If you’re making $20K and now you’re making $25k, you could afford a nicer car, better food, or bigger apartment for sure AND you’d be paying taxes on it too. Which means better schools, roads and fire department.

Automation is already hitting lawyers.

The results of various surveys and polls show that between 60% and 65% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, while less than 15% of Americans have $10,000 or more in savings. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed Study per PolitiFact), the results of which were released in 2014, asked respondents how or…

The poverty line for 2015 was less than $25,000 for a four-person household. I would say that, yes, giving $20,000 to a four-person household ($5,000/person) would change their lives, as they might finally be able to pay off high-interest credit card or other debt (one of the things that most compounds poverty),…

Yes, the system is flawed because money allows you to exert far greater influence into government than those without.

Billionaires do not need to exist, there is no function they provide that cannot be taken up by others once their wealth was spread around.

World class trade schools along with real infrastructure initiatives would do more to lift the boats than any confiscatory tax.

That’s actually my area of work, so I’m sympathetic, but the catch is that: Overtraining forces down wages with a quickness, and you still need somebody to do the employing, and more and more trades are being automated. To speak directly to what you’re saying, turning that money over to the creation of community…

Have you ever been poor? Five thousand dollars is a lot of money for someone living at or below the poverty line, even in the United States.

If you include one more fallacious argument in your post I think you get a gift certificate for free curly fries at Arby’s.

Yeah but if you set a man on fire it will keep him warm for the rest of his life.

Doing the Lord’s work here Mr. Nolan.

Yes. I’m nowhere near the poverty line, but a sudden $5k infusion would be an absolute godsend.

Never underestimate the reflex of Americans to side with rich people and spit on themselves for not being rich.

Not really. It’s just reflecting that as you’ve enjoyed more success, you’ve also used government services more. Who do you think benefits more from our military? Executives at multinational corporations, whose trade routes are guarded by our armed services, or someone making 50k a year?

Thankfully in the real world, a place where neither Hamilton’s polemical writings nor Donald Trump’s policy wonks reside, there is a whole spectrum of choices available to us besides and between “all out capitalism/crony capitalism” and “socialism/communism”.

So don’t tax them at 100%, just tax them at all.

If only there were some middle ground between the two choices Jeff proposes of do nothing or take all their money. Per a 2014 Business Insider article the top 20 percent of the US population controls 83 percent of US GDP. Maybe we could stop putting everything on the middle class, tax the super rich a few additional…

Ah yes, let’s shift the goalposts, in the name of “logic”. Let’s not discuss progressive taxation and billionaires, which is clearly the subject at hand, let’s instead thought experiment this into a situation where a meth addict is legally empowered to stroll into your house and make himself a cheese sandwich.

The scary part is that some people think electing Trump will help the poorest of Americans. SAD!