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0 points151557mo ago0 comments

Basic math would show you that the vast majority of citizens cannot cover the taxable Federal spend: $6.4T/340M persons = $18823/individual. ~$20k in taxes are paid at ~$100k in income. The US taxation regime is highly progressive, obviously the vast majority of the country is not earning $100k annually.

> Evidence actually points in the opposite direction:

I was speaking about the United States: can you find a study that somehow documents illegal immigrant (by definition: undocumented) persons' productivity?

Folks brought over on legal immigration visas likely do make more money (and contribute more) than the average American: that's why we have these programs for 'exceptional' individuals. Nobody is going through the effort (nor can they afford the costs) of obtaining lawful visas for construction labor or meat processing staff.

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Terr_7mo ago

Two problems in the math there:

1. If the entire federal government spend became supported solely by by Income Tax, that means all the other federal taxes would vanish. That other half [0] is way too large ignore when imagining what an alternate-universe American's wages and burden might look like.

2. Dividing by 340m means including the ~75m below age 18 [1] and I don't think we should expect day-old newborns to pay income taxes.

That said, this breakdown [2] may be useful for visualizing, particularly the two-stack diagram showing share-of-earnings versus share-of-taxes for different subgroups.

[0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61185

[1] https://data.unicef.org/how-many/how-many-children-under-18-...

[2] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

gruez7mo ago

Read my comment more carefully. "Exactly" implies I agree with you, and so do the charts, which shows that immigrants are either a net drain on public finances, or only a subset are net contributors (and therefore implies some sort of screening is needed).

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