[notahacker]

> This argument has been false every time anyone has ever made it.

The top 1% pay around 40% of income tax in the US. That's around the same as the consumption share of the top income quintile (and that's with it being income taxes and not consumption taxes they try to avoid). So the near-universally accepted proposition that that switching to consumption taxes shifts part of the tax burden from the ultra-rich to everybody else is obviously not "false".

I feel like this discussion has been something of a waste of time; it's impossible to engage with someone whose argument depends upon baseless denials of established fact even in response to a post which ended by gently hinting they should probably look at the statistics.

I can't see any reason why you still seem unable to grasp the fact that net increases in benefits to non-working people paying no income-tax and little in the way of capital gains or indirect taxes (including, for example, homeowners living off savings) are paid for by increases to current period (net)taxes on working people, not historic tax takes (from times when the early-retirees might have paid income tax but not at levels set to subsidise a UBI for the wider population). It really, really doesn't all net out. And whilst I understand the support for the extreme position of insisting the taxpayer subsidise the lifestyles of tens of millions more economically inactive people might hinge upon the rhetorical device of pretending they're on the cusp of starvation despite their disinterest in applying for jobs and benefits, I still find it unfathomable you're also arguing that [assumed] in-kind services provided by homemakers should be funded not by proportionate support from their grateful recipients but by an arbitrarily large unconditional bill to the state. I have a feeling we're not going to come to agreement on this...