The most effective economic policy to help the impoverished is to tax the rich and give the money directly to the poor.

The only reason this isn't common sense is because the rich have fought it for millennia.

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neilwilson 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The poor will then give it back to the rich in higher prices for the same amount of stuff.

The only real way to tax the rich is to ensure that the rich have to compete for workers by paying competitive wages

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micromacrofoot 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This makes the false assumption that all the money given to the poor go back into high margin goods that the rich profit from? it ignores competition, ignores productivity gains by a lesser impoverished population, ignores the impact on small businesses...

there are all sorts of losses inherent to poverty that shouldn't be discounted, like the inability to save via bulk purchasing, transportation, high cost credit, preventative spending, time losses...

in theory eliminating the poor by literally giving them money could have an impact that makes society better for everyone... it's very reductive to assume there's just one big knob that the rich can turn to get it all back

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jimaway123 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's called inflation. If you helicopter money on people they will bid up the prices of everything that they need. We had an experiment with this just a few years ago.

	▲	micromacrofoot 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		except that the biggest handouts during covid went to businesses, not people... so we didn't really, it was also a very supply constrained economy which was unique to the situation at the very least locking up a trillion dollars with some douchebag isn't a reasonable strategy against inflation

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neilwilson 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The rich own things. They collude. You hit them with costs and they put the price up which is validated by the extra money given to the poor, or by wage suppression as there aren’t enough jobs to go around.

Taxes on the rich are like increased power bills. Businesses pass on costs at a markup.

They can do that because you need a job to eat and they only need to hire if there is a profit to be had.

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t-writescode 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And by making it so that an employee can safely quit at any time without losing their ability to, you know, not get blasted by insane surprise bills - e.g. healthcare.

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IshKebab 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Doubtful. The UK is practically at this point with generous benefits and a very progressive tax curve (you don't pay any tax on the first £12.5k of earnings).

It seems like all it does is lock people into poverty with unreasonably high effective marginal tax rates.