The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

...in America. There are countries that actually fight the oligarchs and tax them until the wealth inequality becomes lesser.

Of course there's no silver bullet and high progressive taxes for the mega-wealthy do have other negative effects. Like people being less motivated to strive. Less capital to invest and less competitive companies born.

But billionaires paying less taxes than the guy sweeping floors at the local mall is absurd. Once you reach a certain threshold of wealth, your taxes actually start going down.

There is actually no sense to put high taxes on ultra wealthy people. They have all means to avoid payment of income/profit taxes at all, no matter of the current tax rate.

That's why poor people pay the highest percentage of their income: they have no choice, no ways to do tax evasion.

> That's why poor people pay the highest percentage of their income

The key word here is income. “Wealth” and “income” tend to be conflated by ostensibly intelligent people who should know better. If I’m granted a million dollars in stock but draw a $20K salary, I’m “wealthy” but not “paying my fair share” because I’ve hardly earned any income for the year.