| Why would they pay income tax, if the point is to redistribute the money collected back to them? Seems like instead of collecting $x amount of tax from them in order to give it back in benefits, we could just not have them pay tax (which is the case currently). The real answer is - raise their wages, and then they will be paying more in federal taxes (just like the upper quartiles are). USA lower tier professionals (Doctors, Lawyers, Programmers, have a anticompetitive racket - they should all get a 20-30% net haircut in salary, tech should be regulated, we should increase admission to med-school and allow nurse practitioners to serve as doctors, etc.). I say this as someone who benefits greatly from the current system, but also realizes how fucked up it is. Finance people should be taxed out the wazoo - watching stocks tick up and down on the market is a waste of time and most of them defraud people anyway, estate and wealth tax should be a thing, if they try to denounce citizenship to get away, immediate tax of 50% of [unrealized] profits (we currently do 20%). Even that wouldn't get us back to how things were in the 1960s, but it would at least be closer, and probably makes things better in the mean time. |
Programmers get paid a lot because the market is extremely competitive. Doctors get paid a lot because healthcare in the US is essentially one massive cartel and incredibly inefficient as a result. In most countries, doctors and programmers make similar salaries.