I reckon eventually welfare will collapse, there will be little or much less “fruitful” White middle class to tax. Already in Cali the top 1% pay about 50% of the taxes. I think the rich should pay the more taxes, but eventually they will get fed up and just leave. Worst case scenario is a dystopian future, with Latin America’s social structure, so a White/Whitish elite (top 5%) a Beige people in the middle and a Black/Brown lower/working class….
I hope that does not happen…. But only time will tell….
Welfare or social spending will not collapse. Already things seem to be going in the opposite direction in most of the world, even here in the US, believe it or not. Food stamps were recently expanded and there has been a huge expansion to Medicaid. There is a major project to get homeless veterans off the streets. If you look around at most of the world, most countries are not wiping out their social spending systems. The systems are either flat or possibly growing. Even where they are shrinking as in the US, they are still extensive.
Already in Cali the top 1% pay about 50% of the taxes.
It is always like this. The rich always pay a vastly disproportionate share of taxes under any fair system. And as inequality increases and the gap between rich and poor grows, the rich will pay an increasing share of taxes if the system is still fair.
The US rich won’t leave. They didn’t leave when the highest marginal tax rate was 90%, so why would they leave now?
Worst case scenario is a dystopian future, with Latin Americas Social Structure, so a White/Whitish Elite (top 5%) a Beige people In the Middle and a Black/Brown lower/working class….
Problem is that that is a revolutionary scenario. You either get a hard rightwing regime or you get some sort of populist Left regime with a lot of instability as the Right causes chaos. In the case of the hard right regimes, eventually the Left takes up arms as in Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and in the past in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba and Honduras.
So that system is highly unstable. With a right regime, the Left will be in unrest and causing a lot of chaos with the Right reacting with mass murder. With a left regime, you have Allende-style chaos with middle classes in the streets banging pans, employer lockouts, repeated coup attempts, political assassinations, street riots, and an insurrectionary media.