Scenario 20-3 Suppose That a Society Is Made Up of Five Families

question 136

Multiple Choice

Scenario 20-3
Suppose that a society is made up of five families whose incomes are as follows:
$120,000; $90,000; $30,000; $30,000; and $18,000.
The federal government is considering two potential income tax plans:
Plan A is a negative income tax plan where the taxes owed equal 1/3 of income minus $20,000.
Plan B is a two-tiered plan where families earning less than $35,000 pay no income tax and families earning more than $35,000 pay 10% of their income in taxes. The income tax revenue collected from those families earning over $35,000 is then redistributed equally to those families earning less than $35,000.
-Refer to Scenario 20-3. Assuming that utility is directly proportional to the cash value of after-tax income, which government policy would an advocate of libertarianism prefer?

• A)Plan A
• B)Plan B
• C)either Plan A or Plan B
• D)neither Plan A nor Plan B because any plan that forcibly redistributes income is against the philosophy

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Definitions:

Normality

Normality is a statistical assumption that data or errors are distributed in a normal (or Gaussian) pattern, centered around the mean with symmetrical variability.

Pie Chart

A pie chart is a circular graph divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion, where the arc length of each slice is proportional to the quantity it represents.

Homoscedasticity

A condition in which the variance within a dataset remains constant across different levels of an independent variable.

Error Variable

A variable in statistical models that captures the difference between observed and predicted values.