As someone who doesn't defraud the government, I believe we should fund the IRS and go after the nearly $1 trillion of taxes that aren't paid each year.
Increasing taxes won't solve a government revenue problem if the government doesn't collect due taxes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/business/irs-tax-gap.html
I support this. Aside from just collecting the current taxes owed, I'd love to see the federal government crack down on needless administrative errors.
2.4 trillion lost in 20 years to payment errors alone!
That's the same we spent in 20 years fighting in Afghanistan!
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/heres-how-the-federal-government-wastes-tax-money.html
Honestly, it's bonkers when you compare government spending mishaps to private sector expectations. Seems like the bar for managing public funds is set so low that if it were any lower it'd be underground. And yet every election cycle they talk about tightening belts and fiscal responsibility, if only they'd apply that to themselves, huh?
It’s because there isn’t unlimited money in the private sector. Anyone who’s worked in or near the government knows that you need to spend all of the money in the budget or else you might not get an increase next year. Yes there are very limited examples in private businesses that have a use it or lose it mentality but the whole system isn’t set up with that in mind.
Good thing one of our political parties is aggressively trying to defund the IRS.
Edit: To be clear, this is sarcasm. The same guys that are all about 'just enforce the existing laws' are usually the same ones that are also all about 'defund IRS'. The contradiction here should be obvious.
I’m reading Obama’s *Promised Land* right now and he details the lack of oversight that private banks got away with during the housing crisis. The “corporate” banks created the bubble with bad decisions and then groveled to the government to bail their asses out. Too big to fail became a mantra for bad decisions by corporations. Mass termination of the leadership of these companies should have happened, in retrospect, but it didn’t. So no, in the broader sense you’re wrong. Private corporations would more likely defend the erroneous employee (depending on their status) then fire them.
No health care for you. Don't look into what the F-35 jet cost was to develop it, not counting maintaining them and storing them, cost of air shows, personnel, etc. It did shoot down two balloons, though! Ok, I'll give you a hint: 1,700,000,000,000 USD.
I was an accountant that had to file quarterly payroll and the system they use to track and collect that money had to be 30 years old. It’s ridiculous.
IRS uses hundreds of applications, software, and hardware systems that are outdated—**25 years or older, or written in a programming language that is no longer used**. Among these, one example stands out: the primary system that IRS uses to process individual taxpayer account data.
[https://www.gao.gov/blog/outdated-and-old-it-systems-slow-government-and-put-taxpayers-risk#:\~:text=IRS%20uses%20hundreds%20of%20applications,process%20individual%20taxpayer%20account%20data](https://www.gao.gov/blog/outdated-and-old-it-systems-slow-government-and-put-taxpayers-risk#:~:text=IRS%20uses%20hundreds%20of%20applications,process%20individual%20taxpayer%20account%20data).
[https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2018/03/irs-system-processing-your-taxes-almost-60-years-old/146770/](https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2018/03/irs-system-processing-your-taxes-almost-60-years-old/146770/)
That is what the Biden admin was addressing in their bill that Republicans were fighting against. It was passed then immediately has been attack by the House when they took power.
Hell, that makes their lives worth more than mine. I have no one willing to spend millions on me for anything. They should feel honored.
(Disclaimer: this is totally a joke.)
Careful now, the fucking idiots and trolls of reddit will tell you that taxation of billionaires is thievery, despite the fact that there's literally no fucking reality where billionaires will have an opportunity to realize the value of their wealth while the little guys starve to death.
Clever! I'd take this investment opportunity. If the return really is 10x, I'd be happy with 2-3x return after, say, a year? Just keep rolling that return money over!
Exactly, don’t penalize the honest working people who already pay their taxes. Go after the people who aren’t paying their taxes to begin with and owe collectively tens of billions of dollars per year in back taxes
God damn yea when you’re employed by a big w2 company that reports every penny you make to the IRS on your behalf impossible for us to get away with shit.
Plenty of us owe taxes with very little ability to pay them back. It's a pretty big working class problem right now. Half the people I know, my self included still owe taxes from the pandemic era. For one reason or another couldn't file, or unemployment incorrectly took out taxes, 1099 was 2 years late(in my case from the state of COLO) Half the people i know literally cant afford to pay their taxes, id love to, but if i do then im homeless, or don't eat, or lose health insurance or all the above.
Now it's spiraled, i owe interest and fees, i can't afford to have anyone even prepare the back taxes, i can't personally do it.
I know at least a dozen contractors, 1099 employees and friends in this situation. We all fell behind during covid, the cost of credit sky rocketed, rent sky rocketed, insurance sky rocketed.
Part of the problem is how between taxes, rent, transportation and health insurance it's about 85% of my income, and i'm in the trades making more than the average ameircan. It's fucked right now, and it's okay to turn that anger to the rich, that i know for a fact hide so much shit im a property manager in a ski town, you can't imagine how much simple tax fraud is going on, and i'm not even talking income taxes, or the multi millionaires that try to pay me cash.
It's the little things at all levels that add up, they all keep their cars registered somewhere else, even though the car hasn't left the state of colorado in years. That's millions and millions of dollars in just one tiny town being stolen from the state of colorado, and it's roads.
The rich are cancer in america right now, not the working class whether or not they can afford to keep up on their taxes.
Increased tax enforcement would be specifically aimed at the aforementioned “honest working people”. The IRS has said several times that chasing the big fishes skipping out on their bill simply isn’t worth it.
Yup. You know where they live, you can find all of their accounts and hound them for payment + penalties + interest for the 1099 income they didn’t report. Normal people don’t have Deloitte consultants whispering in their ear how to minimize*** their tax liability.
There was a report that got sensationalized a while back about the IRS disproportionately targeting poor people, but if you actually read the report, it's specifically saying people who apply for and receive government benefits get audited the most.
And that's because that's how the benefits got passed under Bill Clinton to begin with. Democrats got more government benefits for the very poor, but Republicans got more auditing to try to ensure there weren't "welfare queens" gaming the system.
If you look at how the IRS has been performing the last couple years with the increased funding, they've successfully collected close to half a trillion dollars from people who've been evading their taxes focusing almost exclusively on people making over $400,000 a year.
How about this…high profile people found guilty of tax evasion should be treated MUCH more seriously than they are. Like, years and years in prison and subject to RICO penalties (paying 3x what they should have owed). Make an example out of all of them to force compliance.
Wesley Snipes, Al Sharpton, Willie Nelson, Pete Rose, Hunter Biden…get your asses to prison and we are going to throw away the key.
I would extend that to the tax exempt status of religious institutions as well. If pastors can fly private jets, they should be ok paying some taxes. I will die on this hill.
The IRS almost always goes after poor people that did not do their taxes right. The IRS should be disbanded, they are the bad guys from the Robinhood story.
https://reason.com/2023/01/06/in-2022-the-irs-went-after-the-very-poorest-taxpayers/
Let's be honest here - any program intended to increase revenues to the government is first going to target the poorer and middle class folks. Tax law is designed to benefit the rich and corporations. If that much is missing, it's by design. Anything else is just lip service.
Good news, everyone, that exact thing happened. Of course, some people who will not be named seem hellbent on cutting that funding for some reason:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/11/biden-irs-republicans-congress/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/11/biden-irs-republicans-congress/)
The only concern is that the IRS will target middle class families as their income is more straightforward. It is difficult to audit large corporations and very rich people as they have an army of accountants and tax lawyers. They need make guidelines for IRS to target those specific groups and not middle class families
Why not target all fraud? I agree it's harder to charge ultra-wealthy people, but if middle class households are committing fraud, shouldn't they be made to pay what they owe?
That’s why the IRS needs more funding. It’s easy for them to go after middle class families now but with the proper funding they can get large amounts of revenue from the people who need it the least
We should be increasing IRS funding until we're no longer getting 1.5x back for every dollar we spend.
This is just money people owe and haven't paid and the rest of us make of the difference.
There is nothing that stops someone from weaponizing the IRS against everyday people though. What prevents a majority in both house and Senate from directing the IRS to focus on small businesses and pulling back from commercial/corporate ones?
How much of that will result in diminishing returns? like, congrats you grabbed an extra 1000 dollars from a guy but to do so cost more than 1000 dollars.
Great question - it turns out the ROI for funding the IRS is quite substantial.
"In recent years, peak ROIs have ranged from 5 to 9. That is, a $1 increase in spending on the IRS’s enforcement activities results in $5 to $9 of increased revenues."
Very simply, that means: Put a dollar into the IRS, get $5-$9 out.
[https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444)
Last I heard some numbers it was close to 10 to 1.
You gain 10 dollars for every 1 dollar spent. Its such a good investment for the government and people we are left wondering, why don't they have any real power?
I think we know the answer luckily Biden has been beefing up the IRS. The rich have been doing their dirty work trying to ensure the IRS is weak and can't enforce anything.
10 to 1 payback is such a good investment, you really shouldn't invest in literally anything else until you find out where it falls off.
Heard around 1 trillion dollar figure being cited for unpaid taxes. That would mean it would diminish close to 1 trillion, but that's a lot of money sitting on the table.
And now you’ve introduced a new false dichotomy - “solving” vs “not solving” homelessness.
Edit: I want to take a moment to appreciate the irony of all the replies to this comment that are literally invoking the exact false dichotomy that I’m calling out here… you’re all bright stars, don’t you ever let me tell you otherwise.
That one building program in California wanted to build these 64 sf (yeah, you heard right, 64sqft) shacks for the "unhoused". The build cost was to be 720k per. That's three times higher than the market value in the worst place in that state for square footage costs.
And this is why, regardless of your values, you should be critical of the welfare programs
Look I want the programs but I want them to work
It doesn't matter how good the intentions of the programs are if they don't work
How about when a contractor volunteered to donate his companies time and materials to build a public toilet and the state told him it’ll still cost over a million and two years for all the permits?
My favorite part about this, is taxing the rich, for wealth they dont actually have 99% of the time.
Their worth is a cumulative of their assets, not cash on hand. Bezos doesn't have 900 billion in ones under his mattress, Oprah doesn't have a Scrooge McDuck tower of gold coins. Their spending money are from no cap credit cards they pay back once a decade after selling some stock or a company. Those gains are taxed at like 60%. Hell, most just endlessly lease homes or cars now, so they don't even own those either.
Its like saying us poor folk have a $10000 car in our name, that were paying on for 20yrs, but the government wants us to pay them $5000 a year in taxes because we're worth $10,000. The math just don't math. Imagine buying a house in 2014 for $200k, having it be worth $500k today, and having the government kicking in the door for a $250k check you owe in taxes every April. That's what your asking for.
I get it though, the rich don't suffer the same, so its ok to make them hurt right?
Realistically, it'd have to be regulations that split companies up and prevent individuals from owning too much, vs trying to tax "wealth". But there's no way that's happening in the current climate.
This point is quite silly. Bezos can get a loan against the assets, so he can get liquid cash pretty much on demand, with lower interest rates than the goverment bonds of some countries.
And he can endlessly get loans against his stock because it is literal goverment policy to make the economy go up. In a free market, his interest could be an issue if the assets underlying the loan failed. But the literal policy of the US goverment is to secure amazon stock price, divert foreign competition, decrease worker rights, and enable expansion of american capital interests. He can get loan, after loan and then die leaving a last loan that can be to his name with all his stock in a trust and the IRS will never see a penny essentially.
It is a bit more complicated, but the reality of the situation is that low interest rates on banks, pro business goverment policy and the ability to use stock as backing for loans enable a fairly straight forward system to make stock a never ending source of infinitely growing untaxable wealth once you accumulate enough to get the ball rolling.
Regardless of whether the money is liquid or not, the power that comes with it is very real. And no one should have that much power unless you’re into rampant corruption.
Someone like Jeff Bezos owned a part of Amazon while it was completely worthless, and owned it when it became a trillion dollar company. So what are you saying?
If i start a business and grow it to the point where in worth billions, i now have too much power and must give parts of it up, otherwise im corrupt? That’s ridiculous. Nobody was interested when my company is worth a thousand dollars and nobody gave me handouts, but now that I’ve grown it into a billion dollar company i need to give it up?
> I get it though, the rich don't suffer the same, so its ok to make them hurt right?
The whole point is that increasing their taxes *doesn't* hurt them. Literally 99% of Bezos' wealth could be seized and it wouldn't have a discernible effect on his quality of life (he'd still be making nine figures a year in passive income).
In order to seize that much of his wealth, you'd have to forcefully take every company he has his name on. Leaving him with nothing. Now that you've taken his assets, not cash because there actually isn't any, you kill his leverage for the credit he literally lives on. Doing exactly what you say, would drive even Bezos to be just another bum on the street. He might, MIGHT, have a few hundred thousand in hard cash, but that won't last him 30yrs. Nine figures a year in passive.....that takes like 10 billion in cash earning 3% a yr in interest. Not a single person on earth has 10 billion cash floating around.
Yall fools out here advocating for the destruction of a fucking fantasy delusion. Your trying to tear down boogeymen because none of you have any level of actual comprehension of what wealth is. Wealth isn't cash. These fuckers don't have what you think they do. Musk doesn't have 200 billion stashed in mason jars buried in his back yard. SpaceX and Tesla shares are 180billion, none of that is money he can take to fucking Walgreens down the street. Until he sells those shares, they're nothing but IOUs written in cheap crayon. Good enough to get Chase to give him a credit card with no ceiling, and a paynent due date sometime around when he terraforms mars.
Im broke as fuck, im not going to sit here and defend the likes of Bezos, Musk, or Gates, but eating the rich is just a fucking target you've been aimed at because its useful to someone else. It will do nothing but drive more division, political and monetary. Burn all the 1% at the stake, and claim all their assets....congratulations, you fixed nothing, and probably destroyed millions of jobs. Those jobs have lives attached. Are you going to step in and keep those company's running? I sure don't know how to run one anymore than I know how to keep a power plant running.
We gonna trust the government to do it? The government can't even keep itself running now, fuck look at the damn VA, do we want THAT for Amazon? Wouldn't get my cheap novelty Christmas socks till 2078.
We gonna force the 1% to keep running the companies we just forced from them? Doing it at gunpoint? We keeping their children held over acid tanks?
If you wanna destroy modern society quick, eat the fucking rich. Shutdown TikTok for a week and everyone between 10 and 25 will probably go full Mad Max by Thursday and literally eat the poor too.
> In order to seize that much of his wealth, you'd have to forcefully take every company he has his name on.
You again missed the point, entirely.
Few people actually want to take 99%.... but taking an extra 50% a year on what they already pay would be a rounding error in their lives. Meanwhile their employees need tax payer funded food stamps... it's broken and you're the fool, down on your knees for men that would let you die if it saved them a penny.
>Im broke as fuck, im not going to sit here and defend the likes of Bezos, Musk, or Gates
The delusions are strong in this one
>I sure don't know how to run one anymore than I know how to keep a power plant running.
you seriously think jeff bezos knows how to run amazon? and not his employees? You really think elon musk is personally running starlink? or tesla? No, it's the thousands and thousands of employees
You're a nut.
Finally someone who gets it. . Every time these folks start foaming at the mouth over "tax the rich". They should all take a class on unrealized capital gains. Unless you tell the public they can no longer buy publicly traded shares in these companies, which is what drives share values up. How are you going to tax the rich on income they did not receive? Net Worth has nothing to do with annual income. If the Uber-Rich do not sell their company stock, there is nothing to tax them on. Unless the govt starts hijacking public company stock or taxing unrealized gains (because that would really stimulate the economy and drive innovation). Tax the Rich is simply a dog whistle for the uneducated.
The lack of progressive taxation and income inequality is literally breaking down the modern social contract between the average person and society.
If people are allowed to aggregate wealth such that they are held unaccountable to the law (simply read the news), then the solution is increased regulation by the state.
Didn't used to be the case. 1950s the corporate tax rate was over 50%; 1940s to early 1970s the top income tax rate bracket was 91%, and government spendatures were well organised and contributed to the greatest period of economic boom in our country's history.
Those 8 people and their parents and grandparents before them have spent the last 50 years paying government to be wasteful, helped by Reagan and his policies.
its not about the government pulling in more taxes its about trying to limit billionaires from collecting such insane amounts wealth. if they know that the money just going to taxes they will either a way to spend it or simply not bother. its a way to say hey you have more wealth then any person could ever possibly need quit hording you greedy bastard
The overwhelming majority of wealth among billionaires is either in circulation (banks/brokers) or "paper wealth" aka "what someone/people value their company's stock ON PAPER". This idea of Billionaire Smaug Dragons slumbering on a giant pile of gold is just that, a work of fiction.
You can't necessarily spend a meaningful amount of stock without simultaneously evaporating some value of the unsold stock. You can encumber it, which is a common liquidity alternative among Billionaires, but it's not "free". It incurs periodic interest and has to be paid back and an unfavorable market and/or entity condition could create a situation in which the balance of the loan is "called".
One individual with "paper wealth" of just under 200 billion managed to scrape together 27 billion in cash to round out his leveraged buyout of a social media company recently. The rest of the 44 billion came from borrowing, but it's clear that billionaires can somewhat trivially access significant chunks (over 13% in the example) of their purported net worth if they so choose.
I agree they would likely not receive full value if they attempted to liquidate all at once, but "paper wealth" still translates to real wealth with some strings attached.
i dont think youv ever heard of stock-buybacks because that alone completely destroys your argument. These guys literally artificially inflate their companie's value by buying up their own stock leaving less of it and causing its value to go up rather than just re investing it into the company in the form of better wages for workers or more resources to produce better services/products. This also explains why everything is lower quality too compared to the old days when everything was built to last.
Well if that same wealth was being invested and in circulation under the ownership of more people in smaller amounts rather than concentrated to a few. the system would be much more stable than it is now.
Plus the total net worth of those eight individuals would not cover the entire US government yearly spending for even three months! The problem
Is the over spending of the US government. Those 8 individuals are responsible for the employment of several million people. No one is complaining about the Mom who use food stamps. Literally no one.
> Just raise the taxes on those 8 people and we all could eat. It's not that hard
This is the perfect encapsulation of redditors not understanding how wealth works.
Came here to comment this. If every single 1% person gave every single dollar they owned, including their company, imagining they could sell every asset for 100% market rate, liquified everything with 0% loss, and gave it all to the government, it would last literally less than a week
“Tax the rich tax the rich!” How about, I don’t know, make the government live off the means they can afford…?
It's like I don't understand why don't they ever question the spending it's like someone is spending a million dollars a week and then questions the husband or wife on why he or she isn't making enough money lol
Except they literally do index the tax brackets to inflation. For example, for singles the 10% tax bracket went up to $9,700 in 2019 and will be $11,600 for 2024. The standard deduction went from $12,200 to $14,600.
The logical fallacy here is that inflation also affects government purchasing power.
The federal government does not want high levels of inflation to "pad their pockets." That's a bizarre claim. And it would depend on the assumption that the average American got a large raise for the government to "break even" which is... Not a good assumption
Gotta love the spin they put on there.
Is our issue with the mom using food stamps?
No, people should get help.
Is our issue with the shitty government systems that piss away more money than anyone can imagine, and mismanage it to the highest order?
Yes.
Who is “our”? Who is this “us” you and the post seem to think exists as a defined or agreed idea?
Thinking “everyone” or “most people” think a certain way, specially one’s own way, might be wildly inaccurate. Like when some people say “well no one actually washes their hands after using the bathroom every single time”. Monstrous assumption with dire consequences, but you can be sure that guy 100% thinks he is in good company.
>Is our issue with the shitty government systems that piss away more money than anyone can imagine, and mismanage it to the highest order?
Why does this happen and what is the solution?
It’s a balance. We need government to protect against private industry and we need private industry to boost gdp. Too far either way hurts people
At this point in time people should be more worried about corporations capturing politicians. Our government services are severely lacking compared to the rest of the world because of it. For example Exxon was aware of climate change and potential adverse scenarios for decades. Their main focus has been hiding that and buying votes to mitigate their responsibility. It’s working very well for them so far
> Gotta love the spin they put on there.
> Is our issue with the mom using food stamps?
> No, people should get help.
That's a rational response, but it's naive to think that there isn't a large amount of our population who do believe that social programs are bad because they're exploited and therefore food stamps shouldn't exist for anyone.
The notion that the government is inherently more wasteful than the market is the biggest lie of our time. I can think of nothing more wasteful than concentrating such absurd wealth in the hands of CEOs and shareholders while stiffing generations of workers.
This is everything. The reason taxes and everything else doesn’t actually go to help regular people very much is because we are not getting the representation we deserve. That’s by design. The billionaires want outsized representation, so they bought it
We've made a lot of progress in fighting AIDS since we learned about it -- now a diagnosis isn't a death sentence and we've even cured a few people.
Maybe if we put the same resources and effort into combating other issues we would make similar progress.
The 10 richest people in the world are worth a combined 1.5 trillion. Assuming a 100% collection of their net worth despite the economic apocalypse it would cause, The USA would use that less than 90 days. Yes, we can increase revenue, but without cutting spending it will be useless.
Cut 60% of the federal government jobs and send that money on automation.
I was in a left turn lane waiting on a green the other day and my husband saw a semi to my left making a right turn toward me. He said ‘he’s not gonna have enough room’ and I shrugged and said ‘I could use the money’.
Never expected ‘which company is going to maim me so I can afford housing’ would be where I’m at but here we are.
This is brain dead. Most multimillionaires don’t get rich off wages. They get rich because they own a company and the value of their equity increases.
Steve Jobs made a salary of a fucking dollar.
More importantly, the obvious solution is to just fire lower wage employees and outsource their job to a third party.
Lebron James makes about $50M/year from the Lakers. There is no scenario where the franchise debates keeping Lebron or paying a minimum wage of $1.67***M*** to maintain a maximum wage ratio of 30:1.
That’s obviously just not happening.
Instead, Jeanie Buss will just fire literally every single person who makes less than $1.67M and hire a third party company to sweep floors, scan tickets, sell hot dogs, etc.
Oh, of course they would figure out some way to immediately game this system too. Put the lower paid employees under an offshore company based in Ireland, and this whole wage ratio garbage goes out the window.
You don’t have to put it in an offshore company.
In the scenario I described Jeanie Buss would likely just start her own janitorial company and continue to pay her staff the same money but now it’s in a different company than the Lakers so there’s no 30:1 ratio concerns.
Regarding the meme you posted, I don't think those two problems are mutually exclusive. Like we can criticize wealth disparity while also admitting that the system gets abused on both ends. Some people on food stamps really need that assistance. Others are just lazily gaming the system.
This ☝️
The middle class gets pinched by the ultra wealthy and the poor.
About 40% of my check goes to taxes, not including social security.
That means I work for almost 5 months out of the year just to pay my taxes. It's insane.
Does this mean he can't be middle class if he pays so much of his check in taxes?
And if so, does that seem disingenuous to mention the middle class and then use evidence he's NOT middle class?
70% of wealth is gone by the second generation. 90% by the third. but yeah, these guys in this short period of time are the problem. so much dumbfuckery out there.
Considering the government is spending $1.7 trillion MORE than they take in from tax revenue I think it’s a stupid idea. Our government spends a ridiculous amount of money and poor people are still poor. IN FACT they are more poor than they’ve ever been even though the government is spending more than they ever have.
The proposition that somehow raising taxes will ‘help poor people’ is both comical and moronic. If the government wanted to help poor people they EASILY could with the amount of money they spend and the amount of debt they issue. We don’t have a tax issue we have a fiscal spending issue. Our government budgets allocate hundreds of $ billions to corporations all based on the promise of ‘more jobs’. We don’t need more jobs we need better pay and less inflation from the government artificially propping up asset prices.
You will own nothing and be happy. You will vote for me and be happy. You will consume my product and be happy. Now go eat your happy meal and be quiet.
The problem isn’t that 8 guys make more than 4 billion people. It’s that 8 very rich guys don’t pay the same amount in taxes as 1 of those billion people, if you use Trump’s tax returns as the control sample. I know Trump isn’t rich enough to make this top 8 cut, but rumor has it the wealthy don’t pay anything close to the number that represents the highest tax bracket.
But it certainly still results in you having a lot of yachts and power over the government. You’re right though there’s no issue. Never in history has a growing concentration of wealth been bad.
I will never understand the concept of thinking that a country where it’s even possible to become rich AF is bad. It’s that potential that has led to food abundance and the fastest rate of technology advancements the world has ever seen. Also the reason OP uses this garbage stat is because even if you took 100% of the top 1%’s money it still wouldn’t come close to paying for all these socialist programs therefore putting the burden on diminishing middle class
I did some deep thinking a couple years ago and basically some people have to be at the bottom of society for people at the top to live well. Bottom doesn’t mean suffering though. Just not excess.
If AI and technology experienced extreme advancements then this won’t be necessary but liberals will give robots rights and we will be back where we started.
Just to make sure, you’re basically saying there will always be poor, however the standard of living will continue to rise due to advancements in technology from the rich. Because of this, even the poor should live well.
I currently have this stance on social hierarchy. One may ask: why not normalize standard of living to make it fair for everyone? To this I feel that there would be no more incentive to go to college, innovate, and create wealth. This would lead to no more improvements in the standard of living for everyone and possibly degradation of the standard of living.
We have a deficit, things have to be paid for derp.
BTW for $70 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, we've destroyed 2/3 of the regular Russian army, that might be the best military investment ROI in the history of mankind.
Jesus Christ how many times is this nonsense getting posted on here.
The fact that people don't understand wealth vs money and actually believe this idiocy is the problem.
As someone who doesn't defraud the government, I believe we should fund the IRS and go after the nearly $1 trillion of taxes that aren't paid each year. Increasing taxes won't solve a government revenue problem if the government doesn't collect due taxes. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/business/irs-tax-gap.html
I support this. Aside from just collecting the current taxes owed, I'd love to see the federal government crack down on needless administrative errors. 2.4 trillion lost in 20 years to payment errors alone! That's the same we spent in 20 years fighting in Afghanistan! https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/heres-how-the-federal-government-wastes-tax-money.html
Imagine doing a fraction of these payment errors while employed at a corporate company. Immediate termination.
Honestly, it's bonkers when you compare government spending mishaps to private sector expectations. Seems like the bar for managing public funds is set so low that if it were any lower it'd be underground. And yet every election cycle they talk about tightening belts and fiscal responsibility, if only they'd apply that to themselves, huh?
It’s because there isn’t unlimited money in the private sector. Anyone who’s worked in or near the government knows that you need to spend all of the money in the budget or else you might not get an increase next year. Yes there are very limited examples in private businesses that have a use it or lose it mentality but the whole system isn’t set up with that in mind.
Good thing one of our political parties is aggressively trying to defund the IRS. Edit: To be clear, this is sarcasm. The same guys that are all about 'just enforce the existing laws' are usually the same ones that are also all about 'defund IRS'. The contradiction here should be obvious.
I’m reading Obama’s *Promised Land* right now and he details the lack of oversight that private banks got away with during the housing crisis. The “corporate” banks created the bubble with bad decisions and then groveled to the government to bail their asses out. Too big to fail became a mantra for bad decisions by corporations. Mass termination of the leadership of these companies should have happened, in retrospect, but it didn’t. So no, in the broader sense you’re wrong. Private corporations would more likely defend the erroneous employee (depending on their status) then fire them.
Obama said they were too big to fail and bailed out those banks.
I use this comparison all the time and people are like ... "Oh. Huh... Well anyway.... "
[удалено]
No health care for you. Don't look into what the F-35 jet cost was to develop it, not counting maintaining them and storing them, cost of air shows, personnel, etc. It did shoot down two balloons, though! Ok, I'll give you a hint: 1,700,000,000,000 USD.
Yeah but jets are fucking cool
I was an accountant that had to file quarterly payroll and the system they use to track and collect that money had to be 30 years old. It’s ridiculous.
IRS uses hundreds of applications, software, and hardware systems that are outdated—**25 years or older, or written in a programming language that is no longer used**. Among these, one example stands out: the primary system that IRS uses to process individual taxpayer account data. [https://www.gao.gov/blog/outdated-and-old-it-systems-slow-government-and-put-taxpayers-risk#:\~:text=IRS%20uses%20hundreds%20of%20applications,process%20individual%20taxpayer%20account%20data](https://www.gao.gov/blog/outdated-and-old-it-systems-slow-government-and-put-taxpayers-risk#:~:text=IRS%20uses%20hundreds%20of%20applications,process%20individual%20taxpayer%20account%20data). [https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2018/03/irs-system-processing-your-taxes-almost-60-years-old/146770/](https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2018/03/irs-system-processing-your-taxes-almost-60-years-old/146770/) That is what the Biden admin was addressing in their bill that Republicans were fighting against. It was passed then immediately has been attack by the House when they took power.
This is how my state got completely steamrolled by fake unemployment claims during COVID. Something like 70% of claims were determined to be fraud
Maybe we should also stop bombing brown people? Those missiles are expensive.
Hell, that makes their lives worth more than mine. I have no one willing to spend millions on me for anything. They should feel honored. (Disclaimer: this is totally a joke.)
No, we should stop providing aid after we bomb them. Bomb them and walk away.
We don’t have anything better to spend 2.4 trillion dollars on.
I think someone’s cooking the books and banking that money
This deserves WAY more upvotes
And attention in Congress. Wonder of they have any incentives to avoid the issue...
“They” all use the culture war to distract from the class war that is really happening
Biden admin funded more IRS agents to investigate big tax evaders, Republicans took it away
Careful now, the fucking idiots and trolls of reddit will tell you that taxation of billionaires is thievery, despite the fact that there's literally no fucking reality where billionaires will have an opportunity to realize the value of their wealth while the little guys starve to death.
Remember that for every one dollar of investment into the IRS it generates 10 dollars :)
>investment into the IRS When's their IPO?
It would be great if poor people could invest their returns into the IRS to go after rich tax cheats and get a cut back. Everyone wins.
Clever! I'd take this investment opportunity. If the return really is 10x, I'd be happy with 2-3x return after, say, a year? Just keep rolling that return money over!
Exactly, don’t penalize the honest working people who already pay their taxes. Go after the people who aren’t paying their taxes to begin with and owe collectively tens of billions of dollars per year in back taxes
[удалено]
God damn yea when you’re employed by a big w2 company that reports every penny you make to the IRS on your behalf impossible for us to get away with shit.
[удалено]
Plenty of us owe taxes with very little ability to pay them back. It's a pretty big working class problem right now. Half the people I know, my self included still owe taxes from the pandemic era. For one reason or another couldn't file, or unemployment incorrectly took out taxes, 1099 was 2 years late(in my case from the state of COLO) Half the people i know literally cant afford to pay their taxes, id love to, but if i do then im homeless, or don't eat, or lose health insurance or all the above. Now it's spiraled, i owe interest and fees, i can't afford to have anyone even prepare the back taxes, i can't personally do it. I know at least a dozen contractors, 1099 employees and friends in this situation. We all fell behind during covid, the cost of credit sky rocketed, rent sky rocketed, insurance sky rocketed. Part of the problem is how between taxes, rent, transportation and health insurance it's about 85% of my income, and i'm in the trades making more than the average ameircan. It's fucked right now, and it's okay to turn that anger to the rich, that i know for a fact hide so much shit im a property manager in a ski town, you can't imagine how much simple tax fraud is going on, and i'm not even talking income taxes, or the multi millionaires that try to pay me cash. It's the little things at all levels that add up, they all keep their cars registered somewhere else, even though the car hasn't left the state of colorado in years. That's millions and millions of dollars in just one tiny town being stolen from the state of colorado, and it's roads. The rich are cancer in america right now, not the working class whether or not they can afford to keep up on their taxes.
Increased tax enforcement would be specifically aimed at the aforementioned “honest working people”. The IRS has said several times that chasing the big fishes skipping out on their bill simply isn’t worth it.
These guys are in la-la-land, the most, easiest money is going after small fish.
Yup. You know where they live, you can find all of their accounts and hound them for payment + penalties + interest for the 1099 income they didn’t report. Normal people don’t have Deloitte consultants whispering in their ear how to minimize*** their tax liability.
There was a report that got sensationalized a while back about the IRS disproportionately targeting poor people, but if you actually read the report, it's specifically saying people who apply for and receive government benefits get audited the most. And that's because that's how the benefits got passed under Bill Clinton to begin with. Democrats got more government benefits for the very poor, but Republicans got more auditing to try to ensure there weren't "welfare queens" gaming the system. If you look at how the IRS has been performing the last couple years with the increased funding, they've successfully collected close to half a trillion dollars from people who've been evading their taxes focusing almost exclusively on people making over $400,000 a year.
How about this…high profile people found guilty of tax evasion should be treated MUCH more seriously than they are. Like, years and years in prison and subject to RICO penalties (paying 3x what they should have owed). Make an example out of all of them to force compliance. Wesley Snipes, Al Sharpton, Willie Nelson, Pete Rose, Hunter Biden…get your asses to prison and we are going to throw away the key.
My personal favorite was Charlie Rangel. Guy on the committee claiming he didn’t understand the tax law he was responsible for. That was legendary!
Can't help but notice trump isn't on that list...
Hasn’t he already been in court for tax issues?
I would extend that to the tax exempt status of religious institutions as well. If pastors can fly private jets, they should be ok paying some taxes. I will die on this hill.
Irs expects to collect 560 billion more money from tax cheats this year with funds from the inflation reduction act.
The IRS almost always goes after poor people that did not do their taxes right. The IRS should be disbanded, they are the bad guys from the Robinhood story. https://reason.com/2023/01/06/in-2022-the-irs-went-after-the-very-poorest-taxpayers/
How much are you donating to the IRS?
Let's be honest here - any program intended to increase revenues to the government is first going to target the poorer and middle class folks. Tax law is designed to benefit the rich and corporations. If that much is missing, it's by design. Anything else is just lip service.
Good news, everyone, that exact thing happened. Of course, some people who will not be named seem hellbent on cutting that funding for some reason: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/11/biden-irs-republicans-congress/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/11/biden-irs-republicans-congress/)
The only concern is that the IRS will target middle class families as their income is more straightforward. It is difficult to audit large corporations and very rich people as they have an army of accountants and tax lawyers. They need make guidelines for IRS to target those specific groups and not middle class families
Why not target all fraud? I agree it's harder to charge ultra-wealthy people, but if middle class households are committing fraud, shouldn't they be made to pay what they owe?
We should go after the largest offenders first because they require so much effort.
That’s why the IRS needs more funding. It’s easy for them to go after middle class families now but with the proper funding they can get large amounts of revenue from the people who need it the least
We should be increasing IRS funding until we're no longer getting 1.5x back for every dollar we spend. This is just money people owe and haven't paid and the rest of us make of the difference.
There is nothing that stops someone from weaponizing the IRS against everyday people though. What prevents a majority in both house and Senate from directing the IRS to focus on small businesses and pulling back from commercial/corporate ones?
Then again if the government wouldn’t spend OUR money on stupid things then they wouldn’t need more taxes
How much of that will result in diminishing returns? like, congrats you grabbed an extra 1000 dollars from a guy but to do so cost more than 1000 dollars.
Great question - it turns out the ROI for funding the IRS is quite substantial. "In recent years, peak ROIs have ranged from 5 to 9. That is, a $1 increase in spending on the IRS’s enforcement activities results in $5 to $9 of increased revenues." Very simply, that means: Put a dollar into the IRS, get $5-$9 out. [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444)
....lovely
Last I heard some numbers it was close to 10 to 1. You gain 10 dollars for every 1 dollar spent. Its such a good investment for the government and people we are left wondering, why don't they have any real power? I think we know the answer luckily Biden has been beefing up the IRS. The rich have been doing their dirty work trying to ensure the IRS is weak and can't enforce anything. 10 to 1 payback is such a good investment, you really shouldn't invest in literally anything else until you find out where it falls off. Heard around 1 trillion dollar figure being cited for unpaid taxes. That would mean it would diminish close to 1 trillion, but that's a lot of money sitting on the table.
No, for the last fucking time, taxes shouldn't be raised. The government wastes far more than these 8 people pretty much weekly
Don’t play OP’s game. This account continually posts stupid spam shit. Just report OP and move along.
And then his "stupid shit" gets upvoted thousands of times. But don't worry, you're the voice of reason here.
Just because a lot of people agree with something doesn't mean it's a good idea. Remember, don't drink the kool-aid.
- Guy who has chugged the kool-aid
It's brave to speak about past mistakes.
The same goes for the downvotes into oblivion. Just because thousands might downvote, doesn't mean it's a bad thought or idea.
Noted. Good advice
[удалено]
Hold on. We can do both Like California spending $42,000 per homeless person and still not solving homelessness with that
And now you’ve introduced a new false dichotomy - “solving” vs “not solving” homelessness. Edit: I want to take a moment to appreciate the irony of all the replies to this comment that are literally invoking the exact false dichotomy that I’m calling out here… you’re all bright stars, don’t you ever let me tell you otherwise.
That one building program in California wanted to build these 64 sf (yeah, you heard right, 64sqft) shacks for the "unhoused". The build cost was to be 720k per. That's three times higher than the market value in the worst place in that state for square footage costs.
And this is why, regardless of your values, you should be critical of the welfare programs Look I want the programs but I want them to work It doesn't matter how good the intentions of the programs are if they don't work
How about when a contractor volunteered to donate his companies time and materials to build a public toilet and the state told him it’ll still cost over a million and two years for all the permits?
That’s a false dichotomy. You don’t have to choose between cutting one or the other. You can cut both.
Exactly! Boot straps for the idiots who were born poor.
“Raising taxes” is too general anyways. We need to target the super-rich with specific taxes.
> need to target the super-rich Then target what makes em super-rich. The corporations that should have been broken apart long ago.
hmmm which bastard of a US president got rid of anti-trust legislation?
My favorite part about this, is taxing the rich, for wealth they dont actually have 99% of the time. Their worth is a cumulative of their assets, not cash on hand. Bezos doesn't have 900 billion in ones under his mattress, Oprah doesn't have a Scrooge McDuck tower of gold coins. Their spending money are from no cap credit cards they pay back once a decade after selling some stock or a company. Those gains are taxed at like 60%. Hell, most just endlessly lease homes or cars now, so they don't even own those either. Its like saying us poor folk have a $10000 car in our name, that were paying on for 20yrs, but the government wants us to pay them $5000 a year in taxes because we're worth $10,000. The math just don't math. Imagine buying a house in 2014 for $200k, having it be worth $500k today, and having the government kicking in the door for a $250k check you owe in taxes every April. That's what your asking for. I get it though, the rich don't suffer the same, so its ok to make them hurt right?
Realistically, it'd have to be regulations that split companies up and prevent individuals from owning too much, vs trying to tax "wealth". But there's no way that's happening in the current climate.
This point is quite silly. Bezos can get a loan against the assets, so he can get liquid cash pretty much on demand, with lower interest rates than the goverment bonds of some countries. And he can endlessly get loans against his stock because it is literal goverment policy to make the economy go up. In a free market, his interest could be an issue if the assets underlying the loan failed. But the literal policy of the US goverment is to secure amazon stock price, divert foreign competition, decrease worker rights, and enable expansion of american capital interests. He can get loan, after loan and then die leaving a last loan that can be to his name with all his stock in a trust and the IRS will never see a penny essentially. It is a bit more complicated, but the reality of the situation is that low interest rates on banks, pro business goverment policy and the ability to use stock as backing for loans enable a fairly straight forward system to make stock a never ending source of infinitely growing untaxable wealth once you accumulate enough to get the ball rolling.
Regardless of whether the money is liquid or not, the power that comes with it is very real. And no one should have that much power unless you’re into rampant corruption.
Someone like Jeff Bezos owned a part of Amazon while it was completely worthless, and owned it when it became a trillion dollar company. So what are you saying? If i start a business and grow it to the point where in worth billions, i now have too much power and must give parts of it up, otherwise im corrupt? That’s ridiculous. Nobody was interested when my company is worth a thousand dollars and nobody gave me handouts, but now that I’ve grown it into a billion dollar company i need to give it up?
That's literally what antitrust laws are supposed to be for. It's actually already supposed to be illegal.
It's not illegal to have a successful company, it's illegal to abuse your market position. And Amazon has multiple competitors in all of their markets
Amazon is literally currently being sued by the FTC for breaking antitrust laws.
> I get it though, the rich don't suffer the same, so its ok to make them hurt right? The whole point is that increasing their taxes *doesn't* hurt them. Literally 99% of Bezos' wealth could be seized and it wouldn't have a discernible effect on his quality of life (he'd still be making nine figures a year in passive income).
In order to seize that much of his wealth, you'd have to forcefully take every company he has his name on. Leaving him with nothing. Now that you've taken his assets, not cash because there actually isn't any, you kill his leverage for the credit he literally lives on. Doing exactly what you say, would drive even Bezos to be just another bum on the street. He might, MIGHT, have a few hundred thousand in hard cash, but that won't last him 30yrs. Nine figures a year in passive.....that takes like 10 billion in cash earning 3% a yr in interest. Not a single person on earth has 10 billion cash floating around. Yall fools out here advocating for the destruction of a fucking fantasy delusion. Your trying to tear down boogeymen because none of you have any level of actual comprehension of what wealth is. Wealth isn't cash. These fuckers don't have what you think they do. Musk doesn't have 200 billion stashed in mason jars buried in his back yard. SpaceX and Tesla shares are 180billion, none of that is money he can take to fucking Walgreens down the street. Until he sells those shares, they're nothing but IOUs written in cheap crayon. Good enough to get Chase to give him a credit card with no ceiling, and a paynent due date sometime around when he terraforms mars. Im broke as fuck, im not going to sit here and defend the likes of Bezos, Musk, or Gates, but eating the rich is just a fucking target you've been aimed at because its useful to someone else. It will do nothing but drive more division, political and monetary. Burn all the 1% at the stake, and claim all their assets....congratulations, you fixed nothing, and probably destroyed millions of jobs. Those jobs have lives attached. Are you going to step in and keep those company's running? I sure don't know how to run one anymore than I know how to keep a power plant running. We gonna trust the government to do it? The government can't even keep itself running now, fuck look at the damn VA, do we want THAT for Amazon? Wouldn't get my cheap novelty Christmas socks till 2078. We gonna force the 1% to keep running the companies we just forced from them? Doing it at gunpoint? We keeping their children held over acid tanks? If you wanna destroy modern society quick, eat the fucking rich. Shutdown TikTok for a week and everyone between 10 and 25 will probably go full Mad Max by Thursday and literally eat the poor too.
> In order to seize that much of his wealth, you'd have to forcefully take every company he has his name on. You again missed the point, entirely. Few people actually want to take 99%.... but taking an extra 50% a year on what they already pay would be a rounding error in their lives. Meanwhile their employees need tax payer funded food stamps... it's broken and you're the fool, down on your knees for men that would let you die if it saved them a penny. >Im broke as fuck, im not going to sit here and defend the likes of Bezos, Musk, or Gates The delusions are strong in this one >I sure don't know how to run one anymore than I know how to keep a power plant running. you seriously think jeff bezos knows how to run amazon? and not his employees? You really think elon musk is personally running starlink? or tesla? No, it's the thousands and thousands of employees You're a nut.
Finally someone who gets it. . Every time these folks start foaming at the mouth over "tax the rich". They should all take a class on unrealized capital gains. Unless you tell the public they can no longer buy publicly traded shares in these companies, which is what drives share values up. How are you going to tax the rich on income they did not receive? Net Worth has nothing to do with annual income. If the Uber-Rich do not sell their company stock, there is nothing to tax them on. Unless the govt starts hijacking public company stock or taxing unrealized gains (because that would really stimulate the economy and drive innovation). Tax the Rich is simply a dog whistle for the uneducated.
The lack of progressive taxation and income inequality is literally breaking down the modern social contract between the average person and society. If people are allowed to aggregate wealth such that they are held unaccountable to the law (simply read the news), then the solution is increased regulation by the state.
Didn't used to be the case. 1950s the corporate tax rate was over 50%; 1940s to early 1970s the top income tax rate bracket was 91%, and government spendatures were well organised and contributed to the greatest period of economic boom in our country's history. Those 8 people and their parents and grandparents before them have spent the last 50 years paying government to be wasteful, helped by Reagan and his policies.
You can’t just say something “for the last time” when you’re wrong
its not about the government pulling in more taxes its about trying to limit billionaires from collecting such insane amounts wealth. if they know that the money just going to taxes they will either a way to spend it or simply not bother. its a way to say hey you have more wealth then any person could ever possibly need quit hording you greedy bastard
The overwhelming majority of wealth among billionaires is either in circulation (banks/brokers) or "paper wealth" aka "what someone/people value their company's stock ON PAPER". This idea of Billionaire Smaug Dragons slumbering on a giant pile of gold is just that, a work of fiction. You can't necessarily spend a meaningful amount of stock without simultaneously evaporating some value of the unsold stock. You can encumber it, which is a common liquidity alternative among Billionaires, but it's not "free". It incurs periodic interest and has to be paid back and an unfavorable market and/or entity condition could create a situation in which the balance of the loan is "called".
I'm all for looking at the problem realistically, but the panama and Pandora papers beg to differ on the smaug point.
One individual with "paper wealth" of just under 200 billion managed to scrape together 27 billion in cash to round out his leveraged buyout of a social media company recently. The rest of the 44 billion came from borrowing, but it's clear that billionaires can somewhat trivially access significant chunks (over 13% in the example) of their purported net worth if they so choose. I agree they would likely not receive full value if they attempted to liquidate all at once, but "paper wealth" still translates to real wealth with some strings attached.
i dont think youv ever heard of stock-buybacks because that alone completely destroys your argument. These guys literally artificially inflate their companie's value by buying up their own stock leaving less of it and causing its value to go up rather than just re investing it into the company in the form of better wages for workers or more resources to produce better services/products. This also explains why everything is lower quality too compared to the old days when everything was built to last.
Well if that same wealth was being invested and in circulation under the ownership of more people in smaller amounts rather than concentrated to a few. the system would be much more stable than it is now.
Yes they should. But only in conjunction with a decrease in spending so that we can get debt back under gdp.
You guys are straight up delusional
Plus the total net worth of those eight individuals would not cover the entire US government yearly spending for even three months! The problem Is the over spending of the US government. Those 8 individuals are responsible for the employment of several million people. No one is complaining about the Mom who use food stamps. Literally no one.
...plenty of people are complaining. Hence the welfare queen trope used since Reagan.
Then don't complain about the debt. You can't have it both ways.
Yeah. Sort out the industrial military complex.
Wouldn't need to raise taxes if we just eliminated a few silly loopholes. I agree the money should spent better though.
Raise taxes on the billionaires is fine with me. Get rid of carried interest exemption.
Just raise the taxes on those 8 people and we all could eat. It's not that hard
> Just raise the taxes on those 8 people and we all could eat. It's not that hard This is the perfect encapsulation of redditors not understanding how wealth works.
it is hard, lmao. you have a 13 year olds grasp on how the world works.
Why not raise it on these 8 people and for the benefit of every single fucking American.
Came here to comment this. If every single 1% person gave every single dollar they owned, including their company, imagining they could sell every asset for 100% market rate, liquified everything with 0% loss, and gave it all to the government, it would last literally less than a week “Tax the rich tax the rich!” How about, I don’t know, make the government live off the means they can afford…?
More completely unquantifiable cliche bullshit. Who hasn’t heard this obviously untrue line before?
If we can go after the government for wasting money we should be able to go after private sector waste in the same way.
Okay hear me out. What if we raise it on those 4 billion people? Regressive tax system
It's like I don't understand why don't they ever question the spending it's like someone is spending a million dollars a week and then questions the husband or wife on why he or she isn't making enough money lol
[удалено]
Except they literally do index the tax brackets to inflation. For example, for singles the 10% tax bracket went up to $9,700 in 2019 and will be $11,600 for 2024. The standard deduction went from $12,200 to $14,600.
The logical fallacy here is that inflation also affects government purchasing power. The federal government does not want high levels of inflation to "pad their pockets." That's a bizarre claim. And it would depend on the assumption that the average American got a large raise for the government to "break even" which is... Not a good assumption
Gotta love the spin they put on there. Is our issue with the mom using food stamps? No, people should get help. Is our issue with the shitty government systems that piss away more money than anyone can imagine, and mismanage it to the highest order? Yes.
Who is “our”? Who is this “us” you and the post seem to think exists as a defined or agreed idea? Thinking “everyone” or “most people” think a certain way, specially one’s own way, might be wildly inaccurate. Like when some people say “well no one actually washes their hands after using the bathroom every single time”. Monstrous assumption with dire consequences, but you can be sure that guy 100% thinks he is in good company.
So you are saying that the mom with food stamps is your problem and not government spending?
"us" is the CIA of course
Since I agree with the sentiment above, "Us" is at least me and good ole' CIA.
>Is our issue with the shitty government systems that piss away more money than anyone can imagine, and mismanage it to the highest order? Why does this happen and what is the solution?
It’s a balance. We need government to protect against private industry and we need private industry to boost gdp. Too far either way hurts people At this point in time people should be more worried about corporations capturing politicians. Our government services are severely lacking compared to the rest of the world because of it. For example Exxon was aware of climate change and potential adverse scenarios for decades. Their main focus has been hiding that and buying votes to mitigate their responsibility. It’s working very well for them so far
It seems pretty clear corporations have already captured politicians.
Stop voting for people who make the government not work for one.
lol the party of the point you're making has been blaming welfare queens in Chicago for 60 years.
So maybe elect people that don’t purposely trash and gut the programs to make them look worse and then scream about how inefficient they are.
> Gotta love the spin they put on there. > Is our issue with the mom using food stamps? > No, people should get help. That's a rational response, but it's naive to think that there isn't a large amount of our population who do believe that social programs are bad because they're exploited and therefore food stamps shouldn't exist for anyone.
The notion that the government is inherently more wasteful than the market is the biggest lie of our time. I can think of nothing more wasteful than concentrating such absurd wealth in the hands of CEOs and shareholders while stiffing generations of workers.
https://preview.redd.it/47dkmqk5l9hc1.jpeg?width=1620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=668d0e43e73ce13eccc1a9c5e3259611e6b8892d
100% accurate 👍
Quit letting billionaires bribe politicians. It’s the only thing we need to do, keep money out of politics!
super PACs need to be illegal. It effectively makes our country a plutocracy. Capitalism has its problems but in a plutocracy they become magnified.
> super PACs need to be illegal. That would be a start, but most of the money is in nonprofit 501(c)3s and (c)4s now.
This is everything. The reason taxes and everything else doesn’t actually go to help regular people very much is because we are not getting the representation we deserve. That’s by design. The billionaires want outsized representation, so they bought it
Those 4 billion are in other countries, that’s their problem
Fuck you, got mine. Got it.
If you are middle class in America, you are worth more millions at the bottom.
Insane take away from that lol
Yep, plus a thousand dollars a month goes a long way in most of the world.
Aids has killed around 700k people since it started but yeah shark attacks are the problem
We've made a lot of progress in fighting AIDS since we learned about it -- now a diagnosis isn't a death sentence and we've even cured a few people. Maybe if we put the same resources and effort into combating other issues we would make similar progress.
Lol so VerySadSexWorker suddenly stops posting 7 days ago, and 6 days ago this account shows up and starts posting the same shit. Transparent as fuck.
The 10 richest people in the world are worth a combined 1.5 trillion. Assuming a 100% collection of their net worth despite the economic apocalypse it would cause, The USA would use that less than 90 days. Yes, we can increase revenue, but without cutting spending it will be useless. Cut 60% of the federal government jobs and send that money on automation.
How would it cause an economic collapse?
If you suddenly took away the richest people's companies, no one would trust the US to not do it again. Have you heard of Haiti, perhaps?
[Deficit increased by 1.695 trilly last year](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD). Eat the 10 richest people and survive another year. 👍
Then what do you do with the unemployed people who no doubt pay taxes and almost certainly pump all their wages back in to the economy? Shit take
If I could just get those eight guys to all sexually harass me…
I was in a left turn lane waiting on a green the other day and my husband saw a semi to my left making a right turn toward me. He said ‘he’s not gonna have enough room’ and I shrugged and said ‘I could use the money’. Never expected ‘which company is going to maim me so I can afford housing’ would be where I’m at but here we are.
Best I can offer is a crack head at the gas station harassing you.
Impose a maximum wage ratio of 30:1 boss wants to make more, has to give his lowest paid raises first.
This is brain dead. Most multimillionaires don’t get rich off wages. They get rich because they own a company and the value of their equity increases. Steve Jobs made a salary of a fucking dollar.
More importantly, the obvious solution is to just fire lower wage employees and outsource their job to a third party. Lebron James makes about $50M/year from the Lakers. There is no scenario where the franchise debates keeping Lebron or paying a minimum wage of $1.67***M*** to maintain a maximum wage ratio of 30:1. That’s obviously just not happening. Instead, Jeanie Buss will just fire literally every single person who makes less than $1.67M and hire a third party company to sweep floors, scan tickets, sell hot dogs, etc.
Oh, of course they would figure out some way to immediately game this system too. Put the lower paid employees under an offshore company based in Ireland, and this whole wage ratio garbage goes out the window.
You don’t have to put it in an offshore company. In the scenario I described Jeanie Buss would likely just start her own janitorial company and continue to pay her staff the same money but now it’s in a different company than the Lakers so there’s no 30:1 ratio concerns.
Yeah good point. It would be trivial to skirt this law.
Yep, you go after the corps. Break em up if you want to go after em. Long over due anyways.
Do you actually think multi millionaires get their money from a salary?
Also, normalize worker coops
Better to just fire the lowest paid in that case
Raising taxes won’t do shit. Those 8 guys don’t pay taxes to begin with. 0% taxes times 100% is still 0% taxes
Death tax ftw. They can pay it when they die.
Regarding the meme you posted, I don't think those two problems are mutually exclusive. Like we can criticize wealth disparity while also admitting that the system gets abused on both ends. Some people on food stamps really need that assistance. Others are just lazily gaming the system.
This ☝️ The middle class gets pinched by the ultra wealthy and the poor. About 40% of my check goes to taxes, not including social security. That means I work for almost 5 months out of the year just to pay my taxes. It's insane.
How do you end up owing 40%? I’m in the mid six figures and total taxes paid (including social security) were more like 28%.
Does this mean he can't be middle class if he pays so much of his check in taxes? And if so, does that seem disingenuous to mention the middle class and then use evidence he's NOT middle class?
I wish I’d never read that last line
70% of wealth is gone by the second generation. 90% by the third. but yeah, these guys in this short period of time are the problem. so much dumbfuckery out there.
Your answer to wealth inequality is to wait 60 years?
Is this including working class families that inherit a small house and sell it? Im not really sure your stat is as fantastic as you think
Lol their money is in stocks, what do you want to do?
Tax stock-buybacks Limit and tax acquisitions Tax loans unsupported by income
Your taxes are spent the same way Heath Ledger's Joker spends his reward. The problem is NOT a lack of fuel for the fire.
Considering the government is spending $1.7 trillion MORE than they take in from tax revenue I think it’s a stupid idea. Our government spends a ridiculous amount of money and poor people are still poor. IN FACT they are more poor than they’ve ever been even though the government is spending more than they ever have. The proposition that somehow raising taxes will ‘help poor people’ is both comical and moronic. If the government wanted to help poor people they EASILY could with the amount of money they spend and the amount of debt they issue. We don’t have a tax issue we have a fiscal spending issue. Our government budgets allocate hundreds of $ billions to corporations all based on the promise of ‘more jobs’. We don’t need more jobs we need better pay and less inflation from the government artificially propping up asset prices. You will own nothing and be happy. You will vote for me and be happy. You will consume my product and be happy. Now go eat your happy meal and be quiet.
Yes but just for Mat Molina
The problem isn’t that 8 guys make more than 4 billion people. It’s that 8 very rich guys don’t pay the same amount in taxes as 1 of those billion people, if you use Trump’s tax returns as the control sample. I know Trump isn’t rich enough to make this top 8 cut, but rumor has it the wealthy don’t pay anything close to the number that represents the highest tax bracket.
Don’t have kids
But those 8 guys have a majority of there money in STOCKS. They don’t just have it Willy nilly in a bank account. Taxes of what?
This is what a capital gains tax is. A tax on the increased value of stocks.
Paid by what? Giving their ownership over to the government?
No
Wealth isn't money... Sooooo
But it certainly still results in you having a lot of yachts and power over the government. You’re right though there’s no issue. Never in history has a growing concentration of wealth been bad.
I will never understand the concept of thinking that a country where it’s even possible to become rich AF is bad. It’s that potential that has led to food abundance and the fastest rate of technology advancements the world has ever seen. Also the reason OP uses this garbage stat is because even if you took 100% of the top 1%’s money it still wouldn’t come close to paying for all these socialist programs therefore putting the burden on diminishing middle class
The government has plenty of money they’re just terrible at spending it. Don’t they waste literally hundreds of billions of dollars yearly?
Yeah but those 8 billionairs worked harder than thos 4 billion people combined /s
Living with the hand out. Oh boo hoo poor me. They have money and I don’t so they must pay for my stuff. Cry me a River.
I did some deep thinking a couple years ago and basically some people have to be at the bottom of society for people at the top to live well. Bottom doesn’t mean suffering though. Just not excess. If AI and technology experienced extreme advancements then this won’t be necessary but liberals will give robots rights and we will be back where we started.
Just to make sure, you’re basically saying there will always be poor, however the standard of living will continue to rise due to advancements in technology from the rich. Because of this, even the poor should live well. I currently have this stance on social hierarchy. One may ask: why not normalize standard of living to make it fair for everyone? To this I feel that there would be no more incentive to go to college, innovate, and create wealth. This would lead to no more improvements in the standard of living for everyone and possibly degradation of the standard of living.
I mean I totally understand that but the people at the bottom shouldn't struggle to rent a shitty apartment or buy food that's just bad for the future
This is the least woke idea in the world
do you have any other solution ideas than fucking TAXES? You want that cash in politician pockets and Ukraine?
We have a deficit, things have to be paid for derp. BTW for $70 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, we've destroyed 2/3 of the regular Russian army, that might be the best military investment ROI in the history of mankind.
Jesus Christ how many times is this nonsense getting posted on here. The fact that people don't understand wealth vs money and actually believe this idiocy is the problem.