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Comment by quickthrowman | Hacker News Reader

It could easily be funded by raising the payroll tax cap and leaving the benefits cap in place. High income earners would be subsidizing the program, sounds fair to me after society enabled them to become high income earners.

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> raising the payroll tax cap

I hope a capital-gains tax is considered as part of the mix.

Sure, that would be a great way to fund Social Security and Medicaid. I proposed raising the payroll tax cap simply because it works within the existing framework, but targeting wealth to fund social programs is a good idea too.

I did more digging. You'd have to tap payroll taxes, too. Total taxable capital gains in America are something like 2x the projected annual deficit.

High income earners already subsidize the program. But more importantly, why would you target high income earners instead of targeting the wealthy?

Tax the fuck out of people and do they stop working, or quiet-quit reduce hours/effort?

There are many highly paid essential jobs that society needs. Good luck finding a doctor. How long would transportation or infrastructure last without engineers?

Obviously wouldn't matter for deadwood or bullshit jobs: but we struggle to identify those. You might think Hollywood is unnecessary, but how much of your economy depends on foreign income from unnecessary shit?

No more startups - why bother if there's no reward.

Make Britain great again, by making the US suck!

> after society enabled

You've got causality reversed. Society depends on businesses and workers.

I can't understand how anyone looks at complex systems and thinks "let's just fuck $X". Is it just ignorance?

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