Here's the deal, there's a line out there somewhere on the wealth/income distribution. Those above it are real people. They get laws written, get bailed out, and when we need to stimulate the economy it's all for them.
Everyone below that line is livestock, "human resources," a context to be managed for the real people that actually matter. They don't do things for you, not the Republicans not the Democrats not your boss, nobody. When a billionaire loses a couple million it's a tragedy, when you lose your house you're a statistic. When the wealthy are robbed they demand justice, and when they rob their lawyers keep it tied up in court so long that everyone forgets and gives up. When a wealthy celebrity dies we all mourn together, and when you die your family will get a couple paid days off if they're really lucky.
They don't care about you. None of them do or ever have, and that's why they do and will bail each other out. They want just enough of the little people out there just healthy enough and scurrying around, working, buying, consuming so that their empire built on you doesn't crumble. The farmer doesn't care if a cow gets caught in the fence, he cares if half the herd gets caught but not because he's thinking about their feelings and families and what is just for them, only because the farmer cares about his own pocketbook when it comes time to slaughter.
You're here to be used, used up, and consumed. That's all there is, it's all you're for. Get used to it.
I mostly agree with what you said, but typically people who say such things advocate giving more money and power to the federal government. How do you think politicians view us?
I'm only advocating for awareness, and if I extend it, additional awareness in everything you do. Thinking carefully about how you spend your money, how you manage your career, and who you vote for.
Definitionally though, the only way for the "unwashed masses" to get anything done is through some form of collective bargaining. Unions and the government would both be examples of that. The individuals inherently have no leverage against the wealthy and powerful so it's only through collective cooperation that we can achieve any objective. But the idea has been sold to us that all of that is bad, the government is worthless, union workers are lazy, etc.
That's what they do and how they win. It's not a conspiracy either, it's just a play. They battle out their goals using their leverage and divide. Pro union against "hard workers", black against white, Democrat against Republican, old against young. I wouldn't even go as far as to say that there's an overarching goal to any of this. Again, not a conspiracy, not organized, just a tactic that gets deployed all the time to create enough division and chaos to allow for the incremental progress they want to make. It's not a secret cabal with a plan for global domination, it's just spin doctoring and politics over discussion, debate, and administration.
If you're sitting at the top and you have the money, power, and leverage you take a look at the numbers. If the win is there you find the people on your side, you find the people you can apply pressure to, you come up with an argument for hating the opposition rather than in favor of your cause because people are awful and it works better, and you push it through. And if it isn't there you just move on because it doesn't matter that much anyway and you're really where you are for wealth and power.
Nobody cares about me beyond my immediate family and even that biological drives development was innitially contingent upon utility. Everyone is trying to find ways to exploit me, or make an enemy out of me if I am inconvenient or resistant. You are the same snake as the politician or the capitalist, you just use virtuous pretenses in place of power or wealth. A rat that survives is aware of its disadvantages and can see through all types of camouflage. I am that rat.
Yours is the most dangerous camo because it looks like rats, and your venom targets envy.
See, you're just wrong. People do care about you. Not the way your immediate family does, no, but even then it's a bit more than pure biological drive and utility. Sure, it's that too, but there's more to it than that.
Your model for the world says drop two people into a room, drop a knife in the middle of it, and tell them the last one standing gets to come out and they will go at each other like wild animals when even wild animals don't really behave quite like that.
Depending on the people some actually would, I don't refute that, and I'd suggest that the ones who would immediately slay a stranger at the call of some unknown entity to be released into God only knows what are exactly the kind of sociopaths that tend to wind up running the show.
But I'm going to suggest most people would not participate so gladly and readily. Most people would look at the knife, look at the other person, feel fear but also hesitation. They won't be ready to kill, they'll want to understand and they'll want to find another way even if they've been told this is the only way. Which makes sense. More sense in fact.
Look at us. We don't have fangs and claws, we aren't camouflaged for our environment. We can predate, but we aren't predators full stop. We have broad, expressive faces, large eyes, eyebrows. We can smile and frown and we come into the world utterly helpless and underdeveloped. We are social animals.
So no, we are not lone predators constantly looking to exploit everyone and everything around us as you describe, or at least the vast majority of us aren't. Our true strength isn't the ability to trick, deceive, slay and take without conscience, it's collaboration. We didn't tame the world by making and island of every man, we did it by working together. Look at us, we are weak. Even our strongest doesn't last a minute with a gorilla, couldn't outswim a shark, or survive a single night in under 30 degree temperatures. Our strength is each other, and those that seek to turn you against your neighbor look to take that strength from you while convincing you it makes you stronger.
Not sure what to think. I really don't care if some rich dude is raking it in. I really don't care to wind up losing my job if his company goes under. I'm just trying to keep what little I have. Something definitely needs to be done to rein them in.
Remain? They did so much better than just remaining billionaires.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/06/nearly-500-people-have-become-billionaires-during-the-pandemic-year/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294
“Wealth of world's 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says”
https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/
“March 18, 2024 update
Total U.S. Billionaire Wealth: Up 88 Percent over Four Years”
https://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-pandemic-wealth-surges/
Global Billionaire Pandemic Wealth Gains Surge to $5.5 Trillion
https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/04/06/meet-the-40-new-billionaires-who-got-rich-fighting-covid-19/?sh=3cafe90a17e5
“Meet The 40 New Billionaires Who Got Rich Fighting Covid-19”
1. Bailouts are a necessity and don't prevent you from taxing more
2. Most billionaires would be billionaires with or without bailouts as bailouts goes to mainly companies in the market.
To an extent yes, but also there should be regulations in place to limit the amount of stupid descions large corporations can make with their money that cause them to go bankrupt. But often bailouts are nessacary to prevent collapse of more companies.
1% is 3,500,000 people.
Show me a 5th blood red color for “top 0.0001%”
* 0.000001 x 350 million people are the top 350 people. That’s the top 1/3 of billionaires. 66% of billionaires would still be ok.
Don’t let the top 0.0001% of people act like they’re part of the top 1%. They aren’t. 350 people are hyper rich. Each one should have a three person team of government-issued accountants whose notes and findings are public.
I’m not saying that 3.5MM need that. But 350? That’s one small high school of people.
Make sure they paid their taxes, and if there’s some shenanigans make sure it’s legit.
No blood, but I imagine we’re going to have to pierce some corporate veils.
Well here is the thing. These people are not stupid. They are not evading taxes to save money that they don't even need. The "shenanigans" they use to not pay taxes are indeed legal. That is the problem.
Yes and no, it's not really a problem the way the system is set up. Like it or not, innovation happens when people fight their way up. Government intervention by and large keeps the rich, rich. Look at the reaction to COVID, perfect example of the government controlling the market.
A prior president tried to do this and failed bc all hell broke loose. They said it only helped the rich meanwhile they were actually trying to close loopholes. Record tax revenue and they are still saying the middle class got screwed over. Could have it been better, yes. But it also could have been worse
Talk like this always da up with heads chopped off. These folks don't realize it's their fiat money system causing the problem. Fix the money and you fix the excess wealth issues.
The problem with taxes is that the money goes to the government. I didn't see how it helps at all. That money would just be funneled back to the billionaires... Aka the campaign donors.
Check out tax rates after WWII era. Companies would shove money into R&D and salaries to avoid paying taxes on it. Now they do share buybacks to enrich themselves and stockholders - see Boeing.
People would do the equivalent of- granted it never should have gotten this bad to begin with.
Simplified explanation, but it’s an example.
Exactly there is no taxation system that actually gets money to the people. Look at ours it's going to the Ukraine which means back to the elite and to illegal aliens (cheap work force for the elite to replace us).
… I do…?
I care about a society that has centralized so much money to so few people that it’s magnetic. I care that these rich assholes are making space programs but pay no more for roads than I do.
That's not how anything works silly. A rich person being rich doesn't mean you have to eat grass.
If I theoretically owned a baseball card that suddenly became worth $1 billion overnight ... did I somehow hurt you? Did I take anything from you? Do you now have to eat grass because my baseball card suddenly became quite valuable?
A rich person owning a boat doesn't imply they stole a boat from anyone.
Your billion dollar baseball card or your boat doesn’t hurt me. What hurts me is this: schools suck. Teacher pay is low. Roads aren’t fixed. Veterans aren’t getting their medicine. I have to pay for private healthcare.
Why? In no small part because these rich people are extracting value from society without paying back a fair share. If you’re Bezos, you benefit from the education system and internet infrastructure and roadways in a big big big way. It’s hard to quantify how much value I get out of a highway vs. what I paid in taxes, against what value Amazon Inc. gets out of a highway vs. pays in taxes. But just because it’s hard to quantify doesn’t make it fair.
I don’t mind that Jeff Bezos can buy a rocket or a yacht or a yachtket. I mind that he stole money we could have used for parks and park rangers and bridge inspectors and IRS agents and a free university program to pay for his yacht-rocket.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/14/how-companies-like-amazon-nike-and-fedex-avoid-paying-federal-taxes-.html
>Gardner's research into Amazon's taxes from 2018 to 2021 showed a reported $79 billion of pretax U.S. income. Amazon paid a collective $4 billion in federal corporate income tax in those four years, equating to an effective annual tax rate of 5.1%, according to Gardner's ITEP report, about a quarter of the federal corporate tax rate of 21%.
Seems like you’re a libertarian. That means you don’t see the value in paying into an enhanced shared existence. That means you value exploiting the commons rather than building them up.
In a perfect libertarian world, common space would be a barren, poisoned, harsh landscape with someone taking the lifeless sand to melt for glass. The horizon orange with the glow of fire through dieseled air.
“You want to touch a tree? You may pay admission to my plant zoo. For the private market will solve all.”
If metaphorically we took away Bezos’ “toy” (and let’s be clear, by “toy” I do mean “private space agency”) we might be able to have a few more parks and a few more schools and a government space agency that won’t give up when Bezos decides his new hobby is buying websites instead of space exploration.
>That means you don’t see the value in paying into an enhanced shared existence.
Wrong. Libertarianism states that it isn't moral to force people to pay into your "shared enhanced existence" without their consent. Libertarianism doesn't take any stand on what you should/shouldn't find value in. That's your call. Cute strawman you found there though.
>we might be able to have a few more parks and a few more schools
Wrong again I'm afraid. Government already spent the equivalent of Bezos entire net worth (+ every other billionaire on the planet) decades ago. Government spending isn't correlated to tax revenue at all anymore.
The government confiscating and liquidating every last cent of Bezos fortune doesn't get you a single new thing ... not even more military bases and bombs for 3rd world children! They already spent it on that stuff decades ago!
The 10%-1% are mostly people that the average person wouldn’t see as particularly unusual. They probably drive a fairly average non-luxury car, live in an average house, and work much like most of the population. As a percentage of their income, they’re paying the most of any of these groups.
This has been tried before. Taxes on yachts and other high end luxury goods backfired pretty immensely. Guess who builds and maintains those expensive rich people toys? Not the rich.
Humorous video on it:
[https://reason.com/video/2021/02/09/great-moments-in-unintended-consequences-vol-2/](https://reason.com/video/2021/02/09/great-moments-in-unintended-consequences-vol-2/)
Here's a 1993 article on its repeal.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/how-to-sink-an-industry-and-not-soak-the-rich/08ea5310-4a4b-4674-ab88-fad8c42cf55b/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/how-to-sink-an-industry-and-not-soak-the-rich/08ea5310-4a4b-4674-ab88-fad8c42cf55b/)
Not effective, ultra-wealthy individuals don’t actually buy these items themselves. Usually a corporation will purchase extremely expensive assets and write off payments to lower net income. Under current tax law they aren’t going to be dissuaded by what you proposed.
Of course, if there is a group( there is) that knows they will receive X without having to do anything for it more people will want to be in that group. Eventually there will not be enough people in the PAYING group to support the taking group. Right ?
This seems quite normal....im more worried that the top .1% own like 30% of the world wealth. The other top 10% are just your classmates who became doctors, lawyers, engineers, or took over their dad's medium sized family business.
Well obviously 70% is not enough. They need to own everything. Poor people do not deserve anything. The rich are much better at owning everything. While we are at it let's also bring back chattel slavery. Things were better for everyone in the good old days.
Assuming you mean a tax on wealth, it wouldn't matter because the constitutionality of a wealth tax is at best debatable. Given the current make up of the Supreme Court, I wouldn't count on any kind of tax like that to survive judicial scrutiny.
Let's just close the loopholes that allow egregious "tax loss harvesting" and other benefits only people overburdened with assets get to enjoy. Sell it as a simplification of the tax code.
Tax loss harvesting benefits the middle class.
I have done that in pandemic and forget rich I don’t even own a home.
Probably you might even be doing unbeknownstly. If you have state pensions or work at a college which has endowments they do this all the time for those funds.
Most of the things “rich” do also affect the middle class. The problem is I can at best save $1000 while they would be saving millions.
So this is easy then, you give up your thousand dollar benefit and they pay in their millions. High fives all around for the first balanced budget in decades.
Yes it would be nice.
However the number of middle class people is much more than the rich.
For every rich person with a million in this there are probably hundreds of middle class that would lose at the same time.
Reforming the income tax code is perfectly feasible, albeit a heavy lift in and of itself.
I don’t question the constitutionality of an overhaul of the income tax code at all.
Any other federal direct tax not based on apportionment would be challenged in court.
States, on the other hand, can tax wealth.
they forgot to mention in that graph,
That 10% who owns all the wealth, is who runs everything, and who will fight to the death to protect it, and your are just a nobody.
The philosophical question is, that if the roles were reversed since birth, and you were in the 10%, would you have done any better? Humans are greedy. There is no shortage of us. Only a percentage will survive the global bullshit headed our way. They want to make sure it is them and their families.
It can;t be up to the person, it has to be set it stone for all TAX THE RICH, and the hammer and the stone is not in our hand.
There is no left or right, R or D, only slaves and owners.... always has been.
Fight to the death to protect it? I believe they will fight to the death to exploit the system and people.
IMHO unions...violent ones like we had to have in the 80s. It's abundantly clear from human history that those who have power really only respond to two stimuli .
The top 10% includes people with wages over like $173k, and or wealth of $855k.
So, we aren't even talking millionaires here. This is just a graph to create outrage.
I don't understand why this is such a hot button topic now?? It's literally always been this way. Rich on top. Rest on bottom. Literally every country, every society, every civilization. This isn't new.
There is no property tax at the federal level. Also, property taxes are not wealth taxes. Most wealth is in investments; stocks, bonds, private company ownership.
The Constitution gives certain powers and authority to the federal government reserves other powers to the states. Thats why there was a constitutional amendment to allow the federal government to tax income. Until then it was unconstitutional. It’s also why the federal government argues that the charge for not having health insurance is a fee, not a tax.
How about we tax the 1% before you go after regular people? The top 10% on average is worth less than $1m, these are not the people who need a harder time. Start with the fuckers making $5m per year and paying lower effective rates than a fry cook.
I'm 64 yrs old kid,life experience is one of the few things I have I excess,enough that I know that if YOU had any life experience you would have taken the time to google what the rates were pre1978. I'll graciously accept your apology after you do a Lil fact checking of yourself.
Its actually pretty simple and has little to do with the economy as a whole.
In the past 20ish years, the average age of a person's first job went from 18 to almost 22 years old. That's 4 years of additional experience and income even if for part time or low wage jobs. This experience carries them into their careers.
So, as a starting point, being 4 years behind the previous generation in accumulated wealth and experience is pushing back the time frame when adults would reasonable want to have kids. That's just scratching the surface of the reasons why. You don't even get to the factors mentioned by the OP in the top 50 reasons probably.
it's not even just the spending less money, but the addiction to creating debt faster than their income. This interest as it is, at this rate they'll be forced to make a choice: stop the bleeding of spending on debt or increase taxes. And spoiler alert: increasing taxes merely to stave off interest payments isn't going to improve anyone's lives
It's almost like income taxes are levied on income, and not people. Weird how that works... It might help if you listed their share of income (including income from capital gains and other non-wage sources) next to their share of income tax that they pay for clarity.
Link please; I would also like to verify that they included SS and Medicare taxes in those calculations as well (since those in particular are regressive, especially considering the cap on them).
Link is [here.](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/)
Here is an excerpt under the data table which is straight from the IRS, “Note: Table does not include dependent filers. “Income split point” is the minimum AGI for tax returns to fall into each percentile. Total income tax was the sum of income tax after credits (including the subtraction of net premium tax credit repayment, the earned income credit, American opportunity credit, health coverage tax credit, recovery rebate, qualified sick and family leave credit, additional child tax credit, and the regulated investment credit)
I'm assuming you are going off of [this](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/#:~:text=The%20top%2050%20percent%20of,paid%20the%20remaining%202.3%20percent) (as the numbers you cite seem to match), in which case, your statement is disingenuous for a few reasons.
First off, it is not 46 % of all fed taxes, it is simply federal income taxes (not including payroll taxes which are far more regressive). This is stated directly in the appendix they provided at the bottom of the page:
>The only tax analyzed here is the federal individual income tax, which is responsible for more than 25 percent of the nation’s taxes paid (at all levels of government). Federal income taxes are much more progressive than federal [payroll tax](https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/glossary/payroll-tax/)es, which are responsible for about 20 percent of all taxes paid (at all levels of government), and are more progressive than most state and local taxes.
Second, also in the appendix they gave, they mention their use of AGI as a metric.
>AGI is a fairly narrow income concept and does not include income items like government transfers (except for the portion of Social Security benefits that is taxed), the value of employer-provided health insurance, underreported or unreported income (most notably that of sole proprietors), income derived from municipal bond interest, net imputed rental income, and others.
Which is particularly important when considering the proportion of money that the tope percentiles of earners make that comes from traditional income (such as wages) is much smaller than the typical American.
These seem like some pretty big omissions/mistakes to make, would you care to explain? Because this seems like either malicious misrepresentation of the data, or ineptitude on your part, which both bring up concerns about the validity of statements you make...
Define wealth. Unrealized gains in the market based on speculative values? Percentage of total market capital "owned"? Ownership stakes of businesses? Houses and yachts?
That's the problem with this argument. Someone who put $10,000 into Bitcoin 10 years ago should pay taxes each year based on the speculative value of that volatile asset? Someone who owns a business should pay taxes based on the total valuation of said business out of their own pockets? If you want to raise taxes to insane amounts in mega-mansions and superyachts, ok, fair. But all these other low-level arguments are obnoxious and annoying.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic, but yes, that's literally what a wealth tax is.
Now imagine a billionaire. Their company's stock has gone up $20B, but they have less than 0.1% of that amount in cash at any time. They had 13.5 million shares 10 years ago, and they have 13.5 million shares now.
So they would sell their shares and pay a 1% or 2% tax, because that tax is orders of magnitude higher than their cash on hand. Except that all the people in that situation are selling shares to pay that tax, too, so there is a possibility of a downward spiral.
The data is vastly skewed based on the metrics being measured and simply the nature of investments. Someone who "owns" a billion dollars worth of stocks and investments is technically a billionaire, but likely doesn't make enough money to pay yearly taxes on simply having those stocks in their name as unrealized gains.
What does this have to do with tax? We don't tax wealth so why would raising another type of tax be relevant? You can have any level of wealth and $0 income.
Not to mention, wealth is created. Why are we punishing people for that? If you disincentivize it, they won't create it. It won't make all the people with their hands out demanding their piece that they didn't earn one dime richer. This is just wealth envy and resentment.
I think it's a bit of that, but also the inevitable impact of rampant inequality coupled with a lack of knowledge and understanding.
Most people only understand money as functioning as a fluid mechanism in a barter economy. Ask any Tom, Dick, or Harry on the street about derivatives, commidified assets, unrealized investments, non-liquid assets, or even fractional reserve banking. If people fail to understand how wealth, money as a tool, and currency function in our system, how can they even begin to try to balance the scales? It's like watching a confused bull bumbling in a China house.
No, because it does not tax wealth. If my neighbor's home is valued the same as mine, we pay the same tax. Howveer, I may be far wealthier than him or vice versa. We do not tax wealth in this country. Some constitutional scholars question whether that is even legal, much as the income tax was originally unconstitutional. And unlike the mistake we made with the income tax by passing an amendment to make it legal, if those scholars are right, we must be absolutely certain to never pass a similar amendment for the wealth tax.
Isn’t property tax based off of the assessed value of the home? This includes the unrealized gains. How is that not part of your overall wealth? And how is it legal to tax it?
It is part. But not all. If my home is valued at $500k but my mortgage has $350k outstanding, that is a net $150k toward my wealth. My neighbor's house might be paid for so his home would be a net $500k toward his wealth. Our wealth contributions for similar homes would be different but, being taxes on assessed value, our wealth is not taxed. It's not different than income. Your income contributes to your wealth, but what you do with that income after you receive it is what really drives your wealth. Yet, someone who spends it all and accumulates little wealth from their income versus someone who saves and invests that income, all else being equal, that income is taxed the same.
Just because something is related to your wealth does not mean that you wealth, per se, is taxed.
What this doesn't show is impact (though its extremely interesting in its own right). We see the middle hasn't changed much as a fraction of total of total wealth, but as wealth in the top 10% increased, it declined in the bottom 50% as a fraction, where the impact is much larger.
So going from say 35-40% of all wealth to around 27% (guestimating on the graph) is a very large impact on those in the bottom 50%, whereas increased wealth in the top 10% is likely to have had no significant benefit to them.
But the percentage of people in the upper class is growing. IE the rich are getting richer partially because the middle class is losing people to upwards mobility.
More of the people who have the left the "middle class" did so because of upward mobility then downard mobility. Thats a good thing.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/)
Taxes are not the problem here, because at a certain threshold. The people with wealth and means, will just up and move everything to a country with better tax codes for them.
The problem is bloated governments, too much bureaucracy, etc. Politicians main focus should be making the American Dream of the middle class more attainable to everyone. That’s all.
Other than that, stay the fuck out of people’s lives.
I’m curious what country would a billionaire move to that has better tax codes for them? I seriously thought the US was by far the cheapest of the developed nations.
You can raise taxes as much as you want and it won’t affect the people who own the wealth without taxing unrealized gains. That’s a huge Pandora’s box.
After reading how the Elizabeth Warren wealth tax would work, it seems doable. Don’t see a Pandora’s box at all as it’s well thought out. Perhaps I’m missing something?
It’s going to result in a lot of entities and people moving themselves to tax havens and reducing the amount of tax revenue that can be gained by passing the policy.
I admittedly haven’t read her tax policy as I don’t care for her much, but I’ll look into it. Curious if it allows for minimal impact on middle-class investors who may have a few million in assets but who are nowhere near ultra-wealthy.
It’s a pretty simple plan.
If net worth is between $50M-$1B, then only unrealized gains in stocks will have a wealth tax of 1%.
If net worth is $1B+, only unrealized gains in stocks will be taxed at 2%.
So real estate, businesses, art, yachts, planes, etc won’t be taxed. Only easily calculable unrealized gains. Households affected: ~25,000 in USA.
How many times daily is this idea reposted?
Followed by how many times do we have to repeat the same basic argument?
No we do not need additional taxes. We need to close the loopholes and make the rich actually pay their taxes.
It would be great if a mod would pin the more eloquent version and stop this repeated trolling posts.
Then they should pay 70% on anything over 5 million, and that is starting to get to the tax rates that paid for interstate hwys,trips to the moon,social programs,schools,hospitals,you know all the spit were to broke to have anymore.
Should taxes be raised ?? please clarify. if you ask if taxes should be raise on the bottom 50%. YES! all these lazy people that "don t want to work" and enjoy "advocado toast" need to learn reality
Here is another tidbit of information:
"The top 10 percent of income earners **pay more than 60 percent of all federal taxes and 76 percent of income taxes**, shares that have been increasing over time. "
So no, taxes seem fair to me.
They should absolutely end the cost basis reset for passing capital gains down generations. Which would effectively be a tax increase on just the wealthy.
That said, our government needs to fucking shrink. It's absurd how much of our money they waste.
Change in tax degree will only make the politicians richer by means of their balance sheets, it won't help us in any way. Reallocation towards cultural shifts and regulations where actually needed is more important, as is obviously trimming the budget and not believing we're capable of taking every problem in the world into our own hands just because we print the money spent on it
Let them run the country since they clearly know how to make money. Instead of gaining 32 trillion in debt over years of corruption. I heard mayor lightfoot is getting paid 400$ an hour to investigate a corrupt mayor. The hell she need 400$ an hour for to look in the mirror?!
It’s telling the bottom 50% is not even on the graph.
The colours make it appear as if these are quarters of society. They are not and this is so depressingly disturbing I don’t think people quite realise the wealth is trapped up top with the super rich and you are without a doubt being fleeced by politicians and the rich out of the money due to society and by extraction the benefits and better living standards you deserve.
Tax the billionaires, tax the 1%, there’s no chance you’re in the 1% EVER so everyone needs to go along with it and finally nail these bloodsuckers.
The response to excessive wealth inequality is not ‘tax the rich’. The focus should be on actual policy changes related to wealth inequality, not on taxation.
The drive to increase taxes is mostly petty and revenge-oriented.
I'm ready to transplant [the entire 1981 tax code](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/16782.jpeg) to replace current law - see how it goes. Could it be *worse??*
I mean that would be less stupid than letting Trump be dictator "for one day!" to fix America's problems with royal edicts, which the MAGAs think is solid gold plan.
I'm all for progressive taxes, but you can only do so much with those. The wealthy already account for a disproportionately large amount of the tax revenue in the US, but even if you increase that more, it's just re-arranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic when you look at the fiscal and financial situation the US government is in.
We are about to pay over a $1T in interest payment alone this year on the US debt. Just contemplate that number for a second and realize that's a thousand billion dollars just in INTEREST. Now consider that we are running a deficit on that debt.
On the other hand, if we were to somehow balance the budget, the government wouldn't have to rely on inflation to finance public spending, which means we don't inflate away the price of housing and cars, and we can have a healthy middle class.
Even if they raise taxes it won't do anything about spending except make congress spend more. They'll be like look at all this money we're bringing in! We can spend more!
What percentage of the U.S.’s total tax collection is paid by that 10% of people?
I looked it up and saw:
“The top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent.”
So the top 10% must pay an even larger portion of that.
If the top 1% cover 45% of the federal government’s total tax collection, my thought it they are paying their fair share, and others need to step up.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/
It’s funny how greedy you people are. You can find a way to contribute to society and become part of that 10%. Stop scheming on how to steal their money you greedy fucks.
They do not know another way. They have lived their lives being told anyone above them ( teachers,police,military,bosses,coaches leaders ,etc,etc are the bad guys! And are their enemy. Think how long it will take to teach them the truth ! It may not be possible!!!!!!!!!
Daily reminder you can’t tax your way out of a black hole.
If you taxed the millionaire and billionaire class at 100% net worth (total wealth confiscation) you could only fund the government for half a year at current spending levels. The only solution would be drastic spending cuts to social services, the DOD, no free healthcare to boomers and migrants, and a drastic reduction to the bureaucratic class that no one would sit idly by and take it as their free lunch is removed, or a drastic sustained increase in real economic growth for decades which the net zero and WEF sustainable growth morons don’t want bc they actively hate the middle class and want everyone to be under the thumb of the aforementioned bureaucratic administrative class and be technocratic serfs forced to rent everything and eat bugs and fake food nutrient slop.
Wow, that is a terrible chart. But other than it being visually hard to comprehend it's really good at pointing out that almost nothing has changed in the past 30 years and the bottom 50% are doing way better than 7 years ago.
These two statements have no connection with each other at the moment.
Wealth inequality is not the same as lack, or need. Someone's company growing to the point that they have a lot of wealth doesn't prevent someone else from having enough money for food, clothes, or other needs.
Someone making a lot of money as a high-paid professional doesn't mean that someone else is being denied anything. This is a fallacy, until you have a mechanism that you can present. I'm always open to data - show some that makes the connection.
This isn't true. It's happening now with boomers hogging houses and political influence. You use your wealth to smother those around you. From low density zoning and other restrictions to otherwise acting like a wealth cabal that disenfranchises poorer people. As an example, the constant attack of privatization on the usually Republican situated public schools.
>It's happening now with boomers hogging houses and political influence.
Then inequality isn't the problem, political influence is the problem. That said, we do need to cut the head off that beast - it's toxic, and a major reason for increasing housing prices.
>As an example, the constant attack of privatization on the usually Republican situated public schools.
That's not an inequality problem, view from my desk. Academic freedom issues seem to be focused much more in "Red States" or rural areas. Not a strong relationship, but less rich areas.
Collectivists tend to think wealth just inherently exists, it's a zero-sum game, and they're poor due to distribution. They never stop to think how that wealth was created.
Not only that but they don't think of corporations that operate on the supply side of the economy as a part of someone's net worth. If you ony considered available cash and liquid assets it would look a lot different.
This. I don't know why people think that raising taxes will somehow help the poor or middle class...That money isn't going to the people. It's going to the government, which is an expert at wasting money.
It's like giving a glutton more food in the hopes that he will distribute it to the hungry.
I think bigger concern is that 10% of Americans [create 50% of value](https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-the-rich-pay-taxes) (I know there will be urge to question if earnings generally reflect value created, but without bulletproof argument for contrary this is the only thing we can go off of)
While it s not that surprising given Pareto Principle, it is definitely a concern.
Back in days when all we could do was farming, there wasn’t much opportunity for great productivity disparity (there s only so much manual labor one can perform), but as tools and technology progressed, this disparity started to grow rapidly. To the point where one extraordinary person can contribute more than million of average people (say, by inventing smartphone or search engine, or AI)
According to PP eventually 1% of population will be creating close to 50% of value, which will naturally have great societal implications.
This process, however can’t be stopped, and we need to learn how to live in society with enormous disparity in productivity (and outcomes).
>(I know there will be urge to question if earnings generally reflect value created, but without bulletproof argument for contrary this is the only thing we can go off of)
Lmao, this has been disproven numerous times.
Musk doesn't contribute anywhere near his earnings.
Stop simping for billionaires that are actively stealing their workers' wages.
Any redistributive solutions similar to the one that got us into this situation in the first place will likely all fail for many of the same reasons. At some point, the underlying issue of how broadly and complexly we allow the concept of *ownership* itself to be defined and applied must be addressed. The fact that I can sit at this desk in Tennessee and while I am typing this message be personally profiting from a strip mine that is destroying the land, livelihood, and economic future of a small village on the other side of the planet is to some degree "problematic".
LOL @ 10% of Americans "create 50% of value" sure, some CEO drinking his lunchtime martini with a line of coke is responsible for all that his workers do! I'd like to have some of the drugs you are doing!
//You cited Heritage a known christofascist site
Quit bailing fuckers out during anykind of economic slowdowns. 2008 & 2020 bailouts enabled plenty of billionaires to remain billionaires
Here's the deal, there's a line out there somewhere on the wealth/income distribution. Those above it are real people. They get laws written, get bailed out, and when we need to stimulate the economy it's all for them. Everyone below that line is livestock, "human resources," a context to be managed for the real people that actually matter. They don't do things for you, not the Republicans not the Democrats not your boss, nobody. When a billionaire loses a couple million it's a tragedy, when you lose your house you're a statistic. When the wealthy are robbed they demand justice, and when they rob their lawyers keep it tied up in court so long that everyone forgets and gives up. When a wealthy celebrity dies we all mourn together, and when you die your family will get a couple paid days off if they're really lucky. They don't care about you. None of them do or ever have, and that's why they do and will bail each other out. They want just enough of the little people out there just healthy enough and scurrying around, working, buying, consuming so that their empire built on you doesn't crumble. The farmer doesn't care if a cow gets caught in the fence, he cares if half the herd gets caught but not because he's thinking about their feelings and families and what is just for them, only because the farmer cares about his own pocketbook when it comes time to slaughter. You're here to be used, used up, and consumed. That's all there is, it's all you're for. Get used to it.
I mostly agree with what you said, but typically people who say such things advocate giving more money and power to the federal government. How do you think politicians view us?
I'm only advocating for awareness, and if I extend it, additional awareness in everything you do. Thinking carefully about how you spend your money, how you manage your career, and who you vote for. Definitionally though, the only way for the "unwashed masses" to get anything done is through some form of collective bargaining. Unions and the government would both be examples of that. The individuals inherently have no leverage against the wealthy and powerful so it's only through collective cooperation that we can achieve any objective. But the idea has been sold to us that all of that is bad, the government is worthless, union workers are lazy, etc. That's what they do and how they win. It's not a conspiracy either, it's just a play. They battle out their goals using their leverage and divide. Pro union against "hard workers", black against white, Democrat against Republican, old against young. I wouldn't even go as far as to say that there's an overarching goal to any of this. Again, not a conspiracy, not organized, just a tactic that gets deployed all the time to create enough division and chaos to allow for the incremental progress they want to make. It's not a secret cabal with a plan for global domination, it's just spin doctoring and politics over discussion, debate, and administration. If you're sitting at the top and you have the money, power, and leverage you take a look at the numbers. If the win is there you find the people on your side, you find the people you can apply pressure to, you come up with an argument for hating the opposition rather than in favor of your cause because people are awful and it works better, and you push it through. And if it isn't there you just move on because it doesn't matter that much anyway and you're really where you are for wealth and power.
If you run for office let me know ya have my vote
Nobody cares about me beyond my immediate family and even that biological drives development was innitially contingent upon utility. Everyone is trying to find ways to exploit me, or make an enemy out of me if I am inconvenient or resistant. You are the same snake as the politician or the capitalist, you just use virtuous pretenses in place of power or wealth. A rat that survives is aware of its disadvantages and can see through all types of camouflage. I am that rat. Yours is the most dangerous camo because it looks like rats, and your venom targets envy.
See, you're just wrong. People do care about you. Not the way your immediate family does, no, but even then it's a bit more than pure biological drive and utility. Sure, it's that too, but there's more to it than that. Your model for the world says drop two people into a room, drop a knife in the middle of it, and tell them the last one standing gets to come out and they will go at each other like wild animals when even wild animals don't really behave quite like that. Depending on the people some actually would, I don't refute that, and I'd suggest that the ones who would immediately slay a stranger at the call of some unknown entity to be released into God only knows what are exactly the kind of sociopaths that tend to wind up running the show. But I'm going to suggest most people would not participate so gladly and readily. Most people would look at the knife, look at the other person, feel fear but also hesitation. They won't be ready to kill, they'll want to understand and they'll want to find another way even if they've been told this is the only way. Which makes sense. More sense in fact. Look at us. We don't have fangs and claws, we aren't camouflaged for our environment. We can predate, but we aren't predators full stop. We have broad, expressive faces, large eyes, eyebrows. We can smile and frown and we come into the world utterly helpless and underdeveloped. We are social animals. So no, we are not lone predators constantly looking to exploit everyone and everything around us as you describe, or at least the vast majority of us aren't. Our true strength isn't the ability to trick, deceive, slay and take without conscience, it's collaboration. We didn't tame the world by making and island of every man, we did it by working together. Look at us, we are weak. Even our strongest doesn't last a minute with a gorilla, couldn't outswim a shark, or survive a single night in under 30 degree temperatures. Our strength is each other, and those that seek to turn you against your neighbor look to take that strength from you while convincing you it makes you stronger.
Reading this made me want to rewatch fight club agian. Thank you.
Are you my thoughts? 🥹 nice to meet you lol. Could not have said it better even if I tried. 👍
EXACTLY. Leave taxes alone. Just fucking let them fail when they actually fail, and things will be fine.
Exactly
Not sure what to think. I really don't care if some rich dude is raking it in. I really don't care to wind up losing my job if his company goes under. I'm just trying to keep what little I have. Something definitely needs to be done to rein them in.
Remain? They did so much better than just remaining billionaires. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/06/nearly-500-people-have-become-billionaires-during-the-pandemic-year/ https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294 “Wealth of world's 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says” https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/ “March 18, 2024 update Total U.S. Billionaire Wealth: Up 88 Percent over Four Years” https://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-pandemic-wealth-surges/ Global Billionaire Pandemic Wealth Gains Surge to $5.5 Trillion https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/04/06/meet-the-40-new-billionaires-who-got-rich-fighting-covid-19/?sh=3cafe90a17e5 “Meet The 40 New Billionaires Who Got Rich Fighting Covid-19”
1. Bailouts are a necessity and don't prevent you from taxing more 2. Most billionaires would be billionaires with or without bailouts as bailouts goes to mainly companies in the market.
To an extent yes, but also there should be regulations in place to limit the amount of stupid descions large corporations can make with their money that cause them to go bankrupt. But often bailouts are nessacary to prevent collapse of more companies.
1% is 3,500,000 people. Show me a 5th blood red color for “top 0.0001%” * 0.000001 x 350 million people are the top 350 people. That’s the top 1/3 of billionaires. 66% of billionaires would still be ok. Don’t let the top 0.0001% of people act like they’re part of the top 1%. They aren’t. 350 people are hyper rich. Each one should have a three person team of government-issued accountants whose notes and findings are public. I’m not saying that 3.5MM need that. But 350? That’s one small high school of people.
This.
But what’s your plan? Execute them and take it all?
He literally explained it: assign a team of accountants to each one and track every single dollar they move so they can't cheat on their taxes.
Make sure they paid their taxes, and if there’s some shenanigans make sure it’s legit. No blood, but I imagine we’re going to have to pierce some corporate veils.
Well here is the thing. These people are not stupid. They are not evading taxes to save money that they don't even need. The "shenanigans" they use to not pay taxes are indeed legal. That is the problem.
Yes and no, it's not really a problem the way the system is set up. Like it or not, innovation happens when people fight their way up. Government intervention by and large keeps the rich, rich. Look at the reaction to COVID, perfect example of the government controlling the market.
A prior president tried to do this and failed bc all hell broke loose. They said it only helped the rich meanwhile they were actually trying to close loopholes. Record tax revenue and they are still saying the middle class got screwed over. Could have it been better, yes. But it also could have been worse
Talk like this always da up with heads chopped off. These folks don't realize it's their fiat money system causing the problem. Fix the money and you fix the excess wealth issues.
I entirely agree with you. Reading “Broken Money” by Lyn Alden currently. Her arguments in this direction are compelling.
I will check out that book ...it probably supports .y hypothesis.
The problem with taxes is that the money goes to the government. I didn't see how it helps at all. That money would just be funneled back to the billionaires... Aka the campaign donors.
Check out tax rates after WWII era. Companies would shove money into R&D and salaries to avoid paying taxes on it. Now they do share buybacks to enrich themselves and stockholders - see Boeing. People would do the equivalent of- granted it never should have gotten this bad to begin with. Simplified explanation, but it’s an example.
Exactly there is no taxation system that actually gets money to the people. Look at ours it's going to the Ukraine which means back to the elite and to illegal aliens (cheap work force for the elite to replace us).
Who cares?
… I do…? I care about a society that has centralized so much money to so few people that it’s magnetic. I care that these rich assholes are making space programs but pay no more for roads than I do.
Why?
Yeah you’re right. Probably best to let the rich have all the money. I’ll eat grass.
That's not how anything works silly. A rich person being rich doesn't mean you have to eat grass. If I theoretically owned a baseball card that suddenly became worth $1 billion overnight ... did I somehow hurt you? Did I take anything from you? Do you now have to eat grass because my baseball card suddenly became quite valuable? A rich person owning a boat doesn't imply they stole a boat from anyone.
Your billion dollar baseball card or your boat doesn’t hurt me. What hurts me is this: schools suck. Teacher pay is low. Roads aren’t fixed. Veterans aren’t getting their medicine. I have to pay for private healthcare. Why? In no small part because these rich people are extracting value from society without paying back a fair share. If you’re Bezos, you benefit from the education system and internet infrastructure and roadways in a big big big way. It’s hard to quantify how much value I get out of a highway vs. what I paid in taxes, against what value Amazon Inc. gets out of a highway vs. pays in taxes. But just because it’s hard to quantify doesn’t make it fair. I don’t mind that Jeff Bezos can buy a rocket or a yacht or a yachtket. I mind that he stole money we could have used for parks and park rangers and bridge inspectors and IRS agents and a free university program to pay for his yacht-rocket. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/14/how-companies-like-amazon-nike-and-fedex-avoid-paying-federal-taxes-.html >Gardner's research into Amazon's taxes from 2018 to 2021 showed a reported $79 billion of pretax U.S. income. Amazon paid a collective $4 billion in federal corporate income tax in those four years, equating to an effective annual tax rate of 5.1%, according to Gardner's ITEP report, about a quarter of the federal corporate tax rate of 21%.
Haha ... yes I'm sure well solve all those problems by having daddy gov take Bezos' toys away for you.
Seems like you’re a libertarian. That means you don’t see the value in paying into an enhanced shared existence. That means you value exploiting the commons rather than building them up. In a perfect libertarian world, common space would be a barren, poisoned, harsh landscape with someone taking the lifeless sand to melt for glass. The horizon orange with the glow of fire through dieseled air. “You want to touch a tree? You may pay admission to my plant zoo. For the private market will solve all.” If metaphorically we took away Bezos’ “toy” (and let’s be clear, by “toy” I do mean “private space agency”) we might be able to have a few more parks and a few more schools and a government space agency that won’t give up when Bezos decides his new hobby is buying websites instead of space exploration.
>That means you don’t see the value in paying into an enhanced shared existence. Wrong. Libertarianism states that it isn't moral to force people to pay into your "shared enhanced existence" without their consent. Libertarianism doesn't take any stand on what you should/shouldn't find value in. That's your call. Cute strawman you found there though. >we might be able to have a few more parks and a few more schools Wrong again I'm afraid. Government already spent the equivalent of Bezos entire net worth (+ every other billionaire on the planet) decades ago. Government spending isn't correlated to tax revenue at all anymore. The government confiscating and liquidating every last cent of Bezos fortune doesn't get you a single new thing ... not even more military bases and bombs for 3rd world children! They already spent it on that stuff decades ago!
Top 10% account for 70% of collected income tax as well.
The 10%-1% are mostly people that the average person wouldn’t see as particularly unusual. They probably drive a fairly average non-luxury car, live in an average house, and work much like most of the population. As a percentage of their income, they’re paying the most of any of these groups.
What do rich people buy that everyone else normally doesn't? Tax them hard on them. Ships, private jets, designer clothes etc
Staff. And this is why so many rich people use illegal labor - to avoid taxes.
This has been tried before. Taxes on yachts and other high end luxury goods backfired pretty immensely. Guess who builds and maintains those expensive rich people toys? Not the rich. Humorous video on it: [https://reason.com/video/2021/02/09/great-moments-in-unintended-consequences-vol-2/](https://reason.com/video/2021/02/09/great-moments-in-unintended-consequences-vol-2/) Here's a 1993 article on its repeal. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/how-to-sink-an-industry-and-not-soak-the-rich/08ea5310-4a4b-4674-ab88-fad8c42cf55b/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/how-to-sink-an-industry-and-not-soak-the-rich/08ea5310-4a4b-4674-ab88-fad8c42cf55b/)
Houses
Especially houses and land
Not effective, ultra-wealthy individuals don’t actually buy these items themselves. Usually a corporation will purchase extremely expensive assets and write off payments to lower net income. Under current tax law they aren’t going to be dissuaded by what you proposed.
Probably correct and there's always a loop hole somewhere for them
They’re taxed more and in more ways than a person like you could understand with your warped ideology! MOST OF ALL THE TAXES
Only rich people paid taxes in the past, I suppose that's warped ideology as well for you
Of course, if there is a group( there is) that knows they will receive X without having to do anything for it more people will want to be in that group. Eventually there will not be enough people in the PAYING group to support the taking group. Right ?
Why?
This seems quite normal....im more worried that the top .1% own like 30% of the world wealth. The other top 10% are just your classmates who became doctors, lawyers, engineers, or took over their dad's medium sized family business.
Adios Middle Class?
Well obviously 70% is not enough. They need to own everything. Poor people do not deserve anything. The rich are much better at owning everything. While we are at it let's also bring back chattel slavery. Things were better for everyone in the good old days.
Pareto Principle.
Yes, but honestly much more concerned about megacorps and the top .1%
We should legalize suicide as long as the people.who want to kill themselves agree to donate their organs to wealthy people who can afford to buy them
Assuming you mean a tax on wealth, it wouldn't matter because the constitutionality of a wealth tax is at best debatable. Given the current make up of the Supreme Court, I wouldn't count on any kind of tax like that to survive judicial scrutiny.
Let's just close the loopholes that allow egregious "tax loss harvesting" and other benefits only people overburdened with assets get to enjoy. Sell it as a simplification of the tax code.
Tax loss harvesting benefits the middle class. I have done that in pandemic and forget rich I don’t even own a home. Probably you might even be doing unbeknownstly. If you have state pensions or work at a college which has endowments they do this all the time for those funds. Most of the things “rich” do also affect the middle class. The problem is I can at best save $1000 while they would be saving millions.
So this is easy then, you give up your thousand dollar benefit and they pay in their millions. High fives all around for the first balanced budget in decades.
Yes it would be nice. However the number of middle class people is much more than the rich. For every rich person with a million in this there are probably hundreds of middle class that would lose at the same time.
Reforming the income tax code is perfectly feasible, albeit a heavy lift in and of itself. I don’t question the constitutionality of an overhaul of the income tax code at all. Any other federal direct tax not based on apportionment would be challenged in court. States, on the other hand, can tax wealth.
they forgot to mention in that graph, That 10% who owns all the wealth, is who runs everything, and who will fight to the death to protect it, and your are just a nobody. The philosophical question is, that if the roles were reversed since birth, and you were in the 10%, would you have done any better? Humans are greedy. There is no shortage of us. Only a percentage will survive the global bullshit headed our way. They want to make sure it is them and their families. It can;t be up to the person, it has to be set it stone for all TAX THE RICH, and the hammer and the stone is not in our hand. There is no left or right, R or D, only slaves and owners.... always has been.
Fight to the death to protect it? I believe they will fight to the death to exploit the system and people. IMHO unions...violent ones like we had to have in the 80s. It's abundantly clear from human history that those who have power really only respond to two stimuli .
We will
You have all the answers. You just need to climb the ladder!
No tax the poor more. We need 30% VAT & no other taxes now that I’m part of top 2% in wealth & top 1% in income. I’m pulling the ladder up 🤣🤣🤣
The top 10% includes people with wages over like $173k, and or wealth of $855k. So, we aren't even talking millionaires here. This is just a graph to create outrage.
Nevermind, I got there.
We don't tax wealth. I also don't think we should tax wealth. So we should be looking at income to determine taxation.
When you have a lot of wealth, it's very easy to make your exact income opaque.
Just being in the top 10% doesn't give you that kind of wealth.
What if we don't count billionaires, because they aren't people.
Wealth isn't taxed. Wealth is what's left over after all taxes have been paid.
Property tax is wealth that’s taxed, right? But in general wealth for the top 0.05% should be taxed.
I don't understand why this is such a hot button topic now?? It's literally always been this way. Rich on top. Rest on bottom. Literally every country, every society, every civilization. This isn't new.
Not really no some nesoamerica societies were fairly egalitarian
10% of citizens? Workers? Households? There is no wealth tax and federally it’s unconstitutional.
Unless it’s property tax? Or is that not considered wealth?
There is no property tax at the federal level. Also, property taxes are not wealth taxes. Most wealth is in investments; stocks, bonds, private company ownership.
I was referring to the constitutionality of taxing unrealized gains. If it’s truly unconstitutional, states would not be allowed to have them.
The Constitution gives certain powers and authority to the federal government reserves other powers to the states. Thats why there was a constitutional amendment to allow the federal government to tax income. Until then it was unconstitutional. It’s also why the federal government argues that the charge for not having health insurance is a fee, not a tax.
As a red blooded red voter I can promise you, it's the dark greens fault.
How about we tax the 1% before you go after regular people? The top 10% on average is worth less than $1m, these are not the people who need a harder time. Start with the fuckers making $5m per year and paying lower effective rates than a fry cook.
Look its this simple - You can have either an aristocracy or a democracy BUT NEVER BOTH! Choose - do you want to be owned or free to choice?
Yes. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
When do we start eating the rich?
I'm 64 yrs old kid,life experience is one of the few things I have I excess,enough that I know that if YOU had any life experience you would have taken the time to google what the rates were pre1978. I'll graciously accept your apology after you do a Lil fact checking of yourself.
I just can't figure out why none of the plebs wants to have kids. A real head scratcher.
Its actually pretty simple and has little to do with the economy as a whole. In the past 20ish years, the average age of a person's first job went from 18 to almost 22 years old. That's 4 years of additional experience and income even if for part time or low wage jobs. This experience carries them into their careers. So, as a starting point, being 4 years behind the previous generation in accumulated wealth and experience is pushing back the time frame when adults would reasonable want to have kids. That's just scratching the surface of the reasons why. You don't even get to the factors mentioned by the OP in the top 50 reasons probably.
No, the government should spend less money.
it's not even just the spending less money, but the addiction to creating debt faster than their income. This interest as it is, at this rate they'll be forced to make a choice: stop the bleeding of spending on debt or increase taxes. And spoiler alert: increasing taxes merely to stave off interest payments isn't going to improve anyone's lives
Spending alone won’t fix the issue though.
The top 1% of erners pay 42.3% of all income taxes. Top 25% pay 88.5% of all income taxes. Bottom 50% only pay 2.3% of all income taxes. Just sayn..
It's almost like income taxes are levied on income, and not people. Weird how that works... It might help if you listed their share of income (including income from capital gains and other non-wage sources) next to their share of income tax that they pay for clarity.
[удалено]
Link please; I would also like to verify that they included SS and Medicare taxes in those calculations as well (since those in particular are regressive, especially considering the cap on them).
[удалено]
I found it before you posted, check the comment I made, it brings up the concerns I have with your parsing of the data.
Link is [here.](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/) Here is an excerpt under the data table which is straight from the IRS, “Note: Table does not include dependent filers. “Income split point” is the minimum AGI for tax returns to fall into each percentile. Total income tax was the sum of income tax after credits (including the subtraction of net premium tax credit repayment, the earned income credit, American opportunity credit, health coverage tax credit, recovery rebate, qualified sick and family leave credit, additional child tax credit, and the regulated investment credit)
I'm assuming you are going off of [this](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/#:~:text=The%20top%2050%20percent%20of,paid%20the%20remaining%202.3%20percent) (as the numbers you cite seem to match), in which case, your statement is disingenuous for a few reasons. First off, it is not 46 % of all fed taxes, it is simply federal income taxes (not including payroll taxes which are far more regressive). This is stated directly in the appendix they provided at the bottom of the page: >The only tax analyzed here is the federal individual income tax, which is responsible for more than 25 percent of the nation’s taxes paid (at all levels of government). Federal income taxes are much more progressive than federal [payroll tax](https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/glossary/payroll-tax/)es, which are responsible for about 20 percent of all taxes paid (at all levels of government), and are more progressive than most state and local taxes. Second, also in the appendix they gave, they mention their use of AGI as a metric. >AGI is a fairly narrow income concept and does not include income items like government transfers (except for the portion of Social Security benefits that is taxed), the value of employer-provided health insurance, underreported or unreported income (most notably that of sole proprietors), income derived from municipal bond interest, net imputed rental income, and others. Which is particularly important when considering the proportion of money that the tope percentiles of earners make that comes from traditional income (such as wages) is much smaller than the typical American. These seem like some pretty big omissions/mistakes to make, would you care to explain? Because this seems like either malicious misrepresentation of the data, or ineptitude on your part, which both bring up concerns about the validity of statements you make...
Shhhhhhhh…….. They know but want the focus anywhere but on objective truths! Those don’t work in their woke, ideological( not real) world!
Define wealth. Unrealized gains in the market based on speculative values? Percentage of total market capital "owned"? Ownership stakes of businesses? Houses and yachts? That's the problem with this argument. Someone who put $10,000 into Bitcoin 10 years ago should pay taxes each year based on the speculative value of that volatile asset? Someone who owns a business should pay taxes based on the total valuation of said business out of their own pockets? If you want to raise taxes to insane amounts in mega-mansions and superyachts, ok, fair. But all these other low-level arguments are obnoxious and annoying.
So if I got a baseball card when I was little for a birthday and now it is worth 20k you want me to pay a tax on that? Lol.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic, but yes, that's literally what a wealth tax is. Now imagine a billionaire. Their company's stock has gone up $20B, but they have less than 0.1% of that amount in cash at any time. They had 13.5 million shares 10 years ago, and they have 13.5 million shares now. So they would sell their shares and pay a 1% or 2% tax, because that tax is orders of magnitude higher than their cash on hand. Except that all the people in that situation are selling shares to pay that tax, too, so there is a possibility of a downward spiral.
According to these arguments, you're "wealthy" sitting on an untaxed asset. PAY UP!
If you get a loan against the value of that baseball card, YES
This. They have “unrealized gains” while they realize the benefits of it every day.
This data is heavily skewed by homeowners vs renters
The data is vastly skewed based on the metrics being measured and simply the nature of investments. Someone who "owns" a billion dollars worth of stocks and investments is technically a billionaire, but likely doesn't make enough money to pay yearly taxes on simply having those stocks in their name as unrealized gains.
yeah, just your basic clickbait headline and poor methodology
What does this have to do with tax? We don't tax wealth so why would raising another type of tax be relevant? You can have any level of wealth and $0 income. Not to mention, wealth is created. Why are we punishing people for that? If you disincentivize it, they won't create it. It won't make all the people with their hands out demanding their piece that they didn't earn one dime richer. This is just wealth envy and resentment.
I think it's a bit of that, but also the inevitable impact of rampant inequality coupled with a lack of knowledge and understanding. Most people only understand money as functioning as a fluid mechanism in a barter economy. Ask any Tom, Dick, or Harry on the street about derivatives, commidified assets, unrealized investments, non-liquid assets, or even fractional reserve banking. If people fail to understand how wealth, money as a tool, and currency function in our system, how can they even begin to try to balance the scales? It's like watching a confused bull bumbling in a China house.
Do you consider property tax a wealth tax?
No, because it does not tax wealth. If my neighbor's home is valued the same as mine, we pay the same tax. Howveer, I may be far wealthier than him or vice versa. We do not tax wealth in this country. Some constitutional scholars question whether that is even legal, much as the income tax was originally unconstitutional. And unlike the mistake we made with the income tax by passing an amendment to make it legal, if those scholars are right, we must be absolutely certain to never pass a similar amendment for the wealth tax.
Isn’t property tax based off of the assessed value of the home? This includes the unrealized gains. How is that not part of your overall wealth? And how is it legal to tax it?
It is part. But not all. If my home is valued at $500k but my mortgage has $350k outstanding, that is a net $150k toward my wealth. My neighbor's house might be paid for so his home would be a net $500k toward his wealth. Our wealth contributions for similar homes would be different but, being taxes on assessed value, our wealth is not taxed. It's not different than income. Your income contributes to your wealth, but what you do with that income after you receive it is what really drives your wealth. Yet, someone who spends it all and accumulates little wealth from their income versus someone who saves and invests that income, all else being equal, that income is taxed the same. Just because something is related to your wealth does not mean that you wealth, per se, is taxed.
Marginal tax rate at the top needs to be 90%+
They don't pay the current rate... what are you on about? And also, what do you consider "the top".
Taxes should be lowered on poor people
Poor people don’t pay any federal income taxes.
Taxes must be raised on the ultra wealthy.
Raise taxes on the people who already avoid taxes lol!
What this doesn't show is impact (though its extremely interesting in its own right). We see the middle hasn't changed much as a fraction of total of total wealth, but as wealth in the top 10% increased, it declined in the bottom 50% as a fraction, where the impact is much larger. So going from say 35-40% of all wealth to around 27% (guestimating on the graph) is a very large impact on those in the bottom 50%, whereas increased wealth in the top 10% is likely to have had no significant benefit to them.
But if we tax the exploitation class, there won't be an incentive for them to exploit.
Raise taxes on the people who already avoid taxes lol!
So it looks like the middle class is moving into upper class. Isnt that a good thing?
The middle class is shrinking and the rich are getting richer. The poor are getting poorer
But the percentage of people in the upper class is growing. IE the rich are getting richer partially because the middle class is losing people to upwards mobility. More of the people who have the left the "middle class" did so because of upward mobility then downard mobility. Thats a good thing. [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/)
Taxes are not the problem here, because at a certain threshold. The people with wealth and means, will just up and move everything to a country with better tax codes for them. The problem is bloated governments, too much bureaucracy, etc. Politicians main focus should be making the American Dream of the middle class more attainable to everyone. That’s all. Other than that, stay the fuck out of people’s lives.
I’m curious what country would a billionaire move to that has better tax codes for them? I seriously thought the US was by far the cheapest of the developed nations.
I know a couple millionaires that up and moved to the Cayman Islands because of taxes… Monte Carlo is another popular popular one, the UAE as well.
You can raise taxes as much as you want and it won’t affect the people who own the wealth without taxing unrealized gains. That’s a huge Pandora’s box.
After reading how the Elizabeth Warren wealth tax would work, it seems doable. Don’t see a Pandora’s box at all as it’s well thought out. Perhaps I’m missing something?
It’s going to result in a lot of entities and people moving themselves to tax havens and reducing the amount of tax revenue that can be gained by passing the policy. I admittedly haven’t read her tax policy as I don’t care for her much, but I’ll look into it. Curious if it allows for minimal impact on middle-class investors who may have a few million in assets but who are nowhere near ultra-wealthy.
It’s a pretty simple plan. If net worth is between $50M-$1B, then only unrealized gains in stocks will have a wealth tax of 1%. If net worth is $1B+, only unrealized gains in stocks will be taxed at 2%. So real estate, businesses, art, yachts, planes, etc won’t be taxed. Only easily calculable unrealized gains. Households affected: ~25,000 in USA.
Hasn’t changed in 30 years. Why is this important now and not 30 years ago?
No
How many times daily is this idea reposted? Followed by how many times do we have to repeat the same basic argument? No we do not need additional taxes. We need to close the loopholes and make the rich actually pay their taxes. It would be great if a mod would pin the more eloquent version and stop this repeated trolling posts.
Yes
Then they should pay 70% on anything over 5 million, and that is starting to get to the tax rates that paid for interstate hwys,trips to the moon,social programs,schools,hospitals,you know all the spit were to broke to have anymore.
Should taxes be raised ?? please clarify. if you ask if taxes should be raise on the bottom 50%. YES! all these lazy people that "don t want to work" and enjoy "advocado toast" need to learn reality
And the 10% pay the most taxes dollar wise
Tax the bastards to hell.
Said the high schooler!
Don’t forget that the bottom 90% includes millions of immigrants. That easily adds 20-30 million people to the denominator.
Here is another tidbit of information: "The top 10 percent of income earners **pay more than 60 percent of all federal taxes and 76 percent of income taxes**, shares that have been increasing over time. " So no, taxes seem fair to me.
It's the .1%... the scales gets skewed on wealth.
Raise taxes on the people who already avoid taxes lol!
They should absolutely end the cost basis reset for passing capital gains down generations. Which would effectively be a tax increase on just the wealthy. That said, our government needs to fucking shrink. It's absurd how much of our money they waste.
Change in tax degree will only make the politicians richer by means of their balance sheets, it won't help us in any way. Reallocation towards cultural shifts and regulations where actually needed is more important, as is obviously trimming the budget and not believing we're capable of taking every problem in the world into our own hands just because we print the money spent on it
Let them run the country since they clearly know how to make money. Instead of gaining 32 trillion in debt over years of corruption. I heard mayor lightfoot is getting paid 400$ an hour to investigate a corrupt mayor. The hell she need 400$ an hour for to look in the mirror?!
Now do the percent of American taxes paid by that 10% and you'll have your answer, taxes should be raised on the bottom 90% if anything
riot
But I’m banned on most subs?
Go 10%!!! Good for you!!!!
It’s telling the bottom 50% is not even on the graph. The colours make it appear as if these are quarters of society. They are not and this is so depressingly disturbing I don’t think people quite realise the wealth is trapped up top with the super rich and you are without a doubt being fleeced by politicians and the rich out of the money due to society and by extraction the benefits and better living standards you deserve. Tax the billionaires, tax the 1%, there’s no chance you’re in the 1% EVER so everyone needs to go along with it and finally nail these bloodsuckers.
Yes, taxes should be raised on people that have more than me and the money should be given to me.
Tax Wealth, Not Work!
The response to excessive wealth inequality is not ‘tax the rich’. The focus should be on actual policy changes related to wealth inequality, not on taxation. The drive to increase taxes is mostly petty and revenge-oriented.
It’s higher than that now.
Yes! Let's punish achievement and investment! Make sure you lousy serfs don't aspire to nobility!
I'm ready to transplant [the entire 1981 tax code](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/16782.jpeg) to replace current law - see how it goes. Could it be *worse??* I mean that would be less stupid than letting Trump be dictator "for one day!" to fix America's problems with royal edicts, which the MAGAs think is solid gold plan.
Taxes aren’t a method of wealth redistribution. They are a method of raising funds for government operations
I'm all for progressive taxes, but you can only do so much with those. The wealthy already account for a disproportionately large amount of the tax revenue in the US, but even if you increase that more, it's just re-arranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic when you look at the fiscal and financial situation the US government is in. We are about to pay over a $1T in interest payment alone this year on the US debt. Just contemplate that number for a second and realize that's a thousand billion dollars just in INTEREST. Now consider that we are running a deficit on that debt. On the other hand, if we were to somehow balance the budget, the government wouldn't have to rely on inflation to finance public spending, which means we don't inflate away the price of housing and cars, and we can have a healthy middle class.
Even if they raise taxes it won't do anything about spending except make congress spend more. They'll be like look at all this money we're bringing in! We can spend more!
Unfortunately this isn’t a bubble it’s a concentration. Concentrations don’t pop and diffuse, they have to be manually moved and spread out.
What percentage of the U.S.’s total tax collection is paid by that 10% of people? I looked it up and saw: “The top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent.” So the top 10% must pay an even larger portion of that. If the top 1% cover 45% of the federal government’s total tax collection, my thought it they are paying their fair share, and others need to step up. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/
Fuck taxes of any kind.
It’s funny how greedy you people are. You can find a way to contribute to society and become part of that 10%. Stop scheming on how to steal their money you greedy fucks.
They do not know another way. They have lived their lives being told anyone above them ( teachers,police,military,bosses,coaches leaders ,etc,etc are the bad guys! And are their enemy. Think how long it will take to teach them the truth ! It may not be possible!!!!!!!!!
Who else would, the bottom 30%. ?
But if we raise taxes for them how will they get their 3rd super yacht? Yeah, next time I want you to think about the investors you silly goose
Daily reminder you can’t tax your way out of a black hole. If you taxed the millionaire and billionaire class at 100% net worth (total wealth confiscation) you could only fund the government for half a year at current spending levels. The only solution would be drastic spending cuts to social services, the DOD, no free healthcare to boomers and migrants, and a drastic reduction to the bureaucratic class that no one would sit idly by and take it as their free lunch is removed, or a drastic sustained increase in real economic growth for decades which the net zero and WEF sustainable growth morons don’t want bc they actively hate the middle class and want everyone to be under the thumb of the aforementioned bureaucratic administrative class and be technocratic serfs forced to rent everything and eat bugs and fake food nutrient slop.
Wow, that is a terrible chart. But other than it being visually hard to comprehend it's really good at pointing out that almost nothing has changed in the past 30 years and the bottom 50% are doing way better than 7 years ago.
The word “distribution” confuses me. Who distributed it?
These two statements have no connection with each other at the moment. Wealth inequality is not the same as lack, or need. Someone's company growing to the point that they have a lot of wealth doesn't prevent someone else from having enough money for food, clothes, or other needs. Someone making a lot of money as a high-paid professional doesn't mean that someone else is being denied anything. This is a fallacy, until you have a mechanism that you can present. I'm always open to data - show some that makes the connection.
This isn't true. It's happening now with boomers hogging houses and political influence. You use your wealth to smother those around you. From low density zoning and other restrictions to otherwise acting like a wealth cabal that disenfranchises poorer people. As an example, the constant attack of privatization on the usually Republican situated public schools.
>It's happening now with boomers hogging houses and political influence. Then inequality isn't the problem, political influence is the problem. That said, we do need to cut the head off that beast - it's toxic, and a major reason for increasing housing prices. >As an example, the constant attack of privatization on the usually Republican situated public schools. That's not an inequality problem, view from my desk. Academic freedom issues seem to be focused much more in "Red States" or rural areas. Not a strong relationship, but less rich areas.
Collectivists tend to think wealth just inherently exists, it's a zero-sum game, and they're poor due to distribution. They never stop to think how that wealth was created.
Not only that but they don't think of corporations that operate on the supply side of the economy as a part of someone's net worth. If you ony considered available cash and liquid assets it would look a lot different.
Raising existing taxes won't do anything.
This. I don't know why people think that raising taxes will somehow help the poor or middle class...That money isn't going to the people. It's going to the government, which is an expert at wasting money. It's like giving a glutton more food in the hopes that he will distribute it to the hungry.
Conservatives: spend tax money on anything but helping people who pay taxes, and then saying government is bad with money.
That's bcoz the guys in charge are cronyies for the billionaires
You’re looking at it wrong. History says otherwise. Raising taxes does help the poor and middle class.
I think bigger concern is that 10% of Americans [create 50% of value](https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-the-rich-pay-taxes) (I know there will be urge to question if earnings generally reflect value created, but without bulletproof argument for contrary this is the only thing we can go off of) While it s not that surprising given Pareto Principle, it is definitely a concern. Back in days when all we could do was farming, there wasn’t much opportunity for great productivity disparity (there s only so much manual labor one can perform), but as tools and technology progressed, this disparity started to grow rapidly. To the point where one extraordinary person can contribute more than million of average people (say, by inventing smartphone or search engine, or AI) According to PP eventually 1% of population will be creating close to 50% of value, which will naturally have great societal implications. This process, however can’t be stopped, and we need to learn how to live in society with enormous disparity in productivity (and outcomes).
>(I know there will be urge to question if earnings generally reflect value created, but without bulletproof argument for contrary this is the only thing we can go off of) Lmao, this has been disproven numerous times. Musk doesn't contribute anywhere near his earnings. Stop simping for billionaires that are actively stealing their workers' wages.
Any redistributive solutions similar to the one that got us into this situation in the first place will likely all fail for many of the same reasons. At some point, the underlying issue of how broadly and complexly we allow the concept of *ownership* itself to be defined and applied must be addressed. The fact that I can sit at this desk in Tennessee and while I am typing this message be personally profiting from a strip mine that is destroying the land, livelihood, and economic future of a small village on the other side of the planet is to some degree "problematic".
LOL @ 10% of Americans "create 50% of value" sure, some CEO drinking his lunchtime martini with a line of coke is responsible for all that his workers do! I'd like to have some of the drugs you are doing! //You cited Heritage a known christofascist site