re: #191 Obdicut

A depressingly large number of people don’t understand how progressive taxation works, for example, and think that it’s possible under normal progressive taxation (leaving aside deductions etc.) for your take-home income to go down when you earn enough to go into the next tax bracket.

Even more depressing, a lot of those people, when corrected, when they understand they were wrong, do not change their positions or thinking on taxation one bit. It’s not formed from rational response, but from cultural and kinship in-grouping, I think.

Hard to fight human nature, but it’s possible.

That can actually happen to the working poor. For instance, when your income goes above the threshold for food stamps or other assistance programs. A $100 a month raise may cut you off from $400 of food stamps.

This really ought to be reformed. Benefits should taper off, not simply cut off. No more than 25 cents of benefits should disappear per extra dollar earned. Maybe the slope should be yet more gradual.