Thanks for the acknowledgement. I think tax burden is a valid part of the discussion when we are talking about the affordability crisis. I take it kinda personally because I'm already at 35% and looking at another 10% of my pretax income going to property taxes if I want to buy a home for my family.
It is odd that middle class income taxes are so high, and yet government services are awful, infrastructure is crumbling and you don't even get healthcare.
I still don't think there's an affordability crisis in general though. From what I've seen in this thread it's more of an inability to downsize. Everyone needs a car (sometimes 2), a big house, to live in the most expensive cities, to have kids, and they'd rather go into debt than compromise.
Yeah, you can look at it that way. It depends on your starting position economically. There bottom steps on the economic ladder are missing. Cheap entry level homes near economic centers or good paying jobs in low cost of living areas are both missing. The working poor have tax breaks and see some public benefits, high earners have good tax breaks and no benefits.
I don't know if I agree that the bottom steps are missing. There's a lower step if you rent. There's a lower step if you don't have a car. Some times this is impossible, but in most cases, especially the ones people have been posting about here, it's doable. But people don't want to do this, so they spend more and feel poor.
There might be a big step between poor and middle class though, as you come off benefits and have to pay higher taxes and health insurance. Child care also seems prohibitively expensive.
PS the highest marginal tax rate in the US is 50.3%.
Federal rate of 37% and California rate of 13.3%.