And what if the family doesn’t need to go to the hospital? Sure there’s simple prescription medicine, but I doubt they’re consuming 9,000 dollars worth a year. Just because it costs the government 9,000 dollars to provide the care, mostly because of bureaucratic inefficiency, does not mean that medicaid is valued at 9,000 dollars by the family. I’m sure they would much rather have that money to pay for higher quality food, living arrangements, or education.

I also take issue with your use of the upper bounds of assistance for nearly every example. It is unlikely that a person would receive 10,000 dollars in assistance if they make 30,000 dollars.

FYI, before people react to this in a typical knee-jerk right-wing manner, the point of this is that the current “negotiation” between employer and employee gives the employer most of the power, because the employee is afraid of starvation and homelessness.

If the employee can say “That’s not a decent offer, make me a better offer or forget it”, then the employer has to come back and make a better offer. A guaranteed minimum income sufficient to very basic needs eliminates the element of *duress* from the transaction and makes the market work.

Only if you’re incompetent. Unlike individuals, businesses are taxed on *net* income, not gross income…. if you are taxed on $250,000/year in your business, you actually got $250,000 to play with personally.

Now it’s different if you’re in a partnership or S corp and the partnership earned the money but *didn’t actually pay it out*, but then your problem lies with your *partners* for failing to distribute money which they could have. Be careful who you go into business with.

Bullshit. And that’s a civil response to that. Most such corporations are making *profits*. Large profits. Real *economic profits*. Taxing them more heavily would reduce their *profits*.

They would charge the same amount, because if they charged more, the poor would simply do without their products entirely rather than buying them, and that would make them even less money.

Now, corporations which have a monopoly or cartel position in selling essentials can charge much more (monopoly prices) and they *would* raise their prices…. except that they are *already* raising their prices to the maximum they can get away with, so again an increase in taxes would cut into their profits.

Your argument only applies to companies not making economic profits. This is not the case for giant multinationals for the most part. Admittedly the profits generally go directly into the execs’ pockets….

There’s a strong liberal contingent who would like nothing more than a negative income tax (or government check to everyone every year, like the Alaska Permanent Fund — so people could refuse jobs if they wanted to), would like to have all government programs open to all (no means testing), and so forth.

Having taxation be *progressive*, so that effective marginal rates go *up* as your income goes up, is a core liberal plank.

But we get called names if we try to support these policies, which would solve *ALL* the problems you describe. Usually we’re called “socialists”, without any explanation as to why this is bad.

It is the right-wingers who consistently stop programs like “Medicare for all” or the negative income tax, demanding that money go only to the “deserving poor”…. out of some bizarre belief system having little or nothing to do with economics.

It is fair to criticize wooly-headed members of Congress who want to be liberal but are willing to accept means-testing when that’s the only way right-wingers will vote for a program. It is not reasonable to criticize all liberals for a problem which most liberals are more offended by than you are.

Well, my post was at least civil, IMO.

Maybe I am modeling this incorrectly. I have read the rules that Medicaid and PeachCare phase out at specific income amounts. In my model, you gain a $1,000 of benefits, you lose $9,000 and $12,000 of benefits at two points. For a single mother of two(the assumed household in the model), that is indeed a hell of marginal tax hike.

Whatever your conclusions, this seems to be a policy question about health insurance. From my analysis, the high rates are caused by losing Medicaid and PeachCare. There are tremendous disincentives to earn more for a single mother at those income limits.

If a mother of 2 is getting $30,000 of subsidies that are phased out by the time she is making $50,000 of income she will have to have higher marginal rates over that income range than a single man with no children.

I hope this post qualifies as intelligent and civil.

Thanks.

Yglesias has a link to this instant article here but “would like to see it replicated by someone who’s from someplace more credible than the Mises Institute.”

Corporations can be large and owned by hundreads, thousands and even hundreads of thousands of people.

Therefore it’s reasonable to find ways to limit direct responsibility when nobody is really responsible anyways.

Corporations don’t pay taxes, the consumers and the workers do.

Any taxes forced upon corporations will be passed on to the consumers in the form of higher prices and passed on to the workers in the form of lower wages.

66% of corporations not paying their taxes is outrageous, I demand that 100% of corporations and 100% of individuals DON’T pay taxes.

I earn $30,000 a year and I manage to save $18,000 and I am a POOR manager (in all the meaning of that word), I could save even more money.

So if I would earn $250,000 a year, you would bet I would save at least $175,000. In just 8 years I would be rich.

They guy who earns $250,000 a year and complaints about being broke is a wreckless waste spender.

I bet many of them sold products to the poor”

Never forget the paraphrased “Laws of Thermodynamics”.

Everything is connected to everything.
Everthing has to go somewhere.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. (TANSTAAFL)

These corporations that sold stuff to the (non-working) poor got paid out of public coffers. It is wealth redistribution, plain and simple. Advertising is a tax on the public and the consumers. Corporations are just a financial instrument that protects the owners from direct responsibility; nothing else.

I’m not condemning anyone other than the public. We permit it, vote for it and then whine about it.

So what is the answer?

Education. But this is fundamentally impossible without a grievious reset of the economy. Thrift can only be learned by the masses through the loss of safety nets. This isn’t permissible. The belief systems must be preserved.

So what to do? CYA