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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

Just over 57% of US households are already paying zero or negative federal income tax. This scheme amounts to a giveaway of an extra sum to them, rather than an increase in taxes to them (except for the tiny sliver who are between $0 and -$52 per adult per year in federal income taxes).

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True... up to a point. I'm not a fan of the parent so this isn't a defense of the idea but saying "income taxes" is a bit of a cheat. Taxes are taxes. So, what percent of of households pay taxes? If you look at not just income but sales taxes, sin taxes,payroll taxes and pass-through taxes I'd bet the answer is 100% or close to it. And it's probably more then $1 a week.

That said, the idea of adding an optional poll tax lottery seems dopey.

Dopey or not, the question I'm attempting to raise is whether it has desirable properties compared to our current state-run lotteries. In a just world, perhaps this wouldn't be necessary. But I don't know how to make the world a just one, sadly.

Correct, most of the US does not make enough money to need to pay taxes. This proposal would actually decrease that number, because receiving $300k in one year (if we tax it as income) means you will need to contribute taxes that year...maybe they can even use part of their net earnings to contribute $60 to the fund, so someone else will have enough money to pay taxes the following year.

One positive aspect of this is that, assuming we taxed these payments as income, it would reduce the deficit by around $2.5B/yr, or around 0.1% of the deficit.

Payroll tax currently caps at $147k, if we remove that limit it would reduce that deficit even further. This theoretical giveaway policy is a drop in the bucket compared to many other tax policies that exist right now.

Could make it a payroll tax which everyone with a job pays.

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