to keep it afloat, what does it say about it's viability and income inequality?
> So why not have the worker get/keep more of his money, instead of giving it to a different group of "others"?
The quote is implying: "rather than tax people and give that money to others, just have people keep the money they make."
My point is that this would not necessarily help the taxi driver much, since he probably doesn't pay much in taxes anyway. His issue is that his wage is not high enough.
One could argue that taxi driving shouldn't exist or should be relegated to some impoverished underclass, or one could argue that the issue is with the taxi driver's lifestyle expectations and not with the low wage, or that taxi drivers should find other employment, thus reducing the supply of drivers and either raising wages or "rightsizing" the driver workforce.
In any case, I don't agree with the parent poster's implication that lowering taxes is a viable alternative to tax-funded universal basic income.
Lowering taxes benefits most those who pay a lot of taxes, and those are the people who are least directly affected by the removal of tax-funded welfare programs. Sending the money to "others" is the point.
Keep in mind that the taxi driver is just a made up example, and I myself am not sold on the idea of universal basic income.