Liberals raise taxes on wealthy to 100%, the wonders why everyone is a lazy bum

In my time-travel machine to the near future, I have found that liberals and their tax policy have prevailed and have taken taxing one section of the population to subsidize the other to an extreme. In the year 2052, they have finally raised the taxes on those taking $256,00 or more to 100%, meaning that you cannot effectively make more than $256,000 per year. After having some initial success with huge increases in budget the first year, there seems to have been a sharp drop in productivity in the second year. In fact, it seems that the rich are no longer motivated to do any work. Only about 10 people in the entire country have even bothered to try and take more than $256,000. GDP has nearly dropped in half of last year’s expected value with the line “there’s just nothing in it for me” being commonplace.

The government and the liberals in congress are perplexed at this new development, not seeming to understand that if there’s no reward in being productive, no one will bother to work. People who used to make over $256,000 are seen loitering around in the streets, playing checkers or cards eleven months out of the year, or just plain sleeping all day instead of working like they used to. Business profits for even the largest companies failed to exceed $256,000 by much with business just shutting down because there was no more profits to be made. Charities also reported a 90% drop in donations as the usual donors just weren’t making that much money anymore.

Even the original plan to use the excess tax money to fund welfare programs has come to a grinding halt as the 100% tax above $256,000 seems to have vaporized as almost no one is making more than that. Whats worse is that poor people are even more lazy than usual, not even willing to make it look like they are even searching for jobs. Many have been caught saying “why work when the government will provide everything for free”. This has caused a drop to almost zero in terms of the manual labor supply.

In light of these changes, the liberal-controlled congress has decided to re-visited their fiscal policy to decide if changes are necessary to the current program.