[stahtops]

The USA has no negative income tax. There are programs like the EITC which provide benefits to the poor and can be larger than their tax burden depending on the specific circumstances.

The EITC was initially signed into law by Ford (R) and expanded by Reagan (R). Regan apparently called it "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress".

I'm sure you knew all this, so thanks for being honest in this post about the fact that you would like to dismantle this particular social safety net.

Seething comment sounds like projection btw, I'm not mad. The whole point of HN is to have the discussion expand in detail. Seems like it's working:

- Someone generalized - You called them a liar - We found out the generalization wasn't strictly correct, but basically true in spirit: the wealthy received the majority of the benefit, the poor got a small token for the sake of statistics / sound bytes.

[marcusverus]

> The USA has no negative income tax.

They're called refundable tax credits. They result in people being net recipients of the income tax after refunds are paid out. This is a negative income tax.

> Someone generalized - You called them a liar

They didn't "generalize", they made a claim which is literally and undeniably untrue. That is a lie.

> We found out the generalization wasn't strictly correct, but basically true in spirit.

We found that the people he claimed didn't get a tax cut actually got a 30% tax cut. That's an obvious, blatant lie.

[stahtops]

Putting aside for a moment that 30% of nothing is nothing, where are you even getting this idea that someone got a 30% tax reduction?

Look at the plot you shared "Personal Taxes: Federal Income Taxes by Quintiles of Income Before Taxes: Third 20 Percent (41st to 60th Percentile)"

2015: 1854

2016: 1954 (+100)

2017: 2170 (+216)

2018: 2676 (+506)

2019: 2519 (-157)

What about these numbers makes you think that the third quintile on average got a 30% tax cut?