A Reverse Income Tax: A Bold Replacement for Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps, and others

[quakerboy]

49. They already are pretty near meaningless

Here's the thing... If you don't work hard, there's always someone else who will. We have an overabundance of labor as compared to the needs of our country. So the level of acceptable work remains an issue for you and your employer to work out, same as it is now.

The having a job itself is tied to the money(with the exception of those who are unable to work). All my idea does is level things out, while still leaving that 25% as your incentive do do better, to earn more, etc.

The detriment of your plan is that it inherently goes against human nature as well. Human nature is not a single faceted thing. In the case of your plan, those paying into the system will decry it and attempt to destroy it. And they will be joined by the many others who have been convinced that it is unfair to take cash from those hard working "job creators" and give it to the lazy poor.

This is why Republicans are still in existence as a party, despite their clear plans to destroy SSI, Unemployment, Medicare, medicaid, and all our other social safety programs. Just about everyone, even those many republicans who pay no income tax themselves and live off government programs, believe they are better, they are good, and those lazy other(welfare queens, blacks, youngsters, pick your preferred scapegoat) are milking the system. Make it flat, across the board. You take away the "unfairness" that they like to complain of. You nuke a significant portion of their talking points all at once. Flat tax. Give the tax money back to the people. Etc.

It becomes a lot harder to rationalize complaining about someone else getting money from a program if you, and your mother and your cousin and your favorite WWE star and your favorite NASCAR driver and your favorite musician and your elected state representative and your pastor all get exactly the same payment from exactly the same program.