So unemployment insurance should cost more if you earn more. What about health insurance? Car insurance? Starbucks latte? All goods and services? Would it not be just and fair if all prices were relative to income rather than absolute?
... you'll notice that taken to absurdity this is the same statement as "everyone should be paid the same". And that's been tried.
Government programs are not the same as commercial products. I have no issue with unemployment or health insurance costing a percentage of one's income.
Let's also add fines and traffic tickets to the list of things that ought be more expensive as one becomes wealthier please.
Why not? California been trying to implement income based pricing for privately operated utilities like PG&E for years. It is already partially implemented for electricity.
It seems to me like government programs is a poor delineation, as government can pass a law to extend its own scope.
TANF and SNAP are very different than what I am discussing. That are wealth transfers from general taxes to those in need. Very different than wanking into a public grocery store and seeing different prices based on your income.
Where I am, most grocery stores have two prices for items on the shelves. One "regular" price, and a second, lower price that only applies if one is paying with SNAP.
That taken to an extreme, this idea is the same as "from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their needs". Which sounds great, until you realize that this incentivizes needs and disincentivizes abilities.
It really is not. To see why not, imagine how you'd feel if you had a coworker who would come to work drunk (if they came at all). They would still be paid the same as you. Your only recourse would be to talk to this person as a "meeting of the peers", which they would proceed to ignore.
This was reality under the Soviet system, and was one of the main reasons it failed.
Now, I understand why I am getting all the cheeky responses and the downvotes. People are hurting. Capitalism in the US is currently failing under a different failure mode. The capitalists are relentless optimizers, even past the point where optimizing their metrics stops making sense. Their metric is "extract as much wealth from the populace as possible", and it's gotten to the point where the people are disillusioned, and very soon there will be nothing left to take.
... you'll notice that taken to absurdity this is the same statement as "everyone should be paid the same". And that's been tried.