this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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I agree with him in principle but the "poverty" line hasn't been raised in years. The amount needs to be in the lower middle class bracket. $75-80k is probably good so if you make that much, you won't pay income taxes.
What he and other progressives need to hammer home is that billionaire wealth doesn't help society and in fact hurts it. Money is only useful when it's used. Billionaires literally can lose a million dollars and they won't feel it.
https://www.portangelesfoodbank.org/real-talk/2025/12/5/the-poverty-line-is-a-lie-what-that-means-for-our-community
Poverty is probably closer to $130-150k for a family of four than the $31k calculated by the fed. Mostly because we still calculate the poverty line as "food costs equal to or more than 30% of your take home" and then we pour mountains of money into food subsidies, keeping the poverty line artificially low.
They can dump millions into any political campaign they want. For the avg citizen every dollar has to be carefully rationed.
We also need to fix the welfare cliff. Gaining a raise should always increase the money in your pocket or break even unless you're making a theoretical maximum wage.