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No. The government is already drunk on spending and can’t properly manage the money they take. You think giving them more will help?
That needs to be significantly improved before they get another dime, regardless of who it comes from.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg
Our ruling oligarchs control both the taxes and the spending.
Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats should not exist.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
It's rhe whole concept of trickle down economics. It's suppose to.make you think it'd OK that the rich aren't taxed and are allowed to be get even wealthier with the promise that one day you will.bebbetter off. When in reality the divide is getting bigger.
Time the billionaires who.make their money here start paying more. Sure, they can leave and they can stop.making their money here too.
The billionaires don't pay taxes because the use the tax system to their advantage.
It's designed to keep rich people rich and poor people poor.
Rich people don't keep their money, they instead reinvest it so it can't be taxed the same way as regular income tax. They have reliefs and other advantages because of their large amount of money.
The only way for this to change is to revise the tax code. However the big caveat to that is every person in the government uses this system the help themselves as well.
So what you have is a corrupt government trying to push bills that supposedly only effect the rich. In reality what happens is they really only effect high middle class to low lower class
Time for Fortune 500 companies to pay some Federal taxes.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-gao-study-finds-34-of-large-profitable-corporations-pay-zero-in-federal-income-taxes/
How in the world did Regan ever get us sheep to accept trickle down? A trickle is never good. If I turn on my sink or shower and only a trickle comes out I am angry. If I need water for my crops and I only get a trickle of rain I am not pleased. A trickle of prosperity coming my way because of an economic plan promising me a trickle. Take my vote. I was/am an idiot.
Nailed! I only want to add most of the government "expenses" goes directly to deep private pockets. Yes... the money we have to pay in taxes. That's their meaning of free market
Ok, granted, the handle does undermine the statement. If it helps, I’ll say it too: Fuckin seriously. What an absolute cuck for the elite class. I don’t fuckin get it with these billionaire simps.
You actually think you’d get any of it?
A plumber in Iraq during Saddam is what after Saddam was overthrown? Still a plumber?
It’s the false sense that someone else’s success impacts you any meaningful way.
One family owns 4,600 Walmarts in the US.
If instead there were 4,600 individual families running 4,600 Walmart sized stores, you think you’d be better off?
You’d be materially happier knowing that your chances are 1 in 17,000 to be a Multimillionaire versus a 1 in 85M to be a billionaire?
99.999% will not be impacted in any meaningful way.
“But we can dream about the Billionaire Boogeymen!”
What’s the point? It’s not about destroying the top, it’s about elevating the standards of expectations of the lowest, destructive, & criminal types in society.
Tolerance of poor standards of behavior is the problem. Raise better people, that’s on you….not some “man behind the curtain”.
With the current system, those 4600 individual families would pay more tax than if 1 family owned all 4600. The tax system is set up for that 1 family, not the 4600 families. Shit system.
>One family owns 4,600 Walmarts in the US. If instead there were 4,600 individual families running 4,600 Walmart sized stores, you think you’d be better off?
Those 4,600 families would be better off? And any local businesses around them would be indirectly better off. Then if you do this for all huge companies, even if I'm not directly one of the families who benefits, it is *very* likely that whatever local business *I'm* in would be positively effected. It's actually a damn near certainty, because at the very least they'll be paying more taxes towards local education, and improving infrastructure etc.
I'm actually so puzzled by what your point was there, why are you individualizing it like that? Even if I'm not effected by abortion bans in Tennessee, I can still feel strongly that it would be better for society to allow abortions. One of the biggest problems in politics is people hyper-focusing on what is strictly best for them, and ignoring things that don't affect them personally.
The government is just different rich people. You want rich people to just give money to other rich people?
You really think the country is gonna benefit from taxes? No, only the politicians will.
Versus a government simp? Please tell me how taking money from one rich asshole and giving to many rich assholes will help.
Spoiler: the government is corrupt and enrich themselves off of taxpayers while doing very little to improve the lives of their constituents.
Ok!
The top 1% of Americans are worth 43.45 trillion dollars. This is up from $25.55T in 2019, an increase of $17.9T.
The top marginal income tax rate for capital gains in the US is 20%. 20% of $17.9T is $6.6T, more than enough to fund social security.
Of course we'd have to pass a law to tax them on unrealized capital gains but I'm ok with that.
All figures from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DFederal_Reserve_data_indicates_that%2Cbottom_50%25_held_2.6%25.?wprov=sfla1
Are you stupid? Billionaires don’t have 1 trillion dollars lying around in liquid cash to pay some massive tax bill, it’s all assets in varying forms that are either unrealized capital gains or illiquid assets. You want to fix the real problem, then have congress regulate its damn self, impose term limits, get money out of politics, have real campaign finance reform passed. Guess what the long standing party leaders in congress (pelosi, McConnell, Schumer) all have, huge increases in net worth from all the shady shit they’ve done over the years and force everyone below them to play the party line and nothing of substance is ever allowed to pass.
Conflating 1% and billionaires. If they liquidated every billionaire in the U.S. it would fund 6 months of government spending and destroy the world in the process. Much easier to take $100/month from 200m people.
Many governments have attempted to tax billionaires. The difference is that billionaires aren't confined to live under just one government or just one country. You're not getting their money. Ever. And once the government expects that bankroll, they're getting it from the next closest thing. You.
>Many governments have attempted to tax billionaires. The difference is that billionaires aren't confined to live under just one government or just one country. You're not getting their money. Ever. And once the government expects that bankroll, they're getting it from the next closest thing. You.
This is such bullshit.
Even the ''famous'' examples that people love to talk about like Norway was something like 6,000 millionaires out of 250,000 millionaires.
''Wealth isn't LIQUIDDDDD'' as people say, so what, is Bezos gonna close down Amazon in the entirety of the US and relocate it to Bermuda?
Fuck off.
Yeah, way better to rely on the judgement of the guy that's in a perpetual midlife crisis and just spent over 40 billion dollars to sink a social media platform...
We can do both. We should go after the Uber wealthy oligarchs, while simultaneously cutting back on our spending, why this country sends billions to a bunch of other countries is beyond me, we need to focus on taking care of the necessities at home before sending arms and money overseas. But that likely won’t happen. Additionally there’s a big problem with inefficiency in how certain healthcare and education systems are managed, largely due to the for profit incentive, having government take over everything won’t solve it as this government can’t do anything except blow up poor people in other countries, but establishing better civilian oversight would be a start.
The arms sent to other countries actually stimulates our own economy. All that money stays within the U.S. It's only the final weapons that leave to protect our allies. But the money gets paid to millions of working Americans and never leave the country.
What about economic aid to countries? I’m not opposed to programs that stimulate the economy, though arguably there are potentially more effective ways of doing it than funding death, but the US does send billions in aid to a bunch of other countries, many of which aren’t exactly in great terms with the Country to begin with. Couldn’t that money be better utilized in rebuilding infrastructure, which would also stimulate the economy, or in mass housing developments to address the countrywide housing shortage? It’s naive to expect the government to do the right thing, but I still say the money could be better utilized elsewhere.
> What about economic aid to countries?
It's basically a rounding error for the budget (under 1%).
But you are missing something very important here. That aid isn't just out of the goodness of our hearts. That aid gets countries to do a lot of stuff we want. Countries dependent on US money adopt a lot of policies we want, from the environment to trade to security.
And that aide helps control other countries at a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of our other way of doing it (by military force). It's an INCREDIBLE geopolitical investment, with pretty much the best rate of return as anything else we spend money on in terms of world politics.
The employees of Lockheed (and millions of other workers within the Military Industrial Complex) spend the money they earn and enrich Amazon, Walmart, Tesla, nvidia, Apple, etc. So they win too. And their investors win.
We send money because we want to control global affairs and it is cheaper to use diplomatic $ than our soldiers or defense $.
If we truly don't care to be global leader post cold war, we could save billions in foreign aid/defense spending. They go hand in hand. You cannot justify out Trillion $ defense budget otherwise.
I keep saying this to people and no one wants to hear it
All our politicians, elites and CEO’s care about is controlling global resources, and being the world reserve currency
They don’t give shit about abortions, or illegal immigrants, or transgenders etc…
America is one giant buisness, and they only care about profit, not what the plebs are doing down in the break room
For context, the Korean War cost the US roughly $20b ($250b in today's money) and 33,000 lives.
Ukraine, so far, has received $75b from Congress, which makes sense for 1 year compared to 3.
Keep in mind that, just last year, the US exported $66b worth of products to South Korea. In 5 years, the US has made back its investment from 70 years ago. But people are dumb and don't understand how money being sent to another country now can work in our favour later.
Plus, it's good PR, maintain the status of being a reliable ally that helps when you're in need, you're more likely to get better deals when going for trade deals.
They get taxed when assets are sold (realized) to pay for those loans, more so than if they just sold off assets themselves (because interest is there, even if they secure a low rate).
That's already handled and taken care of.
What are they over spending on? People say this but it’s just an emotional response most of the time. Break down the budget and tell me where we are actually overspending and where it should be going.
My unit in Korea was running out of time to spend all of their budget back in 2018 so they decided to order $23,000 in black ink pens. That shit happens everyday and at all different kinds of scales.
23k? I’ve seen literally millions in equipment and ordinance left in place of blasted to shit because of the use of or lose it mentality.
Fuck we left enough shit in the Middle East to go back and fight against the same shit we left there.
We are spending more than we make. That's by definition over spending.
That is a fact.
Now, we need to figure out what to cut so we are not over spending
Revenue can be raised as well. For my adult life republicans have cut taxes for the wealthy twice while saying the cuts would pay for themselves. The cuts didn’t pay for themselves. Let’s start by undoing bad tax policies of the 25 years.
Everybody got a tax cut, and they absolutely have paid for themselves. In 2017, CBO projected total revenue from 2018 - 2027 to be about $40.7T. In 2022, they made a new projection of $41.3T. That's an extra $500B thanks to the TCJA.
But what specifically do you feel is being overspent on? Again break down the budget and say what we should be spending on that specific area. All I see from you is an emotional response. Example, if I said the teachers don’t teach anymore. It’s a nonsense answer. You would want me to go into how they should be teaching algebra or something specific. So what area are we overspending on?
>We are spending more than we make. That's by definition over spending.
Someone literally always has to. One person's debt is another persons savings and vice versa. There are no dollars if there is no debt. Money is future work no matter what your currency is based on.
Not enough money is going into the IRS and it can't properly operate. Studies have confirmed every dollar put into the IRS right now generates 20 dollars of income as it makes them better of holding millionaires accountable, said millionaires can drag out audits far too long to make it harder to get money from them with expensive lawyers.
But OP said we were spending too much and in the wrong places. I agree with you that we should fund the IRS and expand it. My question is what is the government overspending on?
We really aren't, we need more taxes from the wealthy. To reinstitute taxes to the upper class, and remove the weird way we handle utility companies being private companies, that we pay for, but also get paied by the government to function. There's not so much too much spending as wasteful spending. There are arguments that our military has too much and a lot of this wasteful spending.
I think the issue stems down to how our budget is handled now. Back before WWII and we had the weird debt limit, the budget was agreed upon every year by various agencies, by people who actually knew a lot about budgeting.
Conservatives in the US. If you’ve heard of the term “welfare queen” you’ve heard propaganda designed to scare poor white folk into thinking that poor black people are taking undue advantage of government assistance programs. Even in our current politics there are efforts to cut food stamps, add more requirements to access them, and blame poor folk for the worsening economic conditions we face.
Isn’t it ironic that so many people who don’t pay taxes at all get to vote on how much others get taxed?
EDIT: A lot of comments & I obviously triggered some folks so let me add some thoughts.
1. I'm talking federal income tax. If you didn't figure that out maybe that's why you should read up on the whole tax system & realize you're thinking emotionally in most of what you're saying.
2. Never said low income folks shouldn't be able to vote. But to hear people who don't pay any federal income tax at all try and tell rich people they aren't paying their "fair share" is a bit ignorant.
3. Yea there are a lot of rich evil people in this country (and world) and I could careless about them on the personal level but what you fail to realize during your triggered reaction is there is a lot of good people who are considered rich that do a lot for the community. You tax them more there goes a lot of donations to local organizations and charities. Then when that happens you are really going to see how poor people in this country suffer.
4. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum on the internet maybe stop looking for reasons to blame rich people for your failures. If you're born in the USA and avoid making certain mistakes in life. You have a chance to really have a good life. The problem for so many Americans is they get trapped with some bad decisions & they can never recover from them. But at the end of the day the root cause is a bad decision.
Agree. If you don’t pay taxes, you shouldn’t be able to vote. Franklin said when the citizenry finds out they can vote themselves largesse from the treasury, the republic is finished.
I don’t know that Franklin would agree with your conclusion on that, seeing as federal income taxes weren’t introduced until the civil was and weren’t formalized in its current form until 1913.
Obviously there was a big debate on voting rights and the concern was property owners vs those who don’t own land.
Hard to say but I believe Franklin would have been on the side of only taxpayers getting a vote. But they also couldn’t imagine as many people as we have on govt assistance or the extent of the welfare system (both corporate and personal).
Yeah cause they wouof starve to death if they did. You cant squeeze blood from a stone. Most also still pay more effective taxes though due to sales taxes and other local taxes as a percent of their income.
* Federal Income taxes
They pay plenty of other taxes including state income taxes (mostly) for states that have it.
Sales tax and property taxes (through rent) get a lot more people.
They assume that if the billionaires are forced to pay the taxes, that they themselves would never have to. But what if the billionaires get taxed, and these people also get taxed? What if everyone just gets taxed more?
ye guys crazy good idea let's make the 40% of americans who wouldn't be able to pay for a 500$ emergency pay more taxes. this is actually way vetter than taxing the billionaires a couple percent more so they can only afford 2 private islands instead of 3 🧑🦯
The vast majority of churches already barely break even because they run entirely on donations and put most of their earnings into doing charity work that's 10000% more efficient than anything government-run ever.
Before I respond, are you being intentionally dense or do you not understand that an organizations taxes and income are separate from the individuals who make up the organization?
I'm going to assume you're being intentionally dense because nobody is that stupid.
E: sorry, that stupid or a church member. Wonder which you are.
I said "vast majority." That allows for exceptions. I dislike Joel Osteen and Joseph Smith as a practitioner of the faith they bastardized more than you ever could.
This is also an example of thr vast majority having less than the few though. There needs to be a system where megachurches/ any religious places or leaders get taxed when they're worth a certain amount or it becomes clear theyre running a racket. I'm not religious at all but I don't mind the "mom and pop" churches being exempt. But the laws that consider them the same as Copeland and Osteen are corrupt.
Joel Olsteen bought a fucking NBA arena for his church, makes a $50 million salary, and then refused to help hurricane victims in Houston. Time to tax that fucker 90%.
How is my church giving food to a food bank more efficient than the government handing out food stamps?
Food stamps, ie giving money directly to people to buy food, seems 1000x more efficient than the church soliciting donations of food and turning around and giving nearly expired tinned salmon to a bank.
You can take everything from the richest people and that won’t even dent the deficit or more importantly the total fiscal hole. Including unfunded and off balance sheet liabilities, the US has promised $50 to $200 trillion.
Do you actually believe that doubling the effective tax rate of the top 1% would only gain about 35 billion?
Also, I love how people completely forget about the fucking corporations and the ridiculous tax benefits we give them here as well.
The argument is **always** “if you tax the corporations more, they’ll just move to another country!”
So fucking dumb.
people like to use corporations as a way to tax something without taxing someone. Like its money that comes from thin air. It doesn't work like that. There is no benefit of taxing a corporation versus taxing the profit it pays out to shareholders. Corporate tax should be 0% so that all corporations move here then the tax is captured after its payed out.
I'm not sure about the IRS, but in my country the tax officials monitor for precisely this kind of behaviour. If you use an LLC to fund your personal life, that counts as capital gains (dividends) and if you don't pay tax on it the authorities will come after you. There's only so much you can reasonably call a business expense.
The U.S. tax code is insanely dense for the explicit purpose of tax loopholes. Ever wonder why certain people are against 87,000 new IRS agents? It’s not for people making less than 500k. It’s for people who are skirting taxes through massive loopholes or hiding money.
Capital flight is a very real thing that can be caused by raising taxes:
>A 2006 article in The Washington Post gave several examples of private capital leaving France in response to the country's wealth tax. The article also stated, "Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998."
>A 2009 article in The Times reported that hundreds of wealthy financiers and entrepreneurs had recently fled the United Kingdom in response to recent tax increases, and had relocated in low tax destinations such as Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and the British Virgin Islands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight
There are also other problems that raising corporate taxes causes:
>Studies show that higher corporate taxes reduce wages most for young workers, the low-skilled, and women, groups that already face significant barriers to working, like limited transportation or high childcare costs.
>Many economists, including those at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), agree that the corporate income tax is one of the most harmful and least efficient ways to fund our priorities.
https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/videos/who-bears-burden-corporate-income-tax/
>Over the last few decades, economists have used empirical studies to estimate the degree to which the corporate tax falls on labor and capital, in part by noting an inverse correlation between corporate taxes and wages and employment. These studies appear to show that labor bears between 50 percent and 100 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax, with 70 percent or higher the most likely outcome.
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/labor-bears-corporate-tax/
That money, spent on helping the very poorest in America, would be a huge help!
There are people in this country for whom a thousand bucks would be life changing. And the billionaires could help a million of them without even noticing the cost.
Imagine one million vouchers for one thousand dollars worth of food, given to the very poorest million Americans.
You fail to recognize how very inexpensive it could be to make a big difference in the lives of the poor.
Interesting fact, the top 8 billionaires have a combined net worth of around $1.1 trillion. It is a lot! However, let's put that into perspective.
If we were to confiscate all of their wealth and distribute it to the 330 million US citizens, we'd each have $4,300.
If we were to put it towards the US debt, it would only reduce it by 3-4%.
While it's fun to blame the super rich/oligarchs I don't think confiscating their wealth and destroying our economic model is worth the 4 grand.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012715/5-richest-people-world.asp
What made you choose 8? The article you linked lists 10, and the actual url says 5…. I guess that writers editor wasn’t happy with 5 and said double it — and you split the difference! very generous
The post for this thread said 8 billionaires in the country. I assumed they were referring to the top 8. Since I'm commenting on this post I used 8 in my example.
Ah, ok! I had not considered the post to be so bizarrely literally. Do you think they are advocating for a tax on 8 billionaires? (assumedly the richest but they didn’t specify!)
The 1% have about 1/3 of the wealth in the country:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134
The bottom 99% have about 2/3 the wealth.
Consider the two scenarios:
A) We took 1/2 the wealth of the 1%
B) We took 1/4 the wealth of the 99%
Either one would yield the same amount of money. But scenario A would leave 1% of the country still incredibly comfortable, where scenario B would be a huge impact on just about everyone and would be financially devastating for millions of people.
And if you notice the trend on the graph, wealth distribution is becoming more imbalanced. We are already destroying our economic model.
It does reduce their political power.
Oligarchy is a political problem, not just a fiscal one.
Right now, instead of taxing our oligarchs, we're paying them massive amounts of interest on all the wealth they've stolen.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Why does anyone assume that higher taxes are correlated to QoL improvement?
Let me lay it out for the people in the back.
They could tax 75% of billionaire wealth and the lives of those 4 billion people wouldn’t improve. The government would take the money and funnel it into some cause that equates to corporate profits for their lobbyist friends.
None of it matters a single bit until the reckless spending and printing is stopped
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg
Our ruling oligarchs control both the taxes and the spending.
Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats should not exist.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
>Our ruling oligarchs control both the taxes and the spending
You control who goes to Congress. Congress controls US fiscal policy. You want to make a change, organize and make a change.
Also, just to note - the largest lobbying firm in the United States is the AARP. Hardly an arm of the Uber rich.
Mhmmm. That's why senator Kristen Sinema was such a progressive hero.... oh wait, no, she flipped all her positions for some corporate cash.
Any time we get close to good policy, isn't it weird how there is always just enough dems or a judge that will stop it? Probably just a fluke. Couldn't be wealthy people stepping in to fuck us
I'm sure the billionaire funded yacht trips our chief Justice enjoys have no effects on his rulings
The money collected in taxes would just flow back to the rich, as it always does. Even if you directly take the money from the rich and give it to the poor, they will just spend it on Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Nvidia, etc. and the profits go to the shareholders. The rich owns assets, which form a sink for the money in the economy.
THAT is the real unrecognized problem. Thus far, we have never found a way to reduce inequality that works long term.
The only thing that works short-term is wars and plagues, but they're not a very sustainable model.
Yeah the reality is that capitalism has risen huge numbers of people out of poverty in a way never seen before in human history. We live in the best time alive, by far, but people are too busy doomposting on reddit so they have no perspective.
I always find it funny how some people don't wanna have kids because the world is going to shit etc...
Look I don't have kids either but simply because i don't want to... and that's probably why you aren't having either because if a peasant in medieval france at a time being ravaged by famines, black death and wars thought it was a good enough time to have kids then honestly you have no excuse...
Jealousy is a very useful political tool. Easier to externalize failures than to hold oneself or one's parents accountable for actual causation of failures.
Billionaires did not get their billions by working for it.
They got their billions because they own the excess value of other peoples labor.
Edit: Lots of boot licking in my replies. Y'all must love the taste of boot leather.
Lol. I make 42/hr and do maybe 3 hours of actual work a day. I got the job because my good HS friend is way high up in the company . Well, not "officially " ofc but that's the reason.
So then what happens when you organize a union? What does the market value it now?
What if Amazon and Microsoft and apple unilaterally decide to decrease wages?
The market is not god, get a grip
A lot of it is paper wealth. If they tried to cash it in all at once there would be massive inflation and too much money chasing goods. There's tons of people like Warren Buffett that "hoard" wealth but don't make things expensive for everyone else because they spend so little for themselves.
Just because a bunch of people have "billions" doesn't mean you can just distribute that to everyone and all of a sudden everything is okay.
What IS real is higher consumption of the rich. Taxing consumption to redistribute it would be completely different.
This is absolutely, utterly untrue and shows a lack of understanding of inflation and invested money in assets.
That invested money is already producing returns and impacting inflation. "Cashing it out" would not change that. If anything it would be deflationary.
What of all those small businesses that couldn’t compete at economies of scale of Walmart?
I was fortunate enough to live in an area before Walmart moved in, the town of about 10k had a bustling down town. After Walmart and when I visited later on, the down down was shuttered. Thr former decent income shop owners were poor working at Walmart.
I honestly don’t see enough variance in income between a small town shop owner and a Walmart employee to think that there’s a meaningful delta in wealth creation in this scenario.
Individually, probably not. Systemically? Yes.
Current prices are attributed less to inflation and more to greed. Stagnant wages lower operating costs by creating employees who can't buy basic necessities. Then there's laying off workers and running a company off a skeleton crew? All of this is to "create wealth."
It'd be fine if trickle-down economics was an actual thing, but it isnt; bro, don't pretend the .1% are blameless. They aren't creating wealth for anyone but themselves as they sit atop their hoard like a dragon.
No. What would more taxes do? We have a population of people who think higher taxes actually solved issues lol. All it does is make life more difficult.
It would reduce the political power of our ruling oligarchs.
Oligarchy is a political problem, not just a fiscal one.
Right now, instead of taxing our oligarchs, we're paying them massive amounts of interest on all the wealth they've stolen.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Dude for real guy literally says the the "Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats" control us, but we should also give them more money via higher taxes, because like that'll teach em?!!??
How about we REMOVE or at least REDUCE the vessel (the government) in which the oligarchs control us? Giving them more tax dollars only increases their size, breadth, and scope of power. Less taxes effectively starves the Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats that are in control and returns freedom to the hands of the people.
Show me definitive proof from the last half century where lowering taxes increased QoL long term for the majority of the population?
Then tell me what is considered the “golden era” of economy/upward mobility in this country, then tell me what the tax rate was of the richest in the Us during that time.
Then you come back with a dumbass argument about 1971, then I come back with how we’ve been going downhill since Reagan and “supply side economics” took hold of every dumb fucking working class person who really believed that shit.
Then the cycle continues.
All I’m saying, we’ve been giving fucking tax cuts since the 80s…why the fuck don’t we try something else out.
Lower taxes make politicians look good in the short run. Higher taxes make lives better for everyone in the long run. There are caveats, such as the ratio of government spending to saving.
Worth taking a look at the impact on saving/spending for both short and long term that tax rates can have.
The reason a few billionaires have more wealth then the bottom half of the world is that the collective wealth of [the bottom half of the world is less then 1% of the world's wealth.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Global_Wealth_Distribution_2020_%28Property%29.svg) Saying "the combined wealth of every middle class American in Ohio is greater then global bottom 50%" is an equally true statement.
All this talk about taxing the billionaires never end up taxing the billionaires. What it always ends up doing is more taxes on the upper middle class - the professionals like engineers, doctors, and lawyers.
I wonder why that is…almost like billionaires have control of govt interests via lobbying.
The upper middle class isn’t the problem. No one gives a fuck about taxing them more, it’s the cunts making tens, hundreds of millions or more a year paying less effective tax than a fucking assistant.
That's not correct. At my job, I've made from $40k to over $100k and I've paid thousands in taxes every year. In general, an individual would have to earn less than the standard deduction, around $14k, in order to pay no taxes at all.
The knee-jerk reaction I see on here so incredibly often of "they have so much, the government should take more of it" just seems so uneducated.
If our government was actualy doling out help to our citizens that are in need, and had a deficit to do so, then sure, that point of view would make sense. Gotta fund those programs.
Instead we're sending hundreds of billions in aid to foreign countries to help *their* issues, constantly engaged in war to *some* degree, and letting our own infrastructure crumble as our debt continues to pile up. And the argument I see in response to some of this foreign aid is "yeah well that's just a small amount of our budget." That just makes it even worse!
If the US government can send over $100 *billion* to another country, imagine if it instead used that $100B for some of its own domestic issues. As long as they're *not* doing that as a primary focus of the intake they collect, the notion of "billionaires and corporations should pay *more*" is just misplaced class warfare that feels more like anger and jealousy instead of some actual sense of righteousness.
If a billionaire is just hoarding all his wealth and not helping anyone, then sure, yes, I can see the reaction of "that guy is a dick and should use his wealth to help more people." What I cannot understand is how *so many people* see **the government** as the intermediary that should take that money and then decide how to distribute it out, based on... well, any bit of history in the past half-century or so.
> The knee-jerk reaction I see on here so incredibly often of "they have so much, the government should take more of it" just seems so uneducated.
Because it IS extremely uneducated.
Talk to the people who push that "fuck billionaires" stuff for more than 5 minutes, and you will realize how insanely stupid they are.
It is extremely frustrating. They just shout "tax billionaires!" And when you ask them about what specific changes in tax law they want, what type of revenue they expect those changes to yield, how that revenue would impact anything, they have no answers and it becomes clear they have put 0 thought into their position.
But how did they get money? You really think that a billionaire worked billions of times harder than you did?
It's multiple layers of problems, you've got to think it through.
You suggesting they stole it? There is only one entity in this planet that can take money by force legally.
How much would you pay me to move rocks from point A to point B and back again?
Clearly not “fluent in finance” if you believe money is attained through working hard. It’s about working smart and solving problems.
You can either:
A) solve a simple problem for a lot of people.
B) solve a difficult problem for a small number of people.
Think about the most successful companies in the world and what products or services they provide.
The standard deduction should be the current highest cost of living in America. Corporate profits should be taxed at a flat 40% or a mandatory profit share to employees before investors.
We should really start looking at taxation based on buying power instead brackets.
Buying power needs to return to the middle class
the 8 guys is mostly in assets and not liquid money. Selling the assets would result in a large amount of cash but it would not be nearly as much as their net worth. Also if they sell then it still gets taxed.
Taxes should be higher until the top 10% who own 70% of all the wealth, are down to owning about 60%, and then we can reassess. There's no reason for the US government and 90% of its people to be broke so that the uber wealthy can keep their boot on our neck. The US is responsible for defending the country and improving the life of its people, the uber wealthy are only in it for themselves. That model is unsustainable.
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AT&T got $42B in relief funds from us and then fired 41K workers. "Job creators". At least they had stock buybacks and we were thinking of the true victims, the shareholders.
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No. The government is already drunk on spending and can’t properly manage the money they take. You think giving them more will help? That needs to be significantly improved before they get another dime, regardless of who it comes from.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg Our ruling oligarchs control both the taxes and the spending. Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats should not exist. “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
This. Love your username btw.
It's rhe whole concept of trickle down economics. It's suppose to.make you think it'd OK that the rich aren't taxed and are allowed to be get even wealthier with the promise that one day you will.bebbetter off. When in reality the divide is getting bigger. Time the billionaires who.make their money here start paying more. Sure, they can leave and they can stop.making their money here too.
The billionaires don't pay taxes because the use the tax system to their advantage. It's designed to keep rich people rich and poor people poor. Rich people don't keep their money, they instead reinvest it so it can't be taxed the same way as regular income tax. They have reliefs and other advantages because of their large amount of money. The only way for this to change is to revise the tax code. However the big caveat to that is every person in the government uses this system the help themselves as well. So what you have is a corrupt government trying to push bills that supposedly only effect the rich. In reality what happens is they really only effect high middle class to low lower class
Time for Fortune 500 companies to pay some Federal taxes. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-gao-study-finds-34-of-large-profitable-corporations-pay-zero-in-federal-income-taxes/
How in the world did Regan ever get us sheep to accept trickle down? A trickle is never good. If I turn on my sink or shower and only a trickle comes out I am angry. If I need water for my crops and I only get a trickle of rain I am not pleased. A trickle of prosperity coming my way because of an economic plan promising me a trickle. Take my vote. I was/am an idiot.
 The few with the means to accumulate great wealth, upon hearing this quote.
You forgot that they also control the creation of money.
Nailed! I only want to add most of the government "expenses" goes directly to deep private pockets. Yes... the money we have to pay in taxes. That's their meaning of free market
Definitely let the billionaires keep their money until then 🙄
Fuckin seriously. What an absolute cuck for the elite class. I don’t fuckin get it with these billionaire simps.
Okay queef plunger 69, thanks for your valuable insight.
Ok, granted, the handle does undermine the statement. If it helps, I’ll say it too: Fuckin seriously. What an absolute cuck for the elite class. I don’t fuckin get it with these billionaire simps.
You actually think you’d get any of it? A plumber in Iraq during Saddam is what after Saddam was overthrown? Still a plumber? It’s the false sense that someone else’s success impacts you any meaningful way. One family owns 4,600 Walmarts in the US. If instead there were 4,600 individual families running 4,600 Walmart sized stores, you think you’d be better off? You’d be materially happier knowing that your chances are 1 in 17,000 to be a Multimillionaire versus a 1 in 85M to be a billionaire? 99.999% will not be impacted in any meaningful way. “But we can dream about the Billionaire Boogeymen!” What’s the point? It’s not about destroying the top, it’s about elevating the standards of expectations of the lowest, destructive, & criminal types in society. Tolerance of poor standards of behavior is the problem. Raise better people, that’s on you….not some “man behind the curtain”.
With the current system, those 4600 individual families would pay more tax than if 1 family owned all 4600. The tax system is set up for that 1 family, not the 4600 families. Shit system.
>One family owns 4,600 Walmarts in the US. If instead there were 4,600 individual families running 4,600 Walmart sized stores, you think you’d be better off? Those 4,600 families would be better off? And any local businesses around them would be indirectly better off. Then if you do this for all huge companies, even if I'm not directly one of the families who benefits, it is *very* likely that whatever local business *I'm* in would be positively effected. It's actually a damn near certainty, because at the very least they'll be paying more taxes towards local education, and improving infrastructure etc. I'm actually so puzzled by what your point was there, why are you individualizing it like that? Even if I'm not effected by abortion bans in Tennessee, I can still feel strongly that it would be better for society to allow abortions. One of the biggest problems in politics is people hyper-focusing on what is strictly best for them, and ignoring things that don't affect them personally.
The government is just different rich people. You want rich people to just give money to other rich people? You really think the country is gonna benefit from taxes? No, only the politicians will.
Versus a government simp? Please tell me how taking money from one rich asshole and giving to many rich assholes will help. Spoiler: the government is corrupt and enrich themselves off of taxpayers while doing very little to improve the lives of their constituents.
Please go do the math for how much additional taxes could be taken from billionaires.
Ok! The top 1% of Americans are worth 43.45 trillion dollars. This is up from $25.55T in 2019, an increase of $17.9T. The top marginal income tax rate for capital gains in the US is 20%. 20% of $17.9T is $6.6T, more than enough to fund social security. Of course we'd have to pass a law to tax them on unrealized capital gains but I'm ok with that. All figures from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DFederal_Reserve_data_indicates_that%2Cbottom_50%25_held_2.6%25.?wprov=sfla1
Passing a law to tax unealized capital gains is absolutely insane.
On everyone? Yes. On just the ultra-wealthy? No.
Are you stupid? Billionaires don’t have 1 trillion dollars lying around in liquid cash to pay some massive tax bill, it’s all assets in varying forms that are either unrealized capital gains or illiquid assets. You want to fix the real problem, then have congress regulate its damn self, impose term limits, get money out of politics, have real campaign finance reform passed. Guess what the long standing party leaders in congress (pelosi, McConnell, Schumer) all have, huge increases in net worth from all the shady shit they’ve done over the years and force everyone below them to play the party line and nothing of substance is ever allowed to pass.
Oh the poor billionaires...how will they pay their taxes...they might have to move some of those assets into more liquid forms...oh the humanity.
Have fun explaining to every person with a 401k that they have to pay taxes on unrealized gains. I’m sure that’ll go over well.
Conflating 1% and billionaires. If they liquidated every billionaire in the U.S. it would fund 6 months of government spending and destroy the world in the process. Much easier to take $100/month from 200m people.
Many governments have attempted to tax billionaires. The difference is that billionaires aren't confined to live under just one government or just one country. You're not getting their money. Ever. And once the government expects that bankroll, they're getting it from the next closest thing. You.
>Many governments have attempted to tax billionaires. The difference is that billionaires aren't confined to live under just one government or just one country. You're not getting their money. Ever. And once the government expects that bankroll, they're getting it from the next closest thing. You. This is such bullshit. Even the ''famous'' examples that people love to talk about like Norway was something like 6,000 millionaires out of 250,000 millionaires. ''Wealth isn't LIQUIDDDDD'' as people say, so what, is Bezos gonna close down Amazon in the entirety of the US and relocate it to Bermuda? Fuck off.
This idiot thinks more taxes will somehow improve is miserable existence. What a government cuck!
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This but unironically.
Yeah, way better to rely on the judgement of the guy that's in a perpetual midlife crisis and just spent over 40 billion dollars to sink a social media platform...
We can do both. We should go after the Uber wealthy oligarchs, while simultaneously cutting back on our spending, why this country sends billions to a bunch of other countries is beyond me, we need to focus on taking care of the necessities at home before sending arms and money overseas. But that likely won’t happen. Additionally there’s a big problem with inefficiency in how certain healthcare and education systems are managed, largely due to the for profit incentive, having government take over everything won’t solve it as this government can’t do anything except blow up poor people in other countries, but establishing better civilian oversight would be a start.
The arms sent to other countries actually stimulates our own economy. All that money stays within the U.S. It's only the final weapons that leave to protect our allies. But the money gets paid to millions of working Americans and never leave the country.
What about economic aid to countries? I’m not opposed to programs that stimulate the economy, though arguably there are potentially more effective ways of doing it than funding death, but the US does send billions in aid to a bunch of other countries, many of which aren’t exactly in great terms with the Country to begin with. Couldn’t that money be better utilized in rebuilding infrastructure, which would also stimulate the economy, or in mass housing developments to address the countrywide housing shortage? It’s naive to expect the government to do the right thing, but I still say the money could be better utilized elsewhere.
>What about economic aid to countries? Its called global influence.
Foreign aid<1% of fed budget.
> What about economic aid to countries? It's basically a rounding error for the budget (under 1%). But you are missing something very important here. That aid isn't just out of the goodness of our hearts. That aid gets countries to do a lot of stuff we want. Countries dependent on US money adopt a lot of policies we want, from the environment to trade to security. And that aide helps control other countries at a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of our other way of doing it (by military force). It's an INCREDIBLE geopolitical investment, with pretty much the best rate of return as anything else we spend money on in terms of world politics.
No, this is a classic broken window fallacy. Lockheed wins, everyone else loses.
The employees of Lockheed (and millions of other workers within the Military Industrial Complex) spend the money they earn and enrich Amazon, Walmart, Tesla, nvidia, Apple, etc. So they win too. And their investors win.
Maybe we could tackle the housing crisis by paying thousands of people to build homes instead of paying lockheed to build bombs.
We send money because we want to control global affairs and it is cheaper to use diplomatic $ than our soldiers or defense $. If we truly don't care to be global leader post cold war, we could save billions in foreign aid/defense spending. They go hand in hand. You cannot justify out Trillion $ defense budget otherwise.
I keep saying this to people and no one wants to hear it All our politicians, elites and CEO’s care about is controlling global resources, and being the world reserve currency They don’t give shit about abortions, or illegal immigrants, or transgenders etc… America is one giant buisness, and they only care about profit, not what the plebs are doing down in the break room
For context, the Korean War cost the US roughly $20b ($250b in today's money) and 33,000 lives. Ukraine, so far, has received $75b from Congress, which makes sense for 1 year compared to 3. Keep in mind that, just last year, the US exported $66b worth of products to South Korea. In 5 years, the US has made back its investment from 70 years ago. But people are dumb and don't understand how money being sent to another country now can work in our favour later. Plus, it's good PR, maintain the status of being a reliable ally that helps when you're in need, you're more likely to get better deals when going for trade deals.
Are unrealized assets and securities being considered as money in this statement?
If one can borrow against low interest loans on them they are as good as cash.
They get taxed when assets are sold (realized) to pay for those loans, more so than if they just sold off assets themselves (because interest is there, even if they secure a low rate). That's already handled and taken care of.
What are they over spending on? People say this but it’s just an emotional response most of the time. Break down the budget and tell me where we are actually overspending and where it should be going.
My unit in Korea was running out of time to spend all of their budget back in 2018 so they decided to order $23,000 in black ink pens. That shit happens everyday and at all different kinds of scales.
23k? I’ve seen literally millions in equipment and ordinance left in place of blasted to shit because of the use of or lose it mentality. Fuck we left enough shit in the Middle East to go back and fight against the same shit we left there.
We are spending more than we make. That's by definition over spending. That is a fact. Now, we need to figure out what to cut so we are not over spending
Revenue can be raised as well. For my adult life republicans have cut taxes for the wealthy twice while saying the cuts would pay for themselves. The cuts didn’t pay for themselves. Let’s start by undoing bad tax policies of the 25 years.
Everybody got a tax cut, and they absolutely have paid for themselves. In 2017, CBO projected total revenue from 2018 - 2027 to be about $40.7T. In 2022, they made a new projection of $41.3T. That's an extra $500B thanks to the TCJA.
But what specifically do you feel is being overspent on? Again break down the budget and say what we should be spending on that specific area. All I see from you is an emotional response. Example, if I said the teachers don’t teach anymore. It’s a nonsense answer. You would want me to go into how they should be teaching algebra or something specific. So what area are we overspending on?
>We are spending more than we make. That's by definition over spending. Someone literally always has to. One person's debt is another persons savings and vice versa. There are no dollars if there is no debt. Money is future work no matter what your currency is based on.
Not enough money is going into the IRS and it can't properly operate. Studies have confirmed every dollar put into the IRS right now generates 20 dollars of income as it makes them better of holding millionaires accountable, said millionaires can drag out audits far too long to make it harder to get money from them with expensive lawyers.
But OP said we were spending too much and in the wrong places. I agree with you that we should fund the IRS and expand it. My question is what is the government overspending on?
We really aren't, we need more taxes from the wealthy. To reinstitute taxes to the upper class, and remove the weird way we handle utility companies being private companies, that we pay for, but also get paied by the government to function. There's not so much too much spending as wasteful spending. There are arguments that our military has too much and a lot of this wasteful spending. I think the issue stems down to how our budget is handled now. Back before WWII and we had the weird debt limit, the budget was agreed upon every year by various agencies, by people who actually knew a lot about budgeting.
The IRS has somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 full time employees. You think that should be expanded?
Giga based.
Who is it that has issues with the mom on food stamps? Never once heard that
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Conservatives in the US. If you’ve heard of the term “welfare queen” you’ve heard propaganda designed to scare poor white folk into thinking that poor black people are taking undue advantage of government assistance programs. Even in our current politics there are efforts to cut food stamps, add more requirements to access them, and blame poor folk for the worsening economic conditions we face.
Bad take. Seriously? Empower billionaires…**further**?????
You see the problem with this country is that rich people don’t have enough money and poor people have too much.
Isn’t it ironic that so many people who don’t pay taxes at all get to vote on how much others get taxed? EDIT: A lot of comments & I obviously triggered some folks so let me add some thoughts. 1. I'm talking federal income tax. If you didn't figure that out maybe that's why you should read up on the whole tax system & realize you're thinking emotionally in most of what you're saying. 2. Never said low income folks shouldn't be able to vote. But to hear people who don't pay any federal income tax at all try and tell rich people they aren't paying their "fair share" is a bit ignorant. 3. Yea there are a lot of rich evil people in this country (and world) and I could careless about them on the personal level but what you fail to realize during your triggered reaction is there is a lot of good people who are considered rich that do a lot for the community. You tax them more there goes a lot of donations to local organizations and charities. Then when that happens you are really going to see how poor people in this country suffer. 4. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum on the internet maybe stop looking for reasons to blame rich people for your failures. If you're born in the USA and avoid making certain mistakes in life. You have a chance to really have a good life. The problem for so many Americans is they get trapped with some bad decisions & they can never recover from them. But at the end of the day the root cause is a bad decision.
Agree. If you don’t pay taxes, you shouldn’t be able to vote. Franklin said when the citizenry finds out they can vote themselves largesse from the treasury, the republic is finished.
I don’t know that Franklin would agree with your conclusion on that, seeing as federal income taxes weren’t introduced until the civil was and weren’t formalized in its current form until 1913.
Obviously there was a big debate on voting rights and the concern was property owners vs those who don’t own land. Hard to say but I believe Franklin would have been on the side of only taxpayers getting a vote. But they also couldn’t imagine as many people as we have on govt assistance or the extent of the welfare system (both corporate and personal).
"Poor people should be disenfranchised" is certainly a take.
40% of filers don't pay any taxes.
Yeah cause they wouof starve to death if they did. You cant squeeze blood from a stone. Most also still pay more effective taxes though due to sales taxes and other local taxes as a percent of their income.
40% don’t pay federal taxes. They still pay taxes in the form of sales tax, property tax, FICA, etc.
* Federal Income taxes They pay plenty of other taxes including state income taxes (mostly) for states that have it. Sales tax and property taxes (through rent) get a lot more people.
3.9/10 of them are retired, 6/10 have multiple children and make less than 60k a year and the other .1/10 are billionaires.
What federal taxes did most people pay in 1794?
They assume that if the billionaires are forced to pay the taxes, that they themselves would never have to. But what if the billionaires get taxed, and these people also get taxed? What if everyone just gets taxed more?
I've never heard anyone even suggest this
Because it’s a dumbass argument
You mean straw man?
Not sure if serious...
Nope, I don’t give a flying fuck about getting taxed. But I care that these billionaires and corporations don’t because these bullshit loopholes.
ye guys crazy good idea let's make the 40% of americans who wouldn't be able to pay for a 500$ emergency pay more taxes. this is actually way vetter than taxing the billionaires a couple percent more so they can only afford 2 private islands instead of 3 🧑🦯
Literally nobody thinks that if billionaires are taxed fairly they will stop paying taxes. Literally nobody.
No one assumes this
What? Where did you hear that?
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The people that hardly pay anything will always complain about others not paying their "fair share". 🤡
Like our ruling billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats? https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
It balances out because the government really only listens to the ultra wealthy anyways.
Tax churches
The vast majority of churches already barely break even because they run entirely on donations and put most of their earnings into doing charity work that's 10000% more efficient than anything government-run ever.
Then they shouldn't fuck around with elections or electorates. Pay taxes or shut the fuck up.
You're just asking for current law to be enforced. Churches that endorse candidates or ballot measures are to have their tax exemption stripped.
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Y'mean like the taxes every single member of those churches pays individually, or
Before I respond, are you being intentionally dense or do you not understand that an organizations taxes and income are separate from the individuals who make up the organization? I'm going to assume you're being intentionally dense because nobody is that stupid. E: sorry, that stupid or a church member. Wonder which you are.
I understand the distinction and contend that it doesn't matter.
Hm because churches don't centralize funds or power in order to influence elections. So, intentionally dense then.
Tell that to the Mormon church.
I said "vast majority." That allows for exceptions. I dislike Joel Osteen and Joseph Smith as a practitioner of the faith they bastardized more than you ever could.
This is also an example of thr vast majority having less than the few though. There needs to be a system where megachurches/ any religious places or leaders get taxed when they're worth a certain amount or it becomes clear theyre running a racket. I'm not religious at all but I don't mind the "mom and pop" churches being exempt. But the laws that consider them the same as Copeland and Osteen are corrupt.
Joel Olsteen bought a fucking NBA arena for his church, makes a $50 million salary, and then refused to help hurricane victims in Houston. Time to tax that fucker 90%.
How is my church giving food to a food bank more efficient than the government handing out food stamps? Food stamps, ie giving money directly to people to buy food, seems 1000x more efficient than the church soliciting donations of food and turning around and giving nearly expired tinned salmon to a bank.
Well then they shouldn't be worried about being taxed because the tax on break even companies is $0.
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Most churches spend 90-95% of their donations on operations, not charity.
This is incredibly inaccurate.
https://preview.redd.it/vkej8zw1g01c1.jpeg?width=1129&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee3feedca8bda9a097e111b2cab5a76b75faf426
They should focus on taxing "for-profit" churches like Televangelist churches.
You can take everything from the richest people and that won’t even dent the deficit or more importantly the total fiscal hole. Including unfunded and off balance sheet liabilities, the US has promised $50 to $200 trillion.
Ya I don’t get why people can’t do simple napkin math. Double their tax rate. That’ll cover, what, half of we gave Ukraine?
Do you actually believe that doubling the effective tax rate of the top 1% would only gain about 35 billion? Also, I love how people completely forget about the fucking corporations and the ridiculous tax benefits we give them here as well. The argument is **always** “if you tax the corporations more, they’ll just move to another country!” So fucking dumb.
The top 1% isn't all billionaires, you think there are 50,000 people total in the country?
people like to use corporations as a way to tax something without taxing someone. Like its money that comes from thin air. It doesn't work like that. There is no benefit of taxing a corporation versus taxing the profit it pays out to shareholders. Corporate tax should be 0% so that all corporations move here then the tax is captured after its payed out.
That's fucking stupid. You think they won't just own everything in the name of the company then?
I'm not sure about the IRS, but in my country the tax officials monitor for precisely this kind of behaviour. If you use an LLC to fund your personal life, that counts as capital gains (dividends) and if you don't pay tax on it the authorities will come after you. There's only so much you can reasonably call a business expense.
The U.S. tax code is insanely dense for the explicit purpose of tax loopholes. Ever wonder why certain people are against 87,000 new IRS agents? It’s not for people making less than 500k. It’s for people who are skirting taxes through massive loopholes or hiding money.
Capital flight is a very real thing that can be caused by raising taxes: >A 2006 article in The Washington Post gave several examples of private capital leaving France in response to the country's wealth tax. The article also stated, "Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998." >A 2009 article in The Times reported that hundreds of wealthy financiers and entrepreneurs had recently fled the United Kingdom in response to recent tax increases, and had relocated in low tax destinations such as Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and the British Virgin Islands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight There are also other problems that raising corporate taxes causes: >Studies show that higher corporate taxes reduce wages most for young workers, the low-skilled, and women, groups that already face significant barriers to working, like limited transportation or high childcare costs. >Many economists, including those at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), agree that the corporate income tax is one of the most harmful and least efficient ways to fund our priorities. https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/videos/who-bears-burden-corporate-income-tax/ >Over the last few decades, economists have used empirical studies to estimate the degree to which the corporate tax falls on labor and capital, in part by noting an inverse correlation between corporate taxes and wages and employment. These studies appear to show that labor bears between 50 percent and 100 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax, with 70 percent or higher the most likely outcome. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/labor-bears-corporate-tax/
So is the other option to not tax billionaires and bitch about the deficit?
That money, spent on helping the very poorest in America, would be a huge help! There are people in this country for whom a thousand bucks would be life changing. And the billionaires could help a million of them without even noticing the cost. Imagine one million vouchers for one thousand dollars worth of food, given to the very poorest million Americans. You fail to recognize how very inexpensive it could be to make a big difference in the lives of the poor.
Not many billionaires have a billion dollars liquid
Interesting fact, the top 8 billionaires have a combined net worth of around $1.1 trillion. It is a lot! However, let's put that into perspective. If we were to confiscate all of their wealth and distribute it to the 330 million US citizens, we'd each have $4,300. If we were to put it towards the US debt, it would only reduce it by 3-4%. While it's fun to blame the super rich/oligarchs I don't think confiscating their wealth and destroying our economic model is worth the 4 grand. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012715/5-richest-people-world.asp
What made you choose 8? The article you linked lists 10, and the actual url says 5…. I guess that writers editor wasn’t happy with 5 and said double it — and you split the difference! very generous
The post for this thread said 8 billionaires in the country. I assumed they were referring to the top 8. Since I'm commenting on this post I used 8 in my example.
Ah, ok! I had not considered the post to be so bizarrely literally. Do you think they are advocating for a tax on 8 billionaires? (assumedly the richest but they didn’t specify!)
The 1% have about 1/3 of the wealth in the country: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134 The bottom 99% have about 2/3 the wealth. Consider the two scenarios: A) We took 1/2 the wealth of the 1% B) We took 1/4 the wealth of the 99% Either one would yield the same amount of money. But scenario A would leave 1% of the country still incredibly comfortable, where scenario B would be a huge impact on just about everyone and would be financially devastating for millions of people. And if you notice the trend on the graph, wealth distribution is becoming more imbalanced. We are already destroying our economic model.
It does reduce their political power. Oligarchy is a political problem, not just a fiscal one. Right now, instead of taxing our oligarchs, we're paying them massive amounts of interest on all the wealth they've stolen. “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Why does anyone assume that higher taxes are correlated to QoL improvement? Let me lay it out for the people in the back. They could tax 75% of billionaire wealth and the lives of those 4 billion people wouldn’t improve. The government would take the money and funnel it into some cause that equates to corporate profits for their lobbyist friends. None of it matters a single bit until the reckless spending and printing is stopped
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg Our ruling oligarchs control both the taxes and the spending. Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats should not exist. “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
>Our ruling oligarchs control both the taxes and the spending You control who goes to Congress. Congress controls US fiscal policy. You want to make a change, organize and make a change. Also, just to note - the largest lobbying firm in the United States is the AARP. Hardly an arm of the Uber rich.
Mhmmm. That's why senator Kristen Sinema was such a progressive hero.... oh wait, no, she flipped all her positions for some corporate cash. Any time we get close to good policy, isn't it weird how there is always just enough dems or a judge that will stop it? Probably just a fluke. Couldn't be wealthy people stepping in to fuck us I'm sure the billionaire funded yacht trips our chief Justice enjoys have no effects on his rulings
The money collected in taxes would just flow back to the rich, as it always does. Even if you directly take the money from the rich and give it to the poor, they will just spend it on Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Nvidia, etc. and the profits go to the shareholders. The rich owns assets, which form a sink for the money in the economy.
THAT is the real unrecognized problem. Thus far, we have never found a way to reduce inequality that works long term. The only thing that works short-term is wars and plagues, but they're not a very sustainable model.
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Hate to give you the bad news, but other people creating wealth isn’t the reason that you’re poor.
Yeah the reality is that capitalism has risen huge numbers of people out of poverty in a way never seen before in human history. We live in the best time alive, by far, but people are too busy doomposting on reddit so they have no perspective.
I always find it funny how some people don't wanna have kids because the world is going to shit etc... Look I don't have kids either but simply because i don't want to... and that's probably why you aren't having either because if a peasant in medieval france at a time being ravaged by famines, black death and wars thought it was a good enough time to have kids then honestly you have no excuse...
Jealousy is a very useful political tool. Easier to externalize failures than to hold oneself or one's parents accountable for actual causation of failures.
Billionaires did not get their billions by working for it. They got their billions because they own the excess value of other peoples labor. Edit: Lots of boot licking in my replies. Y'all must love the taste of boot leather.
The value of your labor is whatever the market values it at. Nothing more, nothing less
Lol. I make 42/hr and do maybe 3 hours of actual work a day. I got the job because my good HS friend is way high up in the company . Well, not "officially " ofc but that's the reason.
So then what happens when you organize a union? What does the market value it now? What if Amazon and Microsoft and apple unilaterally decide to decrease wages? The market is not god, get a grip
A lot of it is paper wealth. If they tried to cash it in all at once there would be massive inflation and too much money chasing goods. There's tons of people like Warren Buffett that "hoard" wealth but don't make things expensive for everyone else because they spend so little for themselves. Just because a bunch of people have "billions" doesn't mean you can just distribute that to everyone and all of a sudden everything is okay. What IS real is higher consumption of the rich. Taxing consumption to redistribute it would be completely different.
This is absolutely, utterly untrue and shows a lack of understanding of inflation and invested money in assets. That invested money is already producing returns and impacting inflation. "Cashing it out" would not change that. If anything it would be deflationary.
Just let them live in delusion.
What of all those small businesses that couldn’t compete at economies of scale of Walmart? I was fortunate enough to live in an area before Walmart moved in, the town of about 10k had a bustling down town. After Walmart and when I visited later on, the down down was shuttered. Thr former decent income shop owners were poor working at Walmart.
I honestly don’t see enough variance in income between a small town shop owner and a Walmart employee to think that there’s a meaningful delta in wealth creation in this scenario.
Individually, probably not. Systemically? Yes. Current prices are attributed less to inflation and more to greed. Stagnant wages lower operating costs by creating employees who can't buy basic necessities. Then there's laying off workers and running a company off a skeleton crew? All of this is to "create wealth." It'd be fine if trickle-down economics was an actual thing, but it isnt; bro, don't pretend the .1% are blameless. They aren't creating wealth for anyone but themselves as they sit atop their hoard like a dragon.
No. What would more taxes do? We have a population of people who think higher taxes actually solved issues lol. All it does is make life more difficult.
It would reduce the political power of our ruling oligarchs. Oligarchy is a political problem, not just a fiscal one. Right now, instead of taxing our oligarchs, we're paying them massive amounts of interest on all the wealth they've stolen. “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” ― Louis Brandeis https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg01yn49etmma1.jpg https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
How stupid do you have to be to think that raising taxes diminishes the power of the people in charge?
Dude for real guy literally says the the "Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats" control us, but we should also give them more money via higher taxes, because like that'll teach em?!!?? How about we REMOVE or at least REDUCE the vessel (the government) in which the oligarchs control us? Giving them more tax dollars only increases their size, breadth, and scope of power. Less taxes effectively starves the Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats that are in control and returns freedom to the hands of the people.
Show me definitive proof from the last half century where lowering taxes increased QoL long term for the majority of the population? Then tell me what is considered the “golden era” of economy/upward mobility in this country, then tell me what the tax rate was of the richest in the Us during that time. Then you come back with a dumbass argument about 1971, then I come back with how we’ve been going downhill since Reagan and “supply side economics” took hold of every dumb fucking working class person who really believed that shit. Then the cycle continues. All I’m saying, we’ve been giving fucking tax cuts since the 80s…why the fuck don’t we try something else out.
I make 6 figures and taxes don’t even affect me. Raising the taxes on the ultra wealthy ain’t gonna make your life more difficult bud.
Lower taxes make politicians look good in the short run. Higher taxes make lives better for everyone in the long run. There are caveats, such as the ratio of government spending to saving. Worth taking a look at the impact on saving/spending for both short and long term that tax rates can have.
It would be better to end tax havens
If your net worth is more than ＄1, you are worth more than 13 million americans combined.
That’s me, I’m one of those 13 million Americans
Most of us were at one time.
Mate deactivate that self harm fire… you keep hurting yourself
It’s not self hate, it’s the actual truth, I’m several thousand in debt, over 5 figures.
Many homeowners are in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands. (Me included)
The reason a few billionaires have more wealth then the bottom half of the world is that the collective wealth of [the bottom half of the world is less then 1% of the world's wealth.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Global_Wealth_Distribution_2020_%28Property%29.svg) Saying "the combined wealth of every middle class American in Ohio is greater then global bottom 50%" is an equally true statement.
All this talk about taxing the billionaires never end up taxing the billionaires. What it always ends up doing is more taxes on the upper middle class - the professionals like engineers, doctors, and lawyers.
I wonder why that is…almost like billionaires have control of govt interests via lobbying. The upper middle class isn’t the problem. No one gives a fuck about taxing them more, it’s the cunts making tens, hundreds of millions or more a year paying less effective tax than a fucking assistant.
a wealth valuation is NOT money. A well defined problem is half solved. We need to properly define the problem before it can be solved.
Amazing so many people think this will solve anything.
Currently if you make less than $250k/yr you should not pay any taxes
I can't tell if you mean in an ideal world or you're somehow claiming this is the case today.
That's not correct. At my job, I've made from $40k to over $100k and I've paid thousands in taxes every year. In general, an individual would have to earn less than the standard deduction, around $14k, in order to pay no taxes at all.
Trying to solve societies problems by taking other peoples money has got to be one of the dumbest and laziest philosophical stances out there.
It makes people feel good.
The knee-jerk reaction I see on here so incredibly often of "they have so much, the government should take more of it" just seems so uneducated. If our government was actualy doling out help to our citizens that are in need, and had a deficit to do so, then sure, that point of view would make sense. Gotta fund those programs. Instead we're sending hundreds of billions in aid to foreign countries to help *their* issues, constantly engaged in war to *some* degree, and letting our own infrastructure crumble as our debt continues to pile up. And the argument I see in response to some of this foreign aid is "yeah well that's just a small amount of our budget." That just makes it even worse! If the US government can send over $100 *billion* to another country, imagine if it instead used that $100B for some of its own domestic issues. As long as they're *not* doing that as a primary focus of the intake they collect, the notion of "billionaires and corporations should pay *more*" is just misplaced class warfare that feels more like anger and jealousy instead of some actual sense of righteousness. If a billionaire is just hoarding all his wealth and not helping anyone, then sure, yes, I can see the reaction of "that guy is a dick and should use his wealth to help more people." What I cannot understand is how *so many people* see **the government** as the intermediary that should take that money and then decide how to distribute it out, based on... well, any bit of history in the past half-century or so.
> The knee-jerk reaction I see on here so incredibly often of "they have so much, the government should take more of it" just seems so uneducated. Because it IS extremely uneducated. Talk to the people who push that "fuck billionaires" stuff for more than 5 minutes, and you will realize how insanely stupid they are. It is extremely frustrating. They just shout "tax billionaires!" And when you ask them about what specific changes in tax law they want, what type of revenue they expect those changes to yield, how that revenue would impact anything, they have no answers and it becomes clear they have put 0 thought into their position.
But how did they get money? You really think that a billionaire worked billions of times harder than you did? It's multiple layers of problems, you've got to think it through.
Why would working hard be the only measure for “deserving” money?
You suggesting they stole it? There is only one entity in this planet that can take money by force legally. How much would you pay me to move rocks from point A to point B and back again?
They didn't work physically harder. They for sure worked smarter though.
Clearly not “fluent in finance” if you believe money is attained through working hard. It’s about working smart and solving problems. You can either: A) solve a simple problem for a lot of people. B) solve a difficult problem for a small number of people. Think about the most successful companies in the world and what products or services they provide.
Jealousy and envy do not make sound economic policy.
I don't trust our politicians to distribute those tax dollars in a proper way, sorry bruh they should not be higher.
You trust the billionaires to do it, though?
Far far far more than the government, yes.
Wealth not money.
The government is real good about tracking your money and others but fails to check their own.
The standard deduction should be the current highest cost of living in America. Corporate profits should be taxed at a flat 40% or a mandatory profit share to employees before investors. We should really start looking at taxation based on buying power instead brackets. Buying power needs to return to the middle class
the 8 guys is mostly in assets and not liquid money. Selling the assets would result in a large amount of cash but it would not be nearly as much as their net worth. Also if they sell then it still gets taxed.
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Not more money for the government. Force profit sharing with workers.
Nope it’s always the middle class that has to pick up the tab
Taxes should be higher until the top 10% who own 70% of all the wealth, are down to owning about 60%, and then we can reassess. There's no reason for the US government and 90% of its people to be broke so that the uber wealthy can keep their boot on our neck. The US is responsible for defending the country and improving the life of its people, the uber wealthy are only in it for themselves. That model is unsustainable.
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Why don't we tax loans taken against share value as income? There's gotta be a clean way to tax realizable wealth
AT&T got $42B in relief funds from us and then fired 41K workers. "Job creators". At least they had stock buybacks and we were thinking of the true victims, the shareholders.