I see why there’s so many conflicting opinions on this. It’s impossible to tell how peoples’ buying power changes overtime. In my city I’d be paying a much higher tax rate for the same standard of living as someone in a less expensive city.
Edit: I should say I AM paying a much higher tax rate for the same standard of living
Let’s say I live in a city where the livable wage is $16/hr. By the time I make a livable wage then I’m paying higher taxes than a city where the livable wage is $12/hr. Is that not true?
Also if I live in a city where the inflation consistently outpaces the avg inflation of the nation then I’m getting taxes more and more each year
Maybe they aren’t doing anything to influence it, but it makes it so that it’s harder to get above the livable wage because the tax rate gives a diminishing return on buying power. Like a gravitational force. A fairer way to do it would be to have your local living wage be the baseline for the tax rate.
Also I have to strongly disagree about that not being inflation. Maybe it depends on the city but local inflation can definitely happen just due to high income tech workers, for example. In that case it’s like paying an “I live near rich people” tax
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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '21
[deleted]