A Teeny Tiny Tax On Millionaires Is Funding Universal School Lunches In Mass, Plus Other Good Stuff!

Turns out we CAN have nice things!

Source: PXFuel

Last week, Massachusetts became the eighth state to offer students universal school lunch. Like so many other progressive ideas, universal free lunch is an overwhelmingly popular program, with 74 percent of voters saying they wanted to keep the early COVID-era provision around forever.

But how is the mystery meat being made? Well, in Massachusetts, the money is coming out of a four percent tax on millionaires that passed in the state last year and has so far brought the state over a billion dollars in revenue.

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Universal free lunches are not the only thing the tax is funding. About half of the revenue is expected to go to infrastructure and transportation, while the other half is going to education, finding initiatives like this and like allowing undocumented immigrants who went to high school in the state to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges.

Here’s why this is smart — people making over a million a year are not going to feel much of a twinge from the missing four percent. They’re not going to have to cut back on their spending as a result and they can still easily afford a Birkin bag if they are so moved. What they will notice is that the roads are less congested, that school is maybe more pleasant for their kids and they will appreciate that they have one less thing on their plate to have to consciously think about.

It may not be a major cost to the wealthy to pay for their children’s lunches, but everyone likes not having to worry that in their rush to get everything done, they forgot something important. Money has very little to do with the “Oh god, did I leave a candle burning?” impulse so many of us are besieged by, day in and day out.

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The Biden administration has sought to do something similar, with the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax Act, introduced in March of last year. Under the act, those making over $100 million a year would pay a minimum 20 percent income tax on the full-range of their income, including on unrealized capital gains, which are not currently taxed at all. Those who already pay 20 percent on all of their income would not be affected, while those who do not pay that much due to so much of their wealth coming from unrealized capital gains on their stocks, bonds and other investments, will have to make up the difference.

This would mean that billionaires would have to pay taxes every year the way the rest of us schmucks do, instead of just sitting on their earnings for years, decades and possibly generations.

Various other billionaire taxes have been proposed by other Democrats, Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren in particular. Where the Massachusetts law gets it really right, however, is by offering voters tangible things that affect their everyday lives. While paying down the deficit is a noble idea, it’s not necessarily something that people can look at every day and go “Boy, this is really making things better in my actual life!”

People want nice things and less stress in their lives. Programs that have minimal sting and a lot of positive impact are what will build loyalty and trust with voters, and a tiny tax on millionaires funding universal school lunch and cutting down on traffic congestion (a big deal in Boston) is a great way to do that.