Who will swallow the Corona virus debt? The rich or the poor?

[The Grand Nudger]

When you say The Tax System™ you'd have to be more specific. Tax the poor to feed the rich? If necessary, I could bust out some explicit graphs of how our tax code has been intentionally designed to do this, and being so - the predictable effect has been a loss of wealth at the bottom and an immense increase at the top.

However, taxation doesn't have to increase poverty - even though the way that we do taxation here in the states right now most certainly has had (or contributed to) that effect. It's not a particularly good way to fund services, either..but since we don't offer first world services I guess we can ignore that hiccup. It would be just as easy to find examples of where a specific implementation has lifted people up and out of poverty (and we don't even have to switch countries, we can just look at america in other times).

As a statement of a specific and very silly way to do taxes, it's spot on, but as a logical proof about taxes in general, it's doa. It's possible that your friend is in a range of incomes where, if he could lower his tax commitment to the percentages paid by the rich, he would not fall below the poverty line - but that's not on simple account of his being taxed - but the specific implementation of rates which allow for that as a consequence. It also suggests that your friend is living on the razors edge, which is influenced by tax rates (and any number of other legal systems regarding our finances) but not specifically or uniquely predicated by them. If so, then your friend could benefit from having a pro do his taxes..but ofc, poor people generally can't afford that - another aspect of keeping them poor.

If we're being super generous, we could say that taxation is a way to spread existing poverty around..which is great if the spread is equitable and satisfies it's purpose - but not so great if that spread is confined to the already poor - as it currently is, at least here.