“The left says there’s too much inequality, and the right says the government is incredibly bad at spending money,” Thiel said. “I wouldn’t mind paying more in taxes if I felt the money was being spent as well as it was spent in the ’30s or ’50s.”
Asked about raising the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2016 from the current $9 – a ballot measure proposed by GOP activist Ron Unz – Thiel said was inclined to support it as an alternative to taxpayer-funded benefits.
“In theory, I’m against it, because people should have the freedom to contract at whatever wage they’d like to have,” Thiel said. “But in practice, I think the alternative to higher minimum wage is that people simply end up going on welfare.”
He added, “Given how low the minimum wage is – and how generous the welfare benefits are – you have a marginal tax rate that’s on the order of 100 percent, and people are actually trapped in this sort of welfare state.”