[CamB]

Island - not with the same standard of living.

Personally, I only work about 30-40 hours a week at the moment. That is because I am lazy and I have the option. The fact that I face a (top) marginal tax rate of 39% on the additional income I might earn if I work harder is completely irrelevant. I want to have the free time more than I want to earn heaps more income. Even at 39%, the additional tax is not the relevant factor to me.

I'm serious, think about the consequences of a nice fat tax cut for you. The way the world works, if you get it tax money back, someone else misses out. The debate should only be about what minimum standard of living people are entitled to.

To address other, specific comments:

Curt In a free society, it's nobody's business who "needs" the money more.

Its not a free society - in your "free society" you will enjoy all of the glories of true poverty. Its all fine and well to say "if someone needs to eat, they can get a job". Will they? What if they can't through illness? Because they are a teenage mother and have a daughter with no father?

Oh wait, I hear the answer already - she shouldn't have got pregnant. But she did. You want for mother and baby to go without food so you can have a lower tax rate?

drop out in the 10th grade to buy a Camaro and go to work at Hardee's

He's not really the problem. In your low tax utopia, he would probably get by. He'd live in a slum (I assume you'd be taking away any accommodation supplement he needs), but you'd be ok, because you live behind a big fence.

Poverty sucks, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone - whether it is through their own mistakes or not. You guys basically take the viewpoint that it is ok that poverty sucks because that is an incentive to climb out of it. Screw that.