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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> just further erodes the liberty of private citizens

How does taxation do this? Taxation is a mechanism for funding the maintenance of an ordered society which enables extreme wealth creation. It's the wealthiest citizens who benefit the most from law enforcement, infrastructure, and national defence.

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Taxation is well-acknowledged a trade-off between liberty and social responsibility.

This is a new type of tax that has never been implemented in the US. If the goal is to reduce poverty, it won't do that. So what is the goal?

> If the goal is to reduce poverty, it won't do that.

[citation needed]

Do you really think an extra $100B-$200B added to federal revenue of currently ~$3.6T (5%) will have any noticeable effect on poverty?

Yes, because the amount the US spends on welfare is a smaller fraction of the whole budget. For example, the US spends around ~$100 billion on food assistance [1]. Wikipedia estimates that all non-medical poverty assistance accounts for around $400 billion of the US budget [2]. Increasing expenditure by 10-20% (or even 5%) will almost certainly have a noticeable effect on poverty.

[1] https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/budget-graphic.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...

Yeah I don't think increasing welfare is really the solution to ending poverty. Lots of evidence that welfare actually prolongs poverty, not to mention the waste endemic to bureaucratic administration. How about instead of taxing individuals we tax corporations to incentivize paying their workers more?

> Lots of evidence that welfare actually prolongs poverty

[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty

These statistics don't tell the whole story and often are misleading. While increasing the number of welfare recipients may decrease poverty stats for paper-pushing bureaucrats, on the ground you're increasing the number of people who are dependent on the govt for subsistence which isn't viable in the long-term.

It's been shown that a comfortable reliance on welfare disincentivizes becoming independent again. Especially when welfare recipients have a higher income than minimum wage. Any rational actor will have a hard time transitioning to minimum wage work at the risk of losing welfare when income from welfare is higher. This is plainly obvious https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/states-welfare-recipients...

Would you be in favor of adding a time-limit to welfare eligibility to disincentivize long-term reliance on welfare?

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