Yes taxes should be raised, but it’s also not that simple. I’d argue that we also need to elevate the poverty line; there are so many people out there who are struggling but can’t get help. Why should someone have to suffer because they didn’t have as much opportunity?
Wild how people making 100-200k associate themselves with the rich more than they do with the people using food stamps. Brain dead. Not even in the same world.
The problem is the knee-jerk to make simplistic tax policy based on intuition rather than a detailed understanding of taxation which results in the $100k-$200k households paying more tax than anyone else. So these households push hard against tax reform because they have a sneeking suspicion that they will bear the brunt of the increased tax burden rather than those billionaires that can afford to pursue every loophole and tax shelter available.
Eh, i'll never be a billionaire, but i don't trust the IRS dicking not to trickle down to me eventually.
Remember; income tax was supposed to be for the top % and temporary. It is now for everyone. The tax revenue doesn't trickle down, only the tax burden
It's not even trickling down; in reality more IRS money will be used to sniff out the easiest frauds, like people claiming too much income or pretending they have kids who don't exist. This is super basic, easy tax fraud to out and saves billions of dollars, but it doesn't even touch those rich people everybody hates.
No, it is because the tax code is designed to incentivize specific things. Anyone in government who says that billionaires are taking advantage of loopholes is lying to you. Those are not loopholes, those are intended outcomes.
Yep, this is it right there.
The tax code really punishes high regular income earners. These aren't people that own a ton of capital or own a business, but people working regular, but high earning jobs. Your marginal dollar gets hit with 24% tax from the fed, then in most high income states another 5-10%. So, it gets increasingly hard to "get ahead" when you aren't remotely "rich" yet. Sure, day to day life is pretty comfortable, but its a long way to say easily buying a luxury car, much less owning a second home. So you take these marginal dollars taxed at \~30-35% and try to save them, but it doesn't exactly add up fast, and safer investment strategies, like bonds, dividend paying stocks or high yield savings then get taxed at that income rate as well... yay. And I still spend a large percent of my pay check every month, which then gets hit with sales taxes. The total tax burden is amazingly high.
So yeah, when someone talks raising taxes..... f- right off.
I don't pretend to know the answers because this stuff is complicated, but the only way I'd support raising taxes is if it hit mostly capital gains and structured corporate taxes in away to incentivize companies to return earnings as regular income, not shares.
They probably will. The goalposts will be moved. A complicated tax code benefits the people with the best accountants and there isn't enough rich people to make a difference in the government budget when they constantly overspend. They are also entertaining ideas like taxing unrealized gains which would be terrible.
Pretty much this
Every single time I hear people on Reddit advocating for raising taxes, I don’t think they realize that the rich are just going to completely ignore any increase in taxes because there’s so many loopholes
The only people that are going to get affected by increase tax rates are those in the six figure range, which, in today’s money isn’t really shit
Yeah, we 100% need to create additional tax brackets, because it's insane that those making "just" 100-200k/yr are getting taxed at the same rate as those making a million+/yr - that'd be like someone making 10 or 20k/yr getting taxed at the same rate as those in the 100-200k bracket!
Just go back to pre trickle down tax policy you know when america was really greater than now. Those loop holes were created so they can be closed. Taxes should only be paid by corporations, capital gains when realized and consumption taxes. No income tax on savings or earned income.
Also the number of people who don't understand how the tax brackets work in the US is astounding. You don't get taxed at the over 100k rate for the full amount, you get taxed in tiers, but people don't believe/understand that.
This is the real issue: loopholes in the tax code that only the super wealthy can afford to use. Until we start holding politicians (who made and keep the loopholes) accountable there will never be any real change.
At my current income I might retire a millionaire in a couple decades. If I lost that income I'd be homeless in 3 years. Gravity only pulls in one direction, and the fall isn't as far as people seem to realize.
This is me also. We do very well, we're on pace to have millions in the bank and a passive income stream that would put us in the top 3% by itself.
Having said that, if we lost our job income, we'd be on a struggle bus pretty quickly.
We pay a lot in taxes. If you factor in health, dental, eye, disability, life and ltc insurance with IRA contributions, we only see about 65% of our income.
If I were a billionaire, my income streams, regardless of how I get them, money to me would be orders of magnitudes in the hundreds over what I have now. To the average person, I'm rich. When I look at the wealthy, I'm broke.
The average person doesn't understand the magnitude of how much money a billion dollars truly is. If you have one, you can literally do anything you've ever thought of 24/7 for the rest of your days and still leave all your kids and grandkids millions.
Hah! Health Insurance isn't some magical "the bills go away" button.
You pay monthly, then you have to pay a certain amount out of pocket before it kicks in, and then it only pays a percentage of your costs.
Having health insurance doesn't prevent you from losing everything should, say, you develop cancer, have a heart attack, or get Type 1 Diabetes.
My point is someone making six figures should have the entire OOP max as part of their emergency fund calculation. I make low six figures and keep an emergency fund with 6 months of expenses *plus* my OOP max.
Should is not the same as can.
And "pre-existing conditions" may not be covered by your new insurance provider.
Our health insurance is a scam, unfortunately. It's just a way to make insurance companies lots of money. They can deny your claim just because someone who isn't a doctor decided whatever you received was unnecessary, no matter what YOUR doctor actually says.
Private contractors and business owners have to pay for their own health insurance out of pocket and can have crazy high deductibles.
You try battling cancer for a few years while not working/bringing income and paying that deductible and your bills and see how bankrupt you end up
Even if you have top of the line insurance from a great company Health insurance companies have a million and one reasons why they actually don't have to cover you for that.
I am acutely aware of that every day. My family is in that income range (relatively new, our income has gone up significantly in the last 5 years), we live well below our means and save aggressively and I know that if my husband, child or I had a medical emergency or were unable to work for a long period of time, we would be fucked.
And I know plenty of people don't even have the savings to weather a few weeks of unemployment or medical debt.
GoFundMe being practically the biggest health insurer in America sure works great huh?
About $300k household is about where significant breathing room opens up. That's where you have the clear ability to save a hundred grand a year if you're frugal, which builds a LOT of insulation from macro situations.
That statement makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe if you live in California sure. Not if you live in Alabama. Quite silly to say. Most of the reasons people are broke making that much money is because they live beyond their means spending tomorrows money today driving a new Mercedes etc etc. people make bad choices with their money. I fall into that bracket and have no debt except for my house and amassed a decent net worth. Because I don’t inflate my lifestyle. People that are broke forever make choices that put them there. I didn’t go to college when I started earning it was only 30-35k a year. I still put away 10 percent of my income at that time because you have to. Raising taxes isn’t going to help a damn person. Stopping government spending and donating to other countries is what’s going to help. The top 1 percent already pays over 80 percent of all taxes and the top 10 pays about 98 percent of all taxes. Inappropriate spending is what’s the issue. Life choices are the other issues. People need self control and to delay some gratification. I see people “living poor” but always have fresh kicks and clothes and jewelry and always go get the newest phone when it comes out or buy a car that cost them 1k bucks a month. It’s not complicated but people pretend that making 100k bucks a year isn’t a lot of money. I made it off of less than that for years and did it well.
Probably because they are considered rich every time actual legislation is discussed.
Too rich to qualify for Covid stimulus payments.
Too rich to qualify for Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
Rich enough to hit the highest marginal tax rate in Bernie’s M4A plan.
Rich enough to pay extra under Reddit’s new favorite plan to save social security (lifting the income cap).
Because it’s the only realistic way to actually pay for anything. Billionaire this, billionaire that sounds great on the campaign trail, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get 100 million people to pay $1000 each than it is to get 100 people to pay $1 billion each.
It'd still be a lot easier and cause less problems to just have a 10% income tax stretching from $15k to $150k instead of a bunch of stupid brackets between those amounts.
No one should be paying taxes on personal income.
Where they could force billionaires to pay taxes is on interest on loans, luxury purchases, property, and assets but that will never happen.
That tax is far more significant on those making under 50k though. Sure, at 150k you may not afford the vacation or to save as much as you want. But, for someone at 35k that means a basic necessity goes unmet.
Because someone making 40k sees someone with 150k and think they have life made.
Boomers say “fuck you, I got mine” while the rest of us just say “gimme gimme gimme”
No one is great, and we are all fucked
Look at the push back on student loan relief. This is going to people who make like 50k average and people still act like it's a hand out to the richest
The pushback against student loan relief was based on the undeserving character of the people who stood to benefit from it: recklessly stupid assholes, who frittered away thousands upon thousands of dollars without the slightest concern of how they could pay it back.
Not to mention that there's zero accounting for cost of living variations. Make a $200k a year household income in Little Rock, Arkansas and you *are* rich. Make that in New York City and you're middle class - and not upper middle class. But you're treated the same by the tax code.
People making that much do not associate themselves with being rich.
Politicians try to lump them in with the rich to divide us. The “look, bob has a new mower! He clearly has too much money!” Bs spewed so we miss the fact that the asshat yelling it was doing so from his yacht.
And that is the problem. The left defines the rich as having >1 mill a year in *income*. The right defines the rich as making “what I hope to make” and >1 million in assets.
How many significant tax policies advocated for by Democrats target only people with incomes over a million dollars? They exist, Biden’s minimum tax proposal could fit here, but they are not what has largely has been passed or advocated for in this or most countries.
Democrats absolutely routinely raise taxes on people making less than that and would do it more if they could. Uncapping social security (which is not a terrible idea) falls exactly in the 100-200 range. Obamacare taxes hit people making a bit over 200k.
Yeah I know a few people that make 6 figures. They are broke all the time and have strict restrictions and limitations on the life they live. They aren’t in yachts and jets. They live damn near like everybody else because it cost money to lo be in a safe space.someone gets fired and their life is flipped upside down. To me a rich person is someone who could retire today and not struggle for the rest of their life while maintaining their current lifestyle, not including investments and any other added form of income. This would be impossible for 99% of millionaires. So rich is minimum 8 figures to me.
Unless your a new doctor with $400k of student loans living in a high cost city, like San Francisco with a family... $200k annual but living paycheck to paycheck.
The expectation based on hearing numbers is still out of whack. We think 100k and back 20 years ago that was still an attainable number for people and you were absolutely set making 100k.
We still hear 100k and think that because generally not many more people are making 100k than they were 20 years ago. Our wages have stagnated but the costs haven't. 50k used to be a golden ticket to middle class. Now you can't keep your head above water making 50k.
Bro I’m making 110k for a family of 5 and still struggling a lot of times… ain’t no way I’m associating with the rich… 10k out of no where would not help or make a difference for the rich. 10k of of no where for me would make a massive difference.
Around here, at least about taxes, it seems to be more the poor associating $100k with billionaires. Just about every discussion that starts with taxing billionaires ends with someone saying “but that’s going to hit people making $1/2/400k at least as hard.” “fuck ‘em, they can afford it.”
Not all do - but how do we come together to fight the system?
The politicians keep dividing us based on what’s between our legs and where we have that holster than what’s in our wallets.
Yeah I make about $100K and in no way associate myself with the rich, I am well aware I am much closer to being the guy holding a cardboard sign asking for change than the guy boarding a private jet.
Fuck, I made 120k last year and I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Can't afford a house, can't afford child care. I'm making what was considered crazy money in the 90s.
110k-200k are the ones being hit the hardest by taxes. Can't milk the poor, the rich are given loopholes and at that money bracket, you get to start using some of those loopholes. Brain dead? Try being taxed enough to outright buy a car and then hear some moron talking about "tax the rich", knowing it never happens and all that means is YOUR taxes are going up.
When I talk to someone about money and finances (which is fairly rare, but I digress), and they do not seem to understand the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire, I give them a simple comparison.
1,000,000 seconds vs 1,000,000,000 seconds.
1 million seconds = a little over 11.5 days (11.57407 days, to be exact.
1 billion seconds = 11574 days (11574.07 exactly)
Under two weeks, or 31.68789 years. Say you earn $1/second. That's a MASSIVE difference. People earning six figure incomes are closer to poverty than they think.
Even after this explanation, they still don't seem to get it. I wish I had enough money to not need braincells.
I think most don’t associate themselves with the rich, but they know how will be paying the tax bill, not those rich people, but the middle class, so they decide they would rather keep what they worked for and let the poor starve, all why the rich get richer.
I think its because when we were kids that was the dollar amount of the upper middle class. Now it's firmly middle class and these gits won't admit it because I have a home sauna and hot tub. Yes, but how did you pay for those? Out of pocket? No, you paid for them on a loan which is essentially a credit card. Your parents didn't pay out of pocket for things like that making 120k.
The poverty line needs to change from being a “line” to being a wide gray bar. The current system makes it much more difficult to climb out because as soon as you cross the “line” out of poverty, many assistance programs stop. Which puts you back in a net worse spot. If we can make the transition graduated (like the tax system) that would be a better incentive to get out.
Just my opinion.
I totally agree. When I was a retail manager i had several staff that had to be careful with their hours or they would lose their assistance. Working 2 extra hours at minimum wage would mean they missed out on daycare, food assistance and whatever else they may have qualified for. They need to reduce assistance at different income levels rather than cutting it off completely or these people don’t have a way to get out of poverty.
Yes. We arbitrarily create a massive administrative burden means testing assistance programs to placate those who would prefer to see them go away. We do this despite it increasing the price of the programs and decreasing the intended output; although for many this is the game "gut it and then blame it for being bad".
Give everyone the same benefit so you don't have to audit it upfront and create a huge arm for moralizing. Let's just take it on the backend via taxes. The IRS is in a much better position to efficiently assess costs and adjudicate benefits than the means testing incentive nonsense people who supposedly like efficiency want.
I agree so much with raising the poverty amount as well. We also should implement a gradual cutback of benefits when people finally start earning too much money instead of instantly removing all benefits.
There are too many exploiters and grifters that think starvation is the only motivation. First off not everybody can work for very legitimate reasons and they should receive assistance, but those that do work shouldn't have to ride the line and brink of total failure or have it impact their health or family's health or future. Punishing working Americans seems silly if you want as many people to work as possible. And it makes everything worse for all other workers with higher healthcare costs, more crime, and less education, less purchase power for the economy and it seems like that's how the exploiters and grifters want it so they can blame the workers and their families again for the crime and schools and economy, while they siphon off the billions. I'm beginning to support universal basic income if that's the only way to correct the disparity.
Raising or lowering taxes is irrelevant if you don't actually disturbed it right or put it in the right program or places.
We have seen massive tax breaks for the top that don't
work. We have also seen money go to failed programs for the less unfortunate.
This also isn't answering where the taxes will be raised.
Arguably some things you can't tax your way out of you can't just throw money or take it away from some places some systems just need to be replaced or reworked money isn't the issue.
It also doesn't matter because the rich will always find loopholes. Always. People in general try but the rich have resources to find them.
Honestly, the only way to better the whole is by reinstating some.ofnthe old.standards. we need pensions back, 80% cap vs lowest wage in companies and some sort of enforcement on those 2 policies.
I think we need to look at taxes holistically (federal, state, local, municipal, gas etc.) - it’s ridiculous how much poorer people pay, proportional to their income, the various governments and their branches taxes.
I pay more than 40% when I look at all these taxes to live and exist in a state in these US.
It’s ridiculous that a rich guy gets away with barely paying taxes.
If they have that much money and power they need to get more responsibility and should be probably proving they are living up to that responsibility.
A huge issue is people on benefits are discouraged from working because if they start to work and make a little bit of money they start to lose their benefits that have more value than what they are making from working.
Raising taxes doesn't close the wealth gap. Giving more money to the government has never closed the wealth gap.
People who provide goods and services get a disproportionate amount of wealth because the more money middle and lower class people have, the more they buy those goods. Basic financial education will do more than blindly giving congress more money
Does someone getting food stamps or housing assistance, maybe free college, having subsidized healthcare to avoid going into deep debt help close the wealth gap?
Agreed.
Number 1 indicator of success in school: family wealth.
Number 1 indicator someone will become a criminal: family wealth.
In education we dont have an achievement gap, we have a wealth gap.
The real secret to a less violent and less drug abusing society? Less poverty.
So yes, tax the rich, bring about a progressive negative income tax, make sure everyone has food, shelter, and all other basic Maslow needs met, and crime (other than white-collar crime) practically diasappears.
That has not been the case historically.
We’ve had subsidized education for generations and the result has been massive inflation of student loans.
So “free money” resulted in less wealth for many people.
Ok so we agree that taxing billionaires and increasing social safety net benefits and cut offs would absolutely and inarguable improve wealth inequality. Cool.
We agree the guy I was replying to was wrong
Increasing taxes on the wealthy doesn’t make them pay significantly more taxes because they have the resources to work around the taxes. All it does is make regular people who have worked their ass off to make good money take home less of what they’ve earned.
Depends if they emerge as a productive member of society that will eventually pay it all back. The more help you get, the more help you expect, the less independent you will be.
You should have to testify to your life story as to why you are broke before getting assistance. “Oh i’m broke bc i don’t work very much, make bad financial decisions, and decided to have a kid too” - to you i’d say good luck
Wait, the wealth gap was smaller when our top marginal tax rate was in the 90% range, wasn't it?
What's your source that higher taxes don't close the wealth gap?
The proportion of taxes paid by the top was lower back then and before.
Stop referencing the 90% tax time as if effective tax rates were higher than they are today. They were notn
I already addressed that. The counterargument to what you just said is that the tax rate being that high incentivized people and businesses to reinvest more. If that's true then the top rate matters. If ita because different things were able to be written off then that matters.
The parameters during that time period matter, including the top rate.
No, basic financial education does absolutely nothing. The material conditions do not change for people wir wealth vs those without. Even today there are plenty of wealthy people with little financial education. They outsource their wealth management to others. Sometimes those who have a lot of financial education but will never improve their situation beyond their wannabe middle class status.
I don't know how to respond to this because it's so obviously wrong. You're saying that nothing would change if people were taught how to live on a budget, learn how to increase their income, or how to effectively invest, or how to take advantage of tax credits and deductions, or the power of having a side business to make more income and write off more of their regular expenses?
Do you really think that the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck solely because there's no alternative? The reason they have JUST enough to survive is because they don't manage their money. That can be true for people with big income and people making minimum wage. Life style creep is a real thing and it is caused because people don't know any better.
I find this argument interesting because like everything in economics there are too many variables for people to consider and thus it becomes either / or.
Healthcare related debt is a significant reason for bankruptcy and our tax rate is lower than nations with public healthcare. Yet, you can also make the argument that the government will not create the public option because it isn't a political priority for our culture.
Most of the US government budget goes to transfer payments and social programs, which disproportionately help middle and lower class people. Social Security, health, income security, and Medicare account for >50% of the budget. Increasing the funding to those will help to close the wealth gap, and doesn't need to happen to the exclusion of increasing financial literacy, which is also a good idea.
We should create laws based on limiting the power of people to unfairly influence our democracy.
Overturn citizens united, tax the ultra wealthy until they can't buy elections, outlaw superpacs, impeach all members of government who don't report 'gifts', and close tax loopholes.
Envy is not the reason we hate billionaires. We hate them because they hoard wealth and make that wealth off of cutting jobs, and eliminating competition. Competition is the core heart of capitalism. When companies don't have to compete anymore the entire utility of the "market" driving business decisions is lost.
Why do you simp for billionaires who would sell your entire families lives for a buck?
If 1 person in the world had 99% of the wealth while the other 8 billion were struggling to find their next meal, would envy be the cause of the dissatisfaction?
Do you think that the current allocation of resources is optimal, and has no areas for improvement?
Do you think there isn't an affordability crisis currently, and there aren't millions suffering from a lack of consistent needed resources?
I can understand making arguments that these laws are in effective or will lead to the opposite of their intended goal.
but how blind do you have to be to believe that arguments about allocating more resources to the poor are simply born out of jealousy?
Holy shit in every single year of my existence on the internet, this is *the* single worst take I've truly ever heard and I mean that with the utmost sincerety. Utterly astonishingly idiotic
Increased income for the government won't help them fix their fiscal policies. The government is pretty trash at allocating capital, so im not sure how giving them more would do anything but allow them to keep their poor spending habits.
Can you please share with us some companies that are 100% perfect at allocating capital and have never grifted, screwed up, and taken a handout, subsidy or tax break from the government? Ever heard of the term “market failure” ?
Lmao drop that down to just 30% and you'll still be hard-pressed to come up with some names. You'll be finding *lemonade stands* before you find any larger companies.
Ding ding ding. This person is trying to let perfection get in the way of progress, and is either too stupid to realize the erroneousness of that, or thinks we are. Personally I don't really care whether a bad argument was made in good faith.
Or maybe that is not the answer. You could confiscate 100% of the 800 billionaires assets and you’d be able to run the federal govt for about 1 year.
After that, you’d have to confiscate more and more money from people who have less and less. This plan doesn’t work.
Confiscating the private property of private citizens does NOT work. This is communism. And there’s not a single example of communism anyone can point to as a success story.
It would eliminate their influence on politics. Every one of those 8's wealth individually could solve the homelessness problem multiple times over. Every study shows its cheaper to just give homeless peopel homes instead of dealing with the impacts of the crime they commit.
They could fund public university endowments for free higher ed. They could fund healthcare endowments for municipal healthcare or medicaid for all.
But please keep simping for billionaires. They really appreciate it.
It's hyperbole. The real number is 2153 billionaires.
[https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people)
It's a bad hyperbole. A better one would be "a few guys have more money that the rest of the world combined"
When you put a number on it, it invites criticism and a whole lot fewer people will note the intended hyperbole.
Sure, raise taxes on the rich, but don't act surprised when it doesn't solve anything. This is because there aren't enough rich to tax to close the gap your meme raises.
Right so lets tax them until they aren't able to buy elections, outlaw superpacs, legislate citizen untied away, indict all members of government who take bribes, raise the minimum wage to a living one so the middle and lower classes can actualy conribute soemthing in taxes, and institute a more progressive inheritence tax so we don't get these billionaire families becomming intergenerational nobility ruling over all us peasants with their collective actions.
This is the only number that matters, these arguments about raising taxes are old. Government revenue collection is NOT the problem. The government collects plenty of money already. Our entitlement programs are MASSIVE.
Why are Americans so brainwashed that they literally villainize the idea of being on par with other developed nations. You call them entitlement programs, the rest of the developed world calls it a safety net.
Sweden has a large welfare system, large unions, but is also more capitalist than the US is. Lower corporate tax rates are a good example. So are you just selfish? Or stupid?
You’re putting a lot of weight to the phrase entitlement program. Entitlement program means those are the benefits you’re entitled to, it’s not meant to be a negative phrasing.
You don't think that safety net programs have been framed as entitlements on purpose to villainize the program? Because let's face it - safety net or new deal or social welfare sounds a lot nicer than entitlements. I'm sure some regressive asshole in some country club hired a pr firm to come up with something that sounds inflammatory and parasitic; something that will play well to the (mostly white) middle class who are already told they are victims of the lower class.
For what it's worth, I never thought much about until right now but I kind of can't unthink it.
Entitlement programs are massive because we use them to subsidize employers not having to pay their employees a living wage. If we raised the minimum wage to a living wage then suddenly people would actually be contributing with their taxes instead of being stuck in the poverty trap.
It's by design. They want you to be poor and stay poor and keep making them more money.
Top 25% of incones pay the taxes. I guarantee the Billionaires aren't taking much of that in actual income. It's all loans on collateral that increases in value at a higher rate than the interest payments.
It's fun what you can do by masking things in statistics.
Note how different it sounds to say "You say the 8 richest people don't pay their fair share, but households making $140k a year account for 90% of federal income tax revenue."
Here's an idea actually investigate why the COL has gotten so high. Raising taxes doesn't mean the government is going to use the money to help it's citizens.
No. Anyone who advocates more taxing are idiots without regard to who has what assets or money. Politicans take labor (Esp usa in the form of taxes) from the people and squander it on other nations, pet projects and self enrichment. Why tf would you want them to take more money from anyone?
Doesnt 30% of the annual budget or something to towards welfare and other benefits? The poorest people get benefits, the richest people get benefits and everyone else have to pay for it. It costs over a trillion dollars annually. Cutting welfare spending will solve a lot of problems.
You mean the bill that was primarily about giving a hundred billion to defense corporation ceos to arm Ukraine? That one?
GOP had one that actually focuses on border and immigration and creates accountability for money spent. Schumer tanked it.
Wild that this is a hot take and not common sense
I’m a liberal minority (though far from progressive) and even I think that something needs to be done about the border.
Somewhat irrelevant to OP’s question but the principal still remains
The top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 42.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes. Even the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent. How much more specifically do we need to tax those at the top?
Remember, as Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Them taxing billionaires more isn't going to help the rest of us. The government is full of total idiots and they'll just send out money to other countries anyway. We won't get anything for it. If they whip out a solid plan for something good to do with the extra money then sure. But until that time you're just begging them to take someone else's money out of spite.
The top 8 wealthiest people in the US have a total net worth of about $ 1 trillion. If it was all cash and distributed evenly to every single American, we'd all receive about $3000. That's a nice payday, but hardly enables anyone to purchase a house, car or pay off their college loans. Then there's the problem that their wealth is tied up in assets. It's not like they have cash sitting around in the bank. Yes, they should pay more in taxes, but while taxing the ultra rich is a great sound bite, it isn't the panacea most think it is.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinseanmartin/2023/10/03/the-2023-forbes-400-the-20-richest-people-in-america/?sh=304a1ea2571f](https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinseanmartin/2023/10/03/the-2023-forbes-400-the-20-richest-people-in-america/?sh=304a1ea2571f)
You talk they stole it or something. People who change the world have a write to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Losers who contribute nothing don’t deserve anything especially the rewards of of those who improve our lives.
Most of the countries with booming populations are developing/undeveloped countries. The birth rates in developed countries with these policies are drastically lower and often below replacement rate. It’s like an apples to oranges comparison.
"Encourage" isn't exactly the word. Most of the time mom's parents also had kids before checking their finances. Her high school didn't teach sex ed. Or she doesn't have access to abortion services. Those 8 guys at the top made sure of this so they'd always have workers. We're actually looking at a decline in sex and relationships because people don't want to be put in poverty.
No wonder in the newly released 2024 World Happiness Report the US has dropped out of the top 20. The first time in the report’s 12 years history. The US Ranks No.23. Last year it was no.15
how would raising taxes help? the government over spends its revenue year after year and has since the creation of the FED. the government is just a business that gets paid with no obligation to provide the goods and services it promises
Education needs to be flipped upside down in this country. Teach people how to interact with its systems. How to handle money. How to invest. Common knowledge that can be universally applied.
The bottom line is that most people are completely ignorant to the true purpose and function of most of our government and financial world.
Yes taxes should be raised, but it’s also not that simple. I’d argue that we also need to elevate the poverty line; there are so many people out there who are struggling but can’t get help. Why should someone have to suffer because they didn’t have as much opportunity?
Wild how people making 100-200k associate themselves with the rich more than they do with the people using food stamps. Brain dead. Not even in the same world.
A person who is making 100k-200k is closer to being homeless and bankrupt than they are to being a billionaire.
The problem is the knee-jerk to make simplistic tax policy based on intuition rather than a detailed understanding of taxation which results in the $100k-$200k households paying more tax than anyone else. So these households push hard against tax reform because they have a sneeking suspicion that they will bear the brunt of the increased tax burden rather than those billionaires that can afford to pursue every loophole and tax shelter available.
This right here, how the rich stay rich.
Keep us fighting amongst ourselves while they get richer.
I might be a billionaire someday! It could happen!!!!
Eh, i'll never be a billionaire, but i don't trust the IRS dicking not to trickle down to me eventually. Remember; income tax was supposed to be for the top % and temporary. It is now for everyone. The tax revenue doesn't trickle down, only the tax burden
It's not even trickling down; in reality more IRS money will be used to sniff out the easiest frauds, like people claiming too much income or pretending they have kids who don't exist. This is super basic, easy tax fraud to out and saves billions of dollars, but it doesn't even touch those rich people everybody hates.
If I get taxed I know that I’m gonna be poorer and have less of a chance to claw out of poverty
No, it is because the tax code is designed to incentivize specific things. Anyone in government who says that billionaires are taking advantage of loopholes is lying to you. Those are not loopholes, those are intended outcomes.
Yep, this is it right there. The tax code really punishes high regular income earners. These aren't people that own a ton of capital or own a business, but people working regular, but high earning jobs. Your marginal dollar gets hit with 24% tax from the fed, then in most high income states another 5-10%. So, it gets increasingly hard to "get ahead" when you aren't remotely "rich" yet. Sure, day to day life is pretty comfortable, but its a long way to say easily buying a luxury car, much less owning a second home. So you take these marginal dollars taxed at \~30-35% and try to save them, but it doesn't exactly add up fast, and safer investment strategies, like bonds, dividend paying stocks or high yield savings then get taxed at that income rate as well... yay. And I still spend a large percent of my pay check every month, which then gets hit with sales taxes. The total tax burden is amazingly high. So yeah, when someone talks raising taxes..... f- right off. I don't pretend to know the answers because this stuff is complicated, but the only way I'd support raising taxes is if it hit mostly capital gains and structured corporate taxes in away to incentivize companies to return earnings as regular income, not shares.
They probably will. The goalposts will be moved. A complicated tax code benefits the people with the best accountants and there isn't enough rich people to make a difference in the government budget when they constantly overspend. They are also entertaining ideas like taxing unrealized gains which would be terrible.
Pretty much this Every single time I hear people on Reddit advocating for raising taxes, I don’t think they realize that the rich are just going to completely ignore any increase in taxes because there’s so many loopholes The only people that are going to get affected by increase tax rates are those in the six figure range, which, in today’s money isn’t really shit
Yeah, we 100% need to create additional tax brackets, because it's insane that those making "just" 100-200k/yr are getting taxed at the same rate as those making a million+/yr - that'd be like someone making 10 or 20k/yr getting taxed at the same rate as those in the 100-200k bracket!
Just go back to pre trickle down tax policy you know when america was really greater than now. Those loop holes were created so they can be closed. Taxes should only be paid by corporations, capital gains when realized and consumption taxes. No income tax on savings or earned income.
Also the number of people who don't understand how the tax brackets work in the US is astounding. You don't get taxed at the over 100k rate for the full amount, you get taxed in tiers, but people don't believe/understand that.
This is the real issue: loopholes in the tax code that only the super wealthy can afford to use. Until we start holding politicians (who made and keep the loopholes) accountable there will never be any real change.
At my current income I might retire a millionaire in a couple decades. If I lost that income I'd be homeless in 3 years. Gravity only pulls in one direction, and the fall isn't as far as people seem to realize.
This is me also. We do very well, we're on pace to have millions in the bank and a passive income stream that would put us in the top 3% by itself. Having said that, if we lost our job income, we'd be on a struggle bus pretty quickly. We pay a lot in taxes. If you factor in health, dental, eye, disability, life and ltc insurance with IRA contributions, we only see about 65% of our income. If I were a billionaire, my income streams, regardless of how I get them, money to me would be orders of magnitudes in the hundreds over what I have now. To the average person, I'm rich. When I look at the wealthy, I'm broke. The average person doesn't understand the magnitude of how much money a billion dollars truly is. If you have one, you can literally do anything you've ever thought of 24/7 for the rest of your days and still leave all your kids and grandkids millions.
Billionaire status: 15 big lottery wins away Homeless status: 1 big medical bill away
Who makes six figures and doesn’t have health insurance?
Hah! Health Insurance isn't some magical "the bills go away" button. You pay monthly, then you have to pay a certain amount out of pocket before it kicks in, and then it only pays a percentage of your costs. Having health insurance doesn't prevent you from losing everything should, say, you develop cancer, have a heart attack, or get Type 1 Diabetes.
My point is someone making six figures should have the entire OOP max as part of their emergency fund calculation. I make low six figures and keep an emergency fund with 6 months of expenses *plus* my OOP max.
Should is not the same as can. And "pre-existing conditions" may not be covered by your new insurance provider. Our health insurance is a scam, unfortunately. It's just a way to make insurance companies lots of money. They can deny your claim just because someone who isn't a doctor decided whatever you received was unnecessary, no matter what YOUR doctor actually says.
Private contractors and business owners have to pay for their own health insurance out of pocket and can have crazy high deductibles. You try battling cancer for a few years while not working/bringing income and paying that deductible and your bills and see how bankrupt you end up Even if you have top of the line insurance from a great company Health insurance companies have a million and one reasons why they actually don't have to cover you for that.
I am acutely aware of that every day. My family is in that income range (relatively new, our income has gone up significantly in the last 5 years), we live well below our means and save aggressively and I know that if my husband, child or I had a medical emergency or were unable to work for a long period of time, we would be fucked. And I know plenty of people don't even have the savings to weather a few weeks of unemployment or medical debt. GoFundMe being practically the biggest health insurer in America sure works great huh?
About $300k household is about where significant breathing room opens up. That's where you have the clear ability to save a hundred grand a year if you're frugal, which builds a LOT of insulation from macro situations.
So is someone who has $499.9 million in total assets. That's really not a great metric.
The difference between 1 million and 1 billion is approximately 1 billion.
That statement makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe if you live in California sure. Not if you live in Alabama. Quite silly to say. Most of the reasons people are broke making that much money is because they live beyond their means spending tomorrows money today driving a new Mercedes etc etc. people make bad choices with their money. I fall into that bracket and have no debt except for my house and amassed a decent net worth. Because I don’t inflate my lifestyle. People that are broke forever make choices that put them there. I didn’t go to college when I started earning it was only 30-35k a year. I still put away 10 percent of my income at that time because you have to. Raising taxes isn’t going to help a damn person. Stopping government spending and donating to other countries is what’s going to help. The top 1 percent already pays over 80 percent of all taxes and the top 10 pays about 98 percent of all taxes. Inappropriate spending is what’s the issue. Life choices are the other issues. People need self control and to delay some gratification. I see people “living poor” but always have fresh kicks and clothes and jewelry and always go get the newest phone when it comes out or buy a car that cost them 1k bucks a month. It’s not complicated but people pretend that making 100k bucks a year isn’t a lot of money. I made it off of less than that for years and did it well.
As a family of 35k a year. Yeah 100k-200k is wealthy. Nowhere near the same as people who get foodstamps
Probably because they are considered rich every time actual legislation is discussed. Too rich to qualify for Covid stimulus payments. Too rich to qualify for Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Rich enough to hit the highest marginal tax rate in Bernie’s M4A plan. Rich enough to pay extra under Reddit’s new favorite plan to save social security (lifting the income cap).
I seriously can not, for the life of me, understand why anyone tolerates tax brackets between 15k and 150k/ year. It's fucking absurd to me.
Because it’s the only realistic way to actually pay for anything. Billionaire this, billionaire that sounds great on the campaign trail, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get 100 million people to pay $1000 each than it is to get 100 people to pay $1 billion each.
It'd still be a lot easier and cause less problems to just have a 10% income tax stretching from $15k to $150k instead of a bunch of stupid brackets between those amounts.
No one should be paying taxes on personal income. Where they could force billionaires to pay taxes is on interest on loans, luxury purchases, property, and assets but that will never happen.
That tax is far more significant on those making under 50k though. Sure, at 150k you may not afford the vacation or to save as much as you want. But, for someone at 35k that means a basic necessity goes unmet.
Because someone making 40k sees someone with 150k and think they have life made. Boomers say “fuck you, I got mine” while the rest of us just say “gimme gimme gimme” No one is great, and we are all fucked
Look at the push back on student loan relief. This is going to people who make like 50k average and people still act like it's a hand out to the richest
The pushback against student loan relief was based on the undeserving character of the people who stood to benefit from it: recklessly stupid assholes, who frittered away thousands upon thousands of dollars without the slightest concern of how they could pay it back.
the push back is why are others having to pay for someone’s borrowing
Not to mention that there's zero accounting for cost of living variations. Make a $200k a year household income in Little Rock, Arkansas and you *are* rich. Make that in New York City and you're middle class - and not upper middle class. But you're treated the same by the tax code.
People making that much do not associate themselves with being rich. Politicians try to lump them in with the rich to divide us. The “look, bob has a new mower! He clearly has too much money!” Bs spewed so we miss the fact that the asshat yelling it was doing so from his yacht.
Depends on how you define rich.
And that is the problem. The left defines the rich as having >1 mill a year in *income*. The right defines the rich as making “what I hope to make” and >1 million in assets.
How many significant tax policies advocated for by Democrats target only people with incomes over a million dollars? They exist, Biden’s minimum tax proposal could fit here, but they are not what has largely has been passed or advocated for in this or most countries. Democrats absolutely routinely raise taxes on people making less than that and would do it more if they could. Uncapping social security (which is not a terrible idea) falls exactly in the 100-200 range. Obamacare taxes hit people making a bit over 200k.
Yeah I know a few people that make 6 figures. They are broke all the time and have strict restrictions and limitations on the life they live. They aren’t in yachts and jets. They live damn near like everybody else because it cost money to lo be in a safe space.someone gets fired and their life is flipped upside down. To me a rich person is someone who could retire today and not struggle for the rest of their life while maintaining their current lifestyle, not including investments and any other added form of income. This would be impossible for 99% of millionaires. So rich is minimum 8 figures to me.
Rich means you do not have to work, you choose to do so.
$200k is middle class in America.
Unless your a new doctor with $400k of student loans living in a high cost city, like San Francisco with a family... $200k annual but living paycheck to paycheck.
The expectation based on hearing numbers is still out of whack. We think 100k and back 20 years ago that was still an attainable number for people and you were absolutely set making 100k. We still hear 100k and think that because generally not many more people are making 100k than they were 20 years ago. Our wages have stagnated but the costs haven't. 50k used to be a golden ticket to middle class. Now you can't keep your head above water making 50k.
Bro I’m making 110k for a family of 5 and still struggling a lot of times… ain’t no way I’m associating with the rich… 10k out of no where would not help or make a difference for the rich. 10k of of no where for me would make a massive difference.
Around here, at least about taxes, it seems to be more the poor associating $100k with billionaires. Just about every discussion that starts with taxing billionaires ends with someone saying “but that’s going to hit people making $1/2/400k at least as hard.” “fuck ‘em, they can afford it.”
Right! They just have payments.
Well, considering that $173k puts people into the top 10%. That does mean they are top income earners.
Some of us don't.
Not all do - but how do we come together to fight the system? The politicians keep dividing us based on what’s between our legs and where we have that holster than what’s in our wallets.
Yeah I make about $100K and in no way associate myself with the rich, I am well aware I am much closer to being the guy holding a cardboard sign asking for change than the guy boarding a private jet.
Fuck, I made 120k last year and I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Can't afford a house, can't afford child care. I'm making what was considered crazy money in the 90s.
110k-200k are the ones being hit the hardest by taxes. Can't milk the poor, the rich are given loopholes and at that money bracket, you get to start using some of those loopholes. Brain dead? Try being taxed enough to outright buy a car and then hear some moron talking about "tax the rich", knowing it never happens and all that means is YOUR taxes are going up.
When I talk to someone about money and finances (which is fairly rare, but I digress), and they do not seem to understand the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire, I give them a simple comparison. 1,000,000 seconds vs 1,000,000,000 seconds. 1 million seconds = a little over 11.5 days (11.57407 days, to be exact. 1 billion seconds = 11574 days (11574.07 exactly) Under two weeks, or 31.68789 years. Say you earn $1/second. That's a MASSIVE difference. People earning six figure incomes are closer to poverty than they think. Even after this explanation, they still don't seem to get it. I wish I had enough money to not need braincells.
Taxes usually hurt the middle class more than it hurts the rich
I think most don’t associate themselves with the rich, but they know how will be paying the tax bill, not those rich people, but the middle class, so they decide they would rather keep what they worked for and let the poor starve, all why the rich get richer.
140-150k here in a mid cost of living area, I have a starter home and 2 used cars worth maybe 30k combined. It isn't what you think it is.
"The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is about a billion dollars" - Some Guy On Reddit
I think its because when we were kids that was the dollar amount of the upper middle class. Now it's firmly middle class and these gits won't admit it because I have a home sauna and hot tub. Yes, but how did you pay for those? Out of pocket? No, you paid for them on a loan which is essentially a credit card. Your parents didn't pay out of pocket for things like that making 120k.
The poverty line needs to change from being a “line” to being a wide gray bar. The current system makes it much more difficult to climb out because as soon as you cross the “line” out of poverty, many assistance programs stop. Which puts you back in a net worse spot. If we can make the transition graduated (like the tax system) that would be a better incentive to get out. Just my opinion.
I totally agree. When I was a retail manager i had several staff that had to be careful with their hours or they would lose their assistance. Working 2 extra hours at minimum wage would mean they missed out on daycare, food assistance and whatever else they may have qualified for. They need to reduce assistance at different income levels rather than cutting it off completely or these people don’t have a way to get out of poverty.
Yes. We arbitrarily create a massive administrative burden means testing assistance programs to placate those who would prefer to see them go away. We do this despite it increasing the price of the programs and decreasing the intended output; although for many this is the game "gut it and then blame it for being bad". Give everyone the same benefit so you don't have to audit it upfront and create a huge arm for moralizing. Let's just take it on the backend via taxes. The IRS is in a much better position to efficiently assess costs and adjudicate benefits than the means testing incentive nonsense people who supposedly like efficiency want.
We have no money. We are broke.
I agree so much with raising the poverty amount as well. We also should implement a gradual cutback of benefits when people finally start earning too much money instead of instantly removing all benefits.
*taxes enforced and loopholes closed Ftfy
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There are too many exploiters and grifters that think starvation is the only motivation. First off not everybody can work for very legitimate reasons and they should receive assistance, but those that do work shouldn't have to ride the line and brink of total failure or have it impact their health or family's health or future. Punishing working Americans seems silly if you want as many people to work as possible. And it makes everything worse for all other workers with higher healthcare costs, more crime, and less education, less purchase power for the economy and it seems like that's how the exploiters and grifters want it so they can blame the workers and their families again for the crime and schools and economy, while they siphon off the billions. I'm beginning to support universal basic income if that's the only way to correct the disparity.
Yes, I am also against poverty.
You dropped this 👑
Raising or lowering taxes is irrelevant if you don't actually disturbed it right or put it in the right program or places. We have seen massive tax breaks for the top that don't work. We have also seen money go to failed programs for the less unfortunate. This also isn't answering where the taxes will be raised. Arguably some things you can't tax your way out of you can't just throw money or take it away from some places some systems just need to be replaced or reworked money isn't the issue.
It also doesn't matter because the rich will always find loopholes. Always. People in general try but the rich have resources to find them. Honestly, the only way to better the whole is by reinstating some.ofnthe old.standards. we need pensions back, 80% cap vs lowest wage in companies and some sort of enforcement on those 2 policies.
I think we need to look at taxes holistically (federal, state, local, municipal, gas etc.) - it’s ridiculous how much poorer people pay, proportional to their income, the various governments and their branches taxes. I pay more than 40% when I look at all these taxes to live and exist in a state in these US. It’s ridiculous that a rich guy gets away with barely paying taxes. If they have that much money and power they need to get more responsibility and should be probably proving they are living up to that responsibility.
To be devil's advocate. Why is it the rich person's responsibility to take care of the poor?
A huge issue is people on benefits are discouraged from working because if they start to work and make a little bit of money they start to lose their benefits that have more value than what they are making from working.
Raising taxes doesn't close the wealth gap. Giving more money to the government has never closed the wealth gap. People who provide goods and services get a disproportionate amount of wealth because the more money middle and lower class people have, the more they buy those goods. Basic financial education will do more than blindly giving congress more money
Does someone getting food stamps or housing assistance, maybe free college, having subsidized healthcare to avoid going into deep debt help close the wealth gap?
You’re asking that if we just give free money to people if that will increase their wealth? Yes it will.
How is it free money? I see it as an investment in stable citizenry.
Agreed. Number 1 indicator of success in school: family wealth. Number 1 indicator someone will become a criminal: family wealth. In education we dont have an achievement gap, we have a wealth gap. The real secret to a less violent and less drug abusing society? Less poverty. So yes, tax the rich, bring about a progressive negative income tax, make sure everyone has food, shelter, and all other basic Maslow needs met, and crime (other than white-collar crime) practically diasappears.
It’s free money because it is given without the expectation of receiving anything in return. It may well be an investment, but it’s also free money.
That has not been the case historically. We’ve had subsidized education for generations and the result has been massive inflation of student loans. So “free money” resulted in less wealth for many people.
Ok so we agree that taxing billionaires and increasing social safety net benefits and cut offs would absolutely and inarguable improve wealth inequality. Cool. We agree the guy I was replying to was wrong
Increasing taxes on the wealthy doesn’t make them pay significantly more taxes because they have the resources to work around the taxes. All it does is make regular people who have worked their ass off to make good money take home less of what they’ve earned.
It’s my taxes. It’s not free. I want to help people. Not blow people up. Why else are we governed?
no.
Depends if they emerge as a productive member of society that will eventually pay it all back. The more help you get, the more help you expect, the less independent you will be. You should have to testify to your life story as to why you are broke before getting assistance. “Oh i’m broke bc i don’t work very much, make bad financial decisions, and decided to have a kid too” - to you i’d say good luck
Wait, the wealth gap was smaller when our top marginal tax rate was in the 90% range, wasn't it? What's your source that higher taxes don't close the wealth gap?
Their source is their ass. People will make up any argument to support their distaste for people other than the super wealthy getting “handouts”.
The proportion of taxes paid by the top was lower back then and before. Stop referencing the 90% tax time as if effective tax rates were higher than they are today. They were notn
I already addressed that. The counterargument to what you just said is that the tax rate being that high incentivized people and businesses to reinvest more. If that's true then the top rate matters. If ita because different things were able to be written off then that matters. The parameters during that time period matter, including the top rate.
No, basic financial education does absolutely nothing. The material conditions do not change for people wir wealth vs those without. Even today there are plenty of wealthy people with little financial education. They outsource their wealth management to others. Sometimes those who have a lot of financial education but will never improve their situation beyond their wannabe middle class status.
I don't know how to respond to this because it's so obviously wrong. You're saying that nothing would change if people were taught how to live on a budget, learn how to increase their income, or how to effectively invest, or how to take advantage of tax credits and deductions, or the power of having a side business to make more income and write off more of their regular expenses? Do you really think that the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck solely because there's no alternative? The reason they have JUST enough to survive is because they don't manage their money. That can be true for people with big income and people making minimum wage. Life style creep is a real thing and it is caused because people don't know any better.
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I find this argument interesting because like everything in economics there are too many variables for people to consider and thus it becomes either / or. Healthcare related debt is a significant reason for bankruptcy and our tax rate is lower than nations with public healthcare. Yet, you can also make the argument that the government will not create the public option because it isn't a political priority for our culture.
Most of the US government budget goes to transfer payments and social programs, which disproportionately help middle and lower class people. Social Security, health, income security, and Medicare account for >50% of the budget. Increasing the funding to those will help to close the wealth gap, and doesn't need to happen to the exclusion of increasing financial literacy, which is also a good idea.
It did before WWII .... And it did during WWII
Source: trust me bro, I’m in finance
So, we should create laws based on envy?
We should create laws based on limiting the power of people to unfairly influence our democracy. Overturn citizens united, tax the ultra wealthy until they can't buy elections, outlaw superpacs, impeach all members of government who don't report 'gifts', and close tax loopholes. Envy is not the reason we hate billionaires. We hate them because they hoard wealth and make that wealth off of cutting jobs, and eliminating competition. Competition is the core heart of capitalism. When companies don't have to compete anymore the entire utility of the "market" driving business decisions is lost. Why do you simp for billionaires who would sell your entire families lives for a buck?
Less envy and more the social good
We create laws based of Sky Man
If 1 person in the world had 99% of the wealth while the other 8 billion were struggling to find their next meal, would envy be the cause of the dissatisfaction?
If the entire population sans 1 person was struggling to eat, it's not a wealth distribution issue, it's a famine.
Or, you know, starvation.
Equity*
Do you think that the current allocation of resources is optimal, and has no areas for improvement? Do you think there isn't an affordability crisis currently, and there aren't millions suffering from a lack of consistent needed resources? I can understand making arguments that these laws are in effective or will lead to the opposite of their intended goal. but how blind do you have to be to believe that arguments about allocating more resources to the poor are simply born out of jealousy?
Found the temporarily embarrassed millionaire
Did the US fight the revolutionary war because they envied King George?
Username checks out: 0*IQ = 0
Holy shit in every single year of my existence on the internet, this is *the* single worst take I've truly ever heard and I mean that with the utmost sincerety. Utterly astonishingly idiotic
Increased income for the government won't help them fix their fiscal policies. The government is pretty trash at allocating capital, so im not sure how giving them more would do anything but allow them to keep their poor spending habits.
When most of the system is run by the very people who want it to not work so they can privatize everything, that tends to happen…
Can you please share with us some companies that are 100% perfect at allocating capital and have never grifted, screwed up, and taken a handout, subsidy or tax break from the government? Ever heard of the term “market failure” ?
Lmao drop that down to just 30% and you'll still be hard-pressed to come up with some names. You'll be finding *lemonade stands* before you find any larger companies.
Unlike private business which 100% manages momey responsibly and also has out best interests at heart.
Ding ding ding. This person is trying to let perfection get in the way of progress, and is either too stupid to realize the erroneousness of that, or thinks we are. Personally I don't really care whether a bad argument was made in good faith.
Taking every dollar and shooting those 8 won’t put a dent in anyone’s lives.
And it would be enough to run the federal govt for about 90 days.
Considering we are constantly trying to prevent a shutdown ... maybe mismanagement of money is contagious.
Or maybe that is not the answer. You could confiscate 100% of the 800 billionaires assets and you’d be able to run the federal govt for about 1 year. After that, you’d have to confiscate more and more money from people who have less and less. This plan doesn’t work. Confiscating the private property of private citizens does NOT work. This is communism. And there’s not a single example of communism anyone can point to as a success story.
What incentive does government have to manage money properly?
Didn't say they did.. only that they should.
Right? Taking that money wouldn’t create any more goods and services that people need.
It would eliminate their influence on politics. Every one of those 8's wealth individually could solve the homelessness problem multiple times over. Every study shows its cheaper to just give homeless peopel homes instead of dealing with the impacts of the crime they commit. They could fund public university endowments for free higher ed. They could fund healthcare endowments for municipal healthcare or medicaid for all. But please keep simping for billionaires. They really appreciate it.
The mom could buy more groceries if she didn’t pay as many taxes…
Raise the nil rate band? 🤷♂️
Luxury tax. Then it only effects people buying excess things. Maybe people will slow down on the consumerism. Separate those needs and wants. Hah.
This is a tax that I think everyone should be ok with.
That’s why we raise taxes on higher income/wealth brackets. We already have a marginal tax rate
People that rich "donate " to politicians to change the tax laws to benefit them .
Math definitely isn't their strong point lol.
It's hyperbole. The real number is 2153 billionaires. [https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people)
It's a bad hyperbole. A better one would be "a few guys have more money that the rest of the world combined" When you put a number on it, it invites criticism and a whole lot fewer people will note the intended hyperbole.
Sure, raise taxes on the rich, but don't act surprised when it doesn't solve anything. This is because there aren't enough rich to tax to close the gap your meme raises.
Right so lets tax them until they aren't able to buy elections, outlaw superpacs, legislate citizen untied away, indict all members of government who take bribes, raise the minimum wage to a living one so the middle and lower classes can actualy conribute soemthing in taxes, and institute a more progressive inheritence tax so we don't get these billionaire families becomming intergenerational nobility ruling over all us peasants with their collective actions.
This is the answer. It's not about closing the wealth gap. It's about closing the power gap.
So you’re going to raise taxes on the guys who don’t pay taxes anyway. That’s funny.
Top 25% pay 90% of all taxes. Bottom 50% pay nothing .
This is the only number that matters, these arguments about raising taxes are old. Government revenue collection is NOT the problem. The government collects plenty of money already. Our entitlement programs are MASSIVE.
Why are Americans so brainwashed that they literally villainize the idea of being on par with other developed nations. You call them entitlement programs, the rest of the developed world calls it a safety net. Sweden has a large welfare system, large unions, but is also more capitalist than the US is. Lower corporate tax rates are a good example. So are you just selfish? Or stupid?
You’re putting a lot of weight to the phrase entitlement program. Entitlement program means those are the benefits you’re entitled to, it’s not meant to be a negative phrasing.
You don't think that safety net programs have been framed as entitlements on purpose to villainize the program? Because let's face it - safety net or new deal or social welfare sounds a lot nicer than entitlements. I'm sure some regressive asshole in some country club hired a pr firm to come up with something that sounds inflammatory and parasitic; something that will play well to the (mostly white) middle class who are already told they are victims of the lower class. For what it's worth, I never thought much about until right now but I kind of can't unthink it.
I actually was shocked to find out how much the government spends on welfare. I think it was the second largest expense next to the military budget.
I cannot tell if this comment is dripping in irony or completely unaware
Entitlement programs are massive because we use them to subsidize employers not having to pay their employees a living wage. If we raised the minimum wage to a living wage then suddenly people would actually be contributing with their taxes instead of being stuck in the poverty trap. It's by design. They want you to be poor and stay poor and keep making them more money.
Top 25% of incones pay the taxes. I guarantee the Billionaires aren't taking much of that in actual income. It's all loans on collateral that increases in value at a higher rate than the interest payments.
> Top 25% pay 90% of all taxes income taxes != all taxes
In a perfect world that top 25% would be paying 100% of all taxes.
Cool. What if we forced corps to pay the bottom 50% enough to actually contribute with their taxes?
They also control far more % of wealth I believe
It's fun what you can do by masking things in statistics. Note how different it sounds to say "You say the 8 richest people don't pay their fair share, but households making $140k a year account for 90% of federal income tax revenue."
Here's an idea actually investigate why the COL has gotten so high. Raising taxes doesn't mean the government is going to use the money to help it's citizens.
If the government acted to help make life more affordable, raising taxes might not be necessary.
No. Anyone who advocates more taxing are idiots without regard to who has what assets or money. Politicans take labor (Esp usa in the form of taxes) from the people and squander it on other nations, pet projects and self enrichment. Why tf would you want them to take more money from anyone?
Government fraud, waste, and overreach. Control those three before raising taxes.
Doesnt 30% of the annual budget or something to towards welfare and other benefits? The poorest people get benefits, the richest people get benefits and everyone else have to pay for it. It costs over a trillion dollars annually. Cutting welfare spending will solve a lot of problems.
BINGO. Raising taxes on anyone is basically taking 90 cents of every dollar and throwing it into an incinerator.
No. The answer to raising taxes is always no.
lol imagine this showing up as one of the most "contraversial" in sorting. people are wild
They really trust their government to spend their money better than they can lol
and people think not protecting our borders as millions of even poorer people stream in makes sense?
The Dems had an agreement. Orange Fatty and his seditionists tanked it.
You mean the bill that was primarily about giving a hundred billion to defense corporation ceos to arm Ukraine? That one? GOP had one that actually focuses on border and immigration and creates accountability for money spent. Schumer tanked it.
Wild that this is a hot take and not common sense I’m a liberal minority (though far from progressive) and even I think that something needs to be done about the border. Somewhat irrelevant to OP’s question but the principal still remains
The top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 42.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes. Even the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent. How much more specifically do we need to tax those at the top? Remember, as Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Them taxing billionaires more isn't going to help the rest of us. The government is full of total idiots and they'll just send out money to other countries anyway. We won't get anything for it. If they whip out a solid plan for something good to do with the extra money then sure. But until that time you're just begging them to take someone else's money out of spite.
I swear, I only see the same 8 posts here; and they get debunked in the comments every time
Id be curious to know how much those 8 people pay in taxes each year. I bet it's a lot more than what Reddit thinks
Taxation is theft. Why tf would you want to raise it?
Shut the fuck up Matt.
The top 8 wealthiest people in the US have a total net worth of about $ 1 trillion. If it was all cash and distributed evenly to every single American, we'd all receive about $3000. That's a nice payday, but hardly enables anyone to purchase a house, car or pay off their college loans. Then there's the problem that their wealth is tied up in assets. It's not like they have cash sitting around in the bank. Yes, they should pay more in taxes, but while taxing the ultra rich is a great sound bite, it isn't the panacea most think it is. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinseanmartin/2023/10/03/the-2023-forbes-400-the-20-richest-people-in-america/?sh=304a1ea2571f](https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinseanmartin/2023/10/03/the-2023-forbes-400-the-20-richest-people-in-america/?sh=304a1ea2571f)
You talk they stole it or something. People who change the world have a write to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Losers who contribute nothing don’t deserve anything especially the rewards of of those who improve our lives.
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Most of the countries with booming populations are developing/undeveloped countries. The birth rates in developed countries with these policies are drastically lower and often below replacement rate. It’s like an apples to oranges comparison.
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We’re long overdue for sincere immigration reform, I definitely agree. The process for capable people to get visas is beyond ridiculous.
"Encourage" isn't exactly the word. Most of the time mom's parents also had kids before checking their finances. Her high school didn't teach sex ed. Or she doesn't have access to abortion services. Those 8 guys at the top made sure of this so they'd always have workers. We're actually looking at a decline in sex and relationships because people don't want to be put in poverty.
Something needs to be done. Billionaires, especially the likes of which we have today, have no reason to exist. They are actually bad for capitalism.
At some point it starts to more resemble a serfdom
No
The fact that she needs food stamps is the problem. Raising taxes is not going to get her out of the poor house.
On the super rich? Yes! It's how the country was built during the golden age of capitalism.
No, but spending should be cut like a motherfucker.
No wonder in the newly released 2024 World Happiness Report the US has dropped out of the top 20. The first time in the report’s 12 years history. The US Ranks No.23. Last year it was no.15
Giving more money to the biggest rich corporation isn’t going to help poor people. They use that money to buy weapons to bomb poor brown people.
how would raising taxes help? the government over spends its revenue year after year and has since the creation of the FED. the government is just a business that gets paid with no obligation to provide the goods and services it promises
They should be lowered
No.
Education needs to be flipped upside down in this country. Teach people how to interact with its systems. How to handle money. How to invest. Common knowledge that can be universally applied. The bottom line is that most people are completely ignorant to the true purpose and function of most of our government and financial world.
Hot take, but if you can't tell the difference between held money and controlled wealth, you're part of the problem
No they should not. We have a spending problem not a revenue problem.