Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is pushing a plan to hike taxes for the super-rich, top 1 percent of earners to guarantee a basic income for everybody on the bottom end.
In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything’ session Tuesday, the chair of the anti-poverty Economic Security Project which also launched Tuesday — said under his plan, every American making less than $50,000 a year would get a monthly stipend of $500.
"We know that when people get modest amounts of cash, they use it smartly, their kids stay in school longer, health outcomes improve, and they're happier," Hughes said.
"We have the power to rebalance our economic system and provide more opportunity to all — we just have to develop the political will to do it."
To pay for the proposal, Hughes suggests bringing tax rates on the top 1 percent of earners in the country to 50 percent, which he says is in line with the historical average.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates the top 1 percent of earners paid a tax rate equivalent to around 34 percent of their income in 2017.
The program would cost just under $300 billion, Hughes said.
"If we can afford tax cuts for corporations and the one percent, let's not pretend that we can't afford a boost to the bottom lines of working Americans who haven't seen a raise in decades," he said.
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