1988
Now that's some devotion!
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
1988 points (98.7% liked)
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I don't need the government to feed my kids. But at the moment they are taxing poor workers to do so. Is that a good idea?
So maybe tax the rich? As long as there is a single person who can't afford to feed their kids, the government should feed them.
Ok, done. But don't feed the rich too. Deal?
Yes, this helps poor workers because their kids get free meals. This isn't raising taxes on the poor.
Where does the money come from?
Everyone. Literally everyone. When you're poor, you get the money back on your taxes.
How about we dont take the money in the first place
Because this is a social good that results in ROI over decades. If something is not immediately profitable, it is difficult for the private market to be leveraged to find an optimal solution. Situations like that are typically where government has to step in.
You don't need the government's help. I happen to know a lot of families DO. There are kids right now, in the richest fucking country in the world, who might only have one substantial meal in their day, and that's their school lunch.
Great. Give the free food to them
the solution isn't to stop feeding them altogether, but to tax those who actually wouldn't miss any of the money used for that.
see also: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
How rich do I have to be before I am one of the taxes?
a grossly oversimplied suggestion i would have is 10% of the income, starting from a 10 million USD/month income, up 15 percentual points for each order of magnitude, so 25% if someone gets 100m/mo, 55% if 10b/mo, 70% if 100b/mo etc.
assuming all these people properly pays accurately, that would be about enough to feed people in and out of school.
I don't think your books will balance. There are not enough billionaires to find this. Also, they will all disappear, I bet they have good lawyers.
And I bet if implemented that threshold would come down and down and down. Let's talk to a prosperous Ukrainian farmer in the interwar period. Sent to a goo-lag for having a sewing machine perhaps?
i smell double bind. say nothing and the food is taken away, with parents being forced to spit up more money for food. say something and rich people will be sad, which means no money added to pay for food, which will be used to justify taking away the food anyway.
what's your solution then? you may not need the government to pay for your kids' food, but there are people who still needs it. you gotta feed people somehow and be careful not to fall into ableist policy (e.g only people who quote unquote, "works hard", gets the food).
pretty sure the labor of validating all the applications, surveyling who does and does not get the food, and pushing for the othering of people who have applications as well as those who doesn't but still get the food, is gonna cost more than the actual food, being mostly transportation, cooking and cleaning.
may as well be a culture shock that the idea of restricting food access to people is in any way appealing to you at all.
poor workers aren't being taxed. The US has a heavily progressive tax system. Anyone making less than 40-50k pays almost nothing in taxes as a percentage of income, as compared to someone making 300k a year.
These meals help the poor and middle class the most and are paid for mostly by high earners.