> To your point about "trickle down doesn't work". Where is your evidence that it does work? The trickle down theories have been going on for at least a hundred years when it was horse and sparrow and we haven't seen improvements to the average person from it. The largest improvements have come from labor rights having to physically fight companies for it ~100 years ago, and the post war boom when tax rates on the top income levels were at their historical highs. Since trickle down economics started getting pushed into the economy and tax rates have been continually lowered for the richest, we've seen conditions for everyone not in tech or finance stagnate or go down.

Lets remember trickle down is an originally demeaning term that has like a 100 years old, and was i think promoted by a comedian. It contains in itself an inconsistency with the general stance of lowering taxes, because the purported argument that its supposed to mock is that its better to tax poor people over rich people because rich know better to do with the money. But in general, the main reason to lower taxes is because anyone is better to do with money than the state. Its just that the state is just nominally more effective by taking money from those on top. I say nominally because in the end the state does know how to really tax poor people, which have less resources to fight it.

Progressive taxation in itself brings lots of problems and in its glory of simplification it commits many injustices as well. But above all, the idea of a tax to punish wealthy is envious and petty: they have more so they should pay more. Its not economics, its not morality, its a tantrum. It has been said in the past (i dont know if the math is current) that if you eliminated all exemptions of taxes and put a flat 15% tax on income, you would actually increase tax revenue. And you would do so without requirement nearly as much accounting work as it is today. One of the reasons that is politically hard to sell is because its not progressive enough. So I do see progressive taxation as an obstacle to simpler and more effective tax systems.

Inequality is a real problem, when libertarians say it doesnt matter I think they are wrong. But when liberals say that the way to manage that is a bigger state and bigger taxes they are "wronger". How to solve inequality is still an open problem: its growing even in europe where the tax rate is much higher and the state is much higher. So increasing taxes or state benefits are not the way to reduce inequality.

Now regarding labor laws: I dissent entirely with the premise. Labor laws were and are economically useful as long as they keep the state out of trampling their rights, but they are not useful to improve their working conditions. What lifts the workers labor conditions are not laws but competition for their labor. Lets take argentina as an example: it has strict labor laws and a "in dubis pro operario" legal system where any lawsuit against the employer rules in favor of the employee. Unions have constitutional protections, like their leaders cant be arrested. The result is that the strongest unions have high wages. Success? Hell no. Argentina has had growing poverty and stagnant GDP/capita growth since unions were given this power. The unions protect their workers at everybody elses expense. Because the only way to increase a workers wage is to increase his productivity (which unions dont do) or to reduce the number of workers. They plainly reduce supply, which means they push people to not have jobs.

You will find Argentina, Spain and France, countries with strong unions, to have higher unemployment.