Students in Massachusetts will get free lunch and breakfast at school thanks to a new 4% tax put on people who earn more than $1 million.
We need different terms for people who HAVE a million dollars and people who MAKE a million per year. Lots of people will read this millionaire’s tax and think it will apply to them when they are nearing retirement since they finally have a million dollars after saving all their life.
That’s what the campaign to quash the bill did. That, and tried to convince people that they might have a single multi-million-dollar transaction in their life (like selling a large successful business) and have to pay an extra 4% on it.
Always a push to get the “temporarily embarassed millionaire” to support the reach. “Yeah, yanno. My little lawmowing operation that makes me $20,000 coild sell for over a million and then I’m fucked”
Ah, the Philip J. Fry mentality
“someday I might be rich, and then people like me better watch their step”
It’s easier to sell a tax hike if you know exactly where it’s going :)
Unless you’re Waukesha, Wisconsin, where they specifically voted to stop giving kids handouts (i.e. free lunch). Because, you know, kids should work for their food or something instead of using their energy to learn.
probably the same people that say abortion is murdering kids…
I mean, cheap labor has to come from somewhere… Where do you find empoverished people to exploit if you don’t force births?
If you add underage labour liberalisation to that, you get a bingo!
Of course it is. But you know, kids lives only really matter up until they are born. At that point the kids, their parents and their livelihoods and happiness…all that can fuck right off.
kids just don’t want to work anymore these days. they’re too busy with their avocados and ipad games. meanwhile the child unemployment rates are at historical highs. won’t someone think of the economy?
💀
“It’s about time these kids had some skin in the game!”
-Some Republican Somewhere I’m sure.
Waukesha County is by far the most conservative in the state, and has been playing a massive role in destroying our state’s democratic process for a few decades now.
Another fun fact about it is that they’ve been trying for years to glom onto the Lake Michigan watershed, which, geographically, it is not a part of. They want to straight up take our water, which they do not need, in exchange for nothing whatsoever of any real value.
Yeah it’s a cesspool that way.
I live in the mke area and when looking for housing Waukesha was a tempting area because of how much more house you can get for the money, but I just don’t think I can handle living there. Not to mention I want my kids going to schools in a community that gives a shit about kids and their education.
It’s not a free lunch. It’s just your taxes going to something you actually benefit from.
No shit. It literally says where the money that pays for it comes from right in the headline.
I think the point of the comment was that in the last few decades the rhetoric has been: “Taxes bad” “Government provides free bus passes to underprivileged people” Always divorcing taxes from their positive effects on society. Maybe they were trying to fight that by directly uniting the fact that the government is just a coordinator, collecting taxes and using it to buy lunches for kids.
“4% tax on millionaires pays for breakfasts and lunches for all school children” unlike the above example, is a sentence that reminds people that taxes are what provides these many positive social benefits they recieve, not “the government”, not “for free”, and that taxes aren’t always “bad”.
Or maybe I’m projecting!
Yeah but le redditor needs to show us how much smarts he is.
Of course it is free for the children.
Which I’m ok with
“Nothing is free. Free isn’t actually a word!”
Kids don’t pay taxes. It’s a free lunch.
This comment is just an extreme lack of understanding of any tax system there is, which is wild.
Something that is free for one person will necessarily cost money for another. But for the kids, it’s free.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t think you believed in free lunch.
Ok?
Imagine being this fucking pedantic. This place is legit reddit 2.0 and that’s a bad thing.
This comment is just an extreme lack of understanding of millionaires
For the children and the families of the children, it is free
I can’t believe you have the upvoted comment.
Removed by mod
Your first sentence describes your own comment.
Every time you complain, I will post a meme you wouldn’t understand and a comment mocking your boomer ass.
Most of everything is free for kids. What’s your point?
Free school meals should be a given since our taxes should go to what our elected officials have so thoughtfully decided where to apply them. What no one rarely brings up let alone tries to solve is the disgusting and unsafe food that the local, state and fed officials decide to make available. There’s too much politics in cafeteria food. They should focus there budget in getting healthy food not the cheapest, uncles cousins or corporate friend contract.
Yes, we 100% should be using our school kitchens as kitchens, not just reheating premade “GFS Food.”
Reason why #3648393847 why representative democracy simply does not work.
When making that argument, you’ll want to add a few examples.
Otherwise people think you mean dictatorship.
Switzerland has a direct democracy and they are doing perfectly fine.
The vast majority (262 out of 351) of Massachusetts municipalities are direct democracy. A further 31 are near enough that it’s not hard to be elected if you run (my precinct has empty rep. slots every year).
Also in contrast to the rest of the US, there are no unincorporated areas (“county land”) in Massachusetts. Counties aren’t a useful demarcation here. Everything is a Town or a city.
I think you might be confusing representative democracy with capitalism.
Nah, I mean representative democracy. Trusting someone else to work in your best interests never works. The only one who has your best interests in mind is you, if that.
Thanks for the article, learning aboutnthe positives.
On another note…
In February, President Joe Biden urged lawmakers to pass his billionaires’ tax proposal, which would impose a minimum 20% tax on households with a net worth of more than $100 million.
It is a start, but may be too late in the game for the blue administration for 2024.
I have also heard of other positive things being pushed, in my bubble of politics.
Might be due to all the military conflicts around the world and union strikes, that are also starting to ramp up in the US.
Great post on the positive news. Thanks again!
I think it’s fair to wonder why policy changes like those are being pushed so late into the presidents term. Seems like primaries and elections drive policy more than anything else.
He’s been pretty busy. The Inflation Reduction Act, the Safer Communities Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a decent list for the first 2 years in office. A lot isn’t super progressive but it’s unlikely the ideas you’re hearing about now will pass in their most progressive form either. But you have to start pretty far left to get anything even moderately left of center.
Yes, you are right!
It is always the go-to for politicians, I see it workong less and less as more people get informed.
Cool, but you know who isn’t getting a free lunch now? Those millionaires who worked so hard for that money. What have those kids done to earn theirs?
/s, to be clear. I wish these cool places to live (e.g, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan) weren’t so fucking cold. Why can’t there be a nice liberal southern state?
There is. It is California and a 500sqft house cost $1000000000
Uhh, the cold isn’t the problem. It’s too expensive to live here and the real fix for housing (forced upzoning by the State) is a political nonstarter.
But I will gladly shovel snow versus face the heat, humidiity, snakes, bears, tornadoes, severe hurricanes, drought, wild fires, car oriented development, and whatever other nightmares the rest of the country has to offer. Just get a good coat, LL Bean boots, and a snowblower. It’s not that bad.
But but that’s socialism
Slightly off topic. A lot of public schools already get free meals thanks to federal education dollars. The school lunches are free in my area because of this, even though the (red) state won’t act.
The state has attempted to kill off those dollars in the past.
The GOP is dead set on continuing something called “school lunch debt.” Let that phrase sink in for a moment.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1167163106
https://jacobin.com/2023/05/universal-free-school-meals-program-act-lunch-debt-opposition
Common sense rules in these blue areas.
[https://www.investmentnews.com/welcome-to-the-millionaires-tax-240997](An overview for those that don’t know anything about this.)
a 4% surtax on individual earnings above $1 million. This new provision, which comes into effect from Jan. 1, 2023, will be layered over the preexisting 5% state income tax rate.
Colorado did something similar last year as well.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1134832752/colorado-free-school-lunch-results-measure-midterms
Good. Now slap a 0 to the end of that 4, and then double it.
Made me curious what the total tax rate would be in Mass. Apparently it has a flat 5% income tax, plus 4% millionaires tax, plus federal rate for income over about 578k is 37%, so altogether it’s 46% for income over a mil in Mass.
Definitely think it should be higher for such wildly high income. Also disappointed to see for being a relatively progressive state Mass has a flat rather than progressive income tax.
Definitely think it should be higher for such wildly high income.
Higher, nothing. There should be a rate above which it’s taxed at 100%. No one needs to be as rich as Musk or Zuckerberg or Bezos.
And yet you guys wonder why millionaires move to Texas. You increase the taxes above a certain number and they’ll take all their wealth, consumption and their taxes to another state.
Taxes should be sustainable. High taxes on rich people aren’t sustainable because they’ll leave taking whatever taxes they pay and whatever consumption they do which contributes to the economy.
The wealth that they hoard? The consumption they import? Let me guess, they’re also “job creators.”
And no millioneir will keep his money in a state where those are the tax rates. If you make it too high you literally get nothing.
Awww. Too bad for them. What will we do without millionaires hoarding their wealth?!
No, he’s saying they will keep it. Just in a way that mass gets literally nothing
So either they will get a lot of money or things won’t be any different except millionaires won’t be there hoarding wealth?
I’m not seeing a downside yet.
I think they mean the millionaires will find other ways to hoard it to avoid tax levels they won’t stomach. Fair? No. Reality? Probably.
Then they go to fucking jail
As your income increases, your ability to reduce taxable income also increases. The goal of the state is basically to target the lazy.
In other words, “Don’t provide children with free meals.”
I’m pretty sure at an 80% rate the millionaires would just spend the rate moving, out of state or out of country depending on how far reaching it was.
And nothing of value was lost…
Like, oh no, what would a state do without their money hoarding exploiters that alredy contribute less than the bare minimum???
And worse - if everyone decided to make these laws, where will the poor millionaires escape to then???Oh, won’t someone think of the millionaires!!!11
And nothing of value was lost…
Except the taxable income you wanted to tax?
I don’t want to tax, I want to eat.
You mean the money that we already aren’t getting?
Oh look, someone else who doesn’t understand how progressive tax brackets work. Their effective tax rate wouldn’t be 80%, only income above a certain (very high) number would be taxed at 80%.
That’s exactly how that would go.
why didn’t that happen from 1944 through 1963 when the top marginal tax rate went over 90%?
People found all sorts of loopholes to not pay that. Nobody paid that much taxes.
they didn’t move away.
lots of people paid that much in taxes (you have to look up how marginal rates work they don’t just lose 90% of their wealth each year) and we built huge libraries and free public pools and public schools had art classes and gym classes with teachers and supplies. Hospitals had EXTRA nurses and ambulances were well staffed.
Don’t fall for the lies of the rich. We were WAY BETTER OFF financially as a society when they were paying their fair share. They need to be taxed again so we can go back to building public services for people again.
Nobody paid that much taxes.
Do you have any evidence for that claim, or are you just stating it with certainty because it feels right to you?
Nobody paid 90% of their total income because that’s not how tax brackets work.
Then we’d be rid of them at least
4% of WHAT is taxed?
Yeah, most millionaires have no profit and they’re in the red. We need even more taxes on small aircrafts that are used for private charter, more taxes on purchasing and operating helicopters, taxes on the kerosene not used in military scope.
Taxes on luxury cars that only the billionaire’s afford. Every car over 150.000 USD should have a 100% tax to feed the homeless and the kids
That’s great news! No kid should ever be hungry at school, especially when they really are legally forced to be there!
Not to discourage continued bleeding of the rich, but I wonder if this is the right way to go about it. Theoretically, we should already have a lot of laws on the books that slam millionaires for their advantageous position. But, their budget also allows for accountants that shift and hide that money, sometimes on a questionable basis of legality.
Could one prong on this assault be to increase the IRS’ operating budget, so that they’re able to track down and stop more of these tax haven shenanigans?
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough. This is working, let it work. If they start avoiding it the rules can be changed.
Exactly. When I supported this, there was that wince of “this won’t get the people it really needs to hit”… but it does enough.
And tbh, I know some wealthy fucking people who legitimately don’t cross the line. $1M/yr is a lot of bloody money. That means if I found a way to “only” make $900,000/yr, I’m immune to this tax.
Also, anyone hiring for $900,000/yr?
Right? I hear this all the time about inheritance tax. Im more than willing to pay inheritance tax, meaning I’m getting like $3.5 Million to start.
It’s not bleeding anyone. My father was an airline flag carrier captain in Europe. He made what he called “an obscene paycheck”. When taxes came around, he would say: look at what they are taking from me, I must be making a ton!
And most likely he was paying more then than someone earning the same amount does today. We’re not even close to scrapping our way back out of society being profoundly imbalanced towards the wealthy.
Could one prong on this assault be to increase the IRS’ operating budget, so that they’re able to track down and stop more of these tax haven shenanigans?
Well you could simply start by plugging up a few questionable tax loopholes.
Whether or not the reason the IRS can’t collect the tax revenue to be able to provide certain services is because of them not having enough money, I don’t know.
But if you’re issue is with certain laws on taxation, it would makes more sense to deal with those first.
