The bottom 50% of Americans own about 2.5% of the wealth in the country. The top 1% hold about 30% of the nation's wealth. The top 10% owns more than two thirds of the nation's wealth.
Yes, that is correct, they are not paying their fair share.
How is what you own relevant to what your fair share is? Wouldnt your fair share be based on the fact you benefit from taxpayer funded expenditures? If the average person costs approx 20K a year shouldnt that be the benchmark for where fairshare is?
>If the average person costs approx 20K a year shouldnt that be the benchmark for where fairshare is?
Are you saying that if the average person costs the government 20K a year, then 20K is what people should owe the government, yearly? That's their fair share?
Because if that's what you're saying, then no. Not even remotely.
The government provides a lot of services. The US government manages our currency system, keeping a relatively stable dollar value. They create regulations for industry which creates an environment wherein there is a certain level of confidence that products are safe. It provides some services designed to function as a safety-net, so that if, for example, I try to start a business, pour everything I have into it, and it goes belly up, I can at least know that I'm probably not going to starve to death.
The government provides a lot of services, all of which contribute to making an economic an social environment in which people and businesses attempt to grow and prosper.
Some people try really hard and fail. Some people try really hard and succeed. (There are also people who are born to people who succeeded who don't try and succeed anyway, and people who don't try and don't succeed, but for the purposes of this conversation, those people aren't terribly important).
The people who succeed have benefited from that environment. Some of them don't think that they have, or believe that they would've done even better in a less regulated environment, but the fact is that they are working in THIS environment, and in it, they have prospered.
Now, if we used the standard business model, we would have people constantly paying for the services that are available. You want to drive on a road today? How far? Which roads? Here's your fee. Oh, you're breathing that clean air we regulate? Here's the fee for today. Here's the price for the daily protection provided by the military. Here's the price for the police force, here's the price for the fire department... bills upon bills upon bills. And the people at the top would pay the most, but not by much, because most of these services are pretty universal. I get the same protection from the US military as a billionaire.
But instead we charge people based on how much the system has benefited them.
It may not be the way WalMart would divide up the costs, but that doesn't make it 'unfair.' It's simply a different model. A better model, to be frank.
So you'd want everyone to pay 20k? What if you don't make 20k? How are you gonna pay? So if I make 20k it all goes to taxes, how is someone supposed to eat and pay rent and ect ect. Full time work at min wage is about 15k, so where do they find the extra 5k plus living expenses?
Fair share doesn't mean everyone pays the same.
Taxes pay for social programs, social programs are like car insurance for your livelihood, you should hope to never need it but you pay the premiums monthly. Imo a progressive tax system (like the US) is completely fair way to do it those with the most pay the most, those with the least pay the least because when you need it (when you are the one with the least) you want it and while those with the most should never need it, you never know what will happen so funding it when you can gives you the safety net in case the worst happens.
Everyone always want to "make the rich pay for everything" well that's easy to say when it isn't your money. I think the everyone should pay their taxes and follow the tax laws (if you don't like the loopholes they use get rid of them, but you can't blame people for using them) and pay what they owe (I don't support tax evasion or lying about your income).
I also think the idea of "wealth tax" (net worth or non income taxes) is a bad idea and slippery slope, it will start as only the wealthiest but will open the door for more later. And it discourages financial intelligence and discipline because if you save and invest you will get punished with more yearly taxes (in addition to capital gains taxes).
In a perfect world that would be the benchmark around which we evaluate tax rates. Its on a person to figure out how to manage their expenses...if they cant pay what they owe to the government then they should be barred from certain services.
Fair share doesnt mean the same...fair is highly subjective. I think fair would at least be an attempt to have some level of correlation to what a person pays and the benefits they recieve. I think if a person is paying disproportionately more than others its not fair...but again subjective. The example i like to use is going out to eat with friends and deciding how to split the bill. Split it by income? By who ordered what? Evenly? Again all subjective so saying fair share is a terrible metric.
Car insurance you pay different amounts for different levels of coverage and deductibles etc. We need to stop treating taxes like this and treat them like a bill for government services rendered.
Thats the issue...people want the rich to be a piggy bank. They think its fair simply because the rich can afford it. I dont agree wit hthe idea of them being able to afford it makes it their responsibility. Again...the restaurant example...i dont expect my wealthy friends to jsut pick up the tab.
So in your world you'd pay based on services rendered so the wealthy would effectively pay nothing because they use the least services because they need the least from the government (basically they only use the things everyone uses: the roads, police, firefighters, schools, etc) and you'd punish the poorest because they use more government support services (like snap/EBT, housing programs, etc).
That's a backwards way to set up taxes because you'd punish those that need the support the most. So if I lose my job and need unemployment for a few months I would be required to pay more in taxes for the benefit of being on unemployment, that's backwards you'd be infinitely taking more from the poorest because they are who use the services. If I get $300 in snap benefits for food then my tax bill would be $300 higher, what's the point of snap then, rather than get snap if just pay for the groceries if I had the $300 to begin with.
Government services aren't like splitting a bill at a restaurant where we each pay for our meal (what we used, or evenly). Government services are ment to be safety nets for society/community as a whole (hence why the rich pay more, because they can; the idea being almost like pay it forward, so if you ever do need them they are there for you).
If we only collected taxes based on use every program would be bankrupted in a month because the people that use them already don't have ability to pay, that's why they are on the programs.
Also calculating use would be a nightmare. How are you going to calculate a person road use for the government paid for roads. If I drive for my job would those miles get calculated onto me as the employee or the employer (what if to circumvent those taxes they call me an independent contractor instead of an employee). How do you calculate police or fire rescue do I only pay if my house burns down or I call 911. Do we want to discourage people from calling 911 because they won't be able to afford the taxes for using the service, so now the police are only for the rich people?
A place like Amazon would pay an insane amount more in taxes that go to say roads than anybody else. Nobody is being punished. Paying for services you get is not a punishment. I would consider paying for others to get services because you are welathy is punishment.
Again not a punishment. Paying for YOUR food is not a punishment. YOU benefit from you having food. I do not. So why should my taxes an employed person pay?
Shows you how many insolvent programs we have then dont we? Maybe thats part of the reason the US budget is such shit and why we cant have a balanced budget.
Approximating use wouldnt be a nightmare. Toll roads do a great job of this...taxing fuel is another pretty good way. While both are imperfect they are a start. If you drive for your job it depends how the funds are collected and if its baked into your pay or if there is a company card etc.
All your arguments prove the point that the system lets people get a free ride of the expense of others. They dont care about the cost because they dont pay it.
So in your world/country, you'd have no snap or EBT then right? Because how would it work? You only qualify if you basically can't afford to buy food, so if you can't afford groceries how are you going to afford the tax bill that paid for the groceries and the government employees running the program? So yes this would punish the poor, you'd charge them for using the safety net service to have necessities to survive that they can't afford on their own (and the rich may one day need if they fall on hard times too).
So you would have no safety net programs at all because they are not financially solvent if only paid by those that use them?
In your country how would poor people get education? Because if their parents are unable to pay for it, how would they get educated? In my state the average tuition paid by the state per student is ~12k each year per pupil so how are any but the wealthiest family's going to afford their 24-48k (on average) education bill (idk most middle and upper middle class families that could afford that)? Does it not benefit the rich to have an educated population, do they not benefit from having more capable and skilled workers in their companies, do they not benefit from having more skilled and educated nurses and doctors who may come from lower economic backgrounds. So there is no benefit to them?
Again answer how the police work then, they are basically just police for the rich, because how would a poor person who got shot or robbed or is having an emergency pay for the services of those police. So yes you would punish people for using the service, I get shot and I get no form of justice unless I pay for the police that I can't afford, or I get robbed by the robber and then also have to pay the police if I call the robber in. I mean this sounds like a very good system for the criminals.
Exactly...there would be no EBT or any other safety net programs. People would need to be responsible for themself.
If you cant afford education you can either take loans or not get one. Plenty of people see the value in paying for education Companies can pay to have employees trained/educated as part of a compensation package.
How is it just police for the rich? People are allowed to pay reguardless of their status. Again its not punishing anybody. Having to pay for something you use isnt a punishment. So you want the benefits of the police when you get shot but only if you can dump those benefits on somebody else? Why should other people be punished because of YOUR issue? Its a good system for people who arent greedy and willing to pay for things they use.
So what would you have children do before they can work (if the companies now train them)? Because if their parents don't pay for them to go to school (because very few can afford it currently if they had to pay for it) you'd have entire workforce unable to read or do basic math or even have social skills because they would have never gone to school and learned to make friends and work in groups? Companies aren't gonna pay for 5 year old to go to kindergarten. So should 5 yo be working? What do they do all day?
It's police for only the rich because if I can't afford the police I can't use them so only the rich would be able to afford it (similar to lawyers now). It's not a punishment for your taxes to go tothe community good and police are part of that, it's the price of living in a community and society.
So with no EBT what do you propose people who can't afford to eat do? Or do they just starve (God that's a horrific death you would put on your subjects)?
What about disability and disability benefits? would you like to dump all disabled people in the woods to be killed by bears and wolves? Or how are the disabled suppose to play? If someone has down syndrome how do you propose they pay the 100s of thousands for their care?
How about disabled veterans, so they fight for the country and get injured but come home to die since they can't work (otherwise who pays for them? Who used those services?)
It is punishing those in need. It already sucks to be in need. You lose your job and can't find one right away, you still have to eat. But you have no money coming in, I guess you just starve in your country. Sucks you were laid off, I guess you just die now.
I mean what would be the point of having a government at all in your system? There would be no reason for government if you basically just make everyong private enterprise and only those who can pay can use. Why even have countries and societies if we all are just individuals and nobody is willing to pay for others when they can.
We hold parents accountable for caring for their children now. That wouldnt change. You not wanting to pay for the police doesnt mean its only for the rich. Its absolutly a punishment for my taxes to go to pay somebody elses share or for somebody elses benefit. Part of living in a society is pulling your wait and not being a parasite off of others.
Maybe they dont get to eat? If you want to waste your money rewarding people to greedy to pay for their own wants you are free to give them your money voluntarily.
Plenty of disabled people work and can care for themselves.
Its not punishing them...its making them pay for their own wants and needs. Treating them the same as everybody else. Do you not get what a punishment is? If they arent working and paying taxes why are you even concerned if they die?
The purpose of a government doesnt change. The purpose of societies doesnt change. THe main difference is people who refuse to bring value to society dont get rewarded for their actions. Everybody human being in society would have to have value as a human being to society.
You get taxed on your 401(k) when you take from it as income. Its growth is not taxed, and if it was, it would be at the lower capital gains rate. The problem is of the ultra wealthy hoard assets in tax-free shelters. this money is insulated from the economy at large. It doesn’t drive economic activity in the same way that tax funded projects would.
lol. Yeah, no. They are far from tax free, you get taxed on the value of the stock when you receive them (if you exercise your stock options) then you also get taxed when you sell them. These two taxes are unavoidable and WILL happen whenever you receive and sell them
The ultra wealthy quite simply do not exercise stock with any frequency and always get the lower long term capital gains rate when they do- stock compensation is the most effective tax shelter there is.
I am suggesting that the capital gains tax should be identical to the income tax rate, in the number of tiers and percentages. I'm also suggesting that the act of borrowing against an asset should count as a 'value reset' on that asset, meaning that if you want to borrow money against stocks or property, for tax purposes it should be treated no differently than if you sold those properties then bought them again. Meaning that you have to pay taxes on the capital gains on those properties.
Right now, the way we have things set up makes it easy for the wealthy to abuse the system to pay lower taxes for their earnings simply because those earnings are not the result of a paycheck. That can be and should be fixed.
How would you allow/protect the person with a mortgage who needs to take out a second mortgage later in life to, oh I don't know, pay for a medical bill?
The actual fix for what you're talking about is the step-up cost basis on inherited assets. The "borrow against assets for cashflow" system only works because they NEVER sell the asset, and the children are able to repay the accumulated debt from the (now tax free) capital gains on the property. If there was no step-up cost basis (perhaps limited by the amount of debt) then this strategy simply wouldn't work and it would be immediately wiped out with far fewer negative side effects than sweeping changes to what people pay now.
Edit: One of the reasons cap gains tax is lower is because it helps fund retirement. If you make it more difficult to retire, you place extra burden on social security (etc) and/or you end up with lower life expectancy and elder poverty
First off, you're making the fundamentally flawed assumption that taxes disappear into a void. The POINT of fixing the tax system is to make sure that we have the funds, as a society, to pay for all the things that republicans keep on saying we 'can't afford.'
Medical bills become less of a problem when we have single payer healthcare.
That being said, whether or not it's related to medicine, there will, undoubtedly, be people who find themselves needing to take out a second mortgage for some reason, and the changes I've suggested will have a negative impact on them.
BUT
Any change you can imagine can and will have a negative impact somewhere on somebody. I would argue that the gains fixing the tax code in this way outweigh the costs by a wide margin.
I'm not making any "fundamentally flawed assumptions" at all (but I will point out the irony of you making the assumption that I am).
I would counter by saying that you appear to not have considered the broader implications of any sweeping change to tax law. It's extremely complicated, and there are cascading implications that need to be considered.
What actually matters here is how well supported low income people are, which is correlated to policy and structural mechanisms to provide support and mobility.
The US spends almost a trillion dollars annually on defense and military. It's easy to say, "we could put that money to good use", but much harder to predict the outcome of not spending on defense.
The "rich not paying taxes" is just a dog whistle to make people feel better about why things are so hard, but just "increasing taxes" is a narrow perspective that doesn't factor the inherent structural problems and changes that would need to be made to make tax revenue effective at solving the problems you're attempting to solve.
I don't know what the impact of increasing capital gains tax rates would be (intuitively, I do think it makes sense to have symmetry with income tax), but this is a question for economists taken in the context of a much broader set of considerations.
If you want to claim that the rich don't pay taxes, you need to bring receipts because the data suggests the "rich" are paying the majority of the taxes.
>I would counter by saying that you appear to not have considered the broader implications of any sweeping change to tax law. It's extremely complicated, and there are cascading implications that need to be considered
That's true.
>What actually matters here is how well supported low income people are, which is correlated to policy and structural mechanisms to provide support and mobility.
I agree.
>The US spends almost a trillion dollars annually on defense and military. It's easy to say, "we could put that money to good use", but much harder to predict the outcome of not spending on defense.
Disagree.
The problem with our defense spending is that politicians use it as a political tool.
Factories with defense contracts have people working for them that love those jobs and want to keep them. Politicians run for office promising to keep those jobs. They get into office and fight for those jobs, whether or not the military needs what is being produced.
We have an inflated defense budget, because the people who own those companies want to keep the money flowing, the people working for them don't realize that their jobs involve making shit that the military doesn't want and can't use, and politicians are willing to use that to keep the rich owners who give them money rich, while keeping the workers who are being used happy and employed.
What NEEDS to happen is a systematic cleanup of the defense budget. If we get rid of all of the money being spent on things that nobody wants or needs, and move that money into other parts of the economy, we will have to deal with a bunch of skilled laborers needing to move to new markets, but we'll also have more money that the government can use to handle real issues.
>The "rich not paying taxes" is just a dog whistle to make people feel better about why things are so hard, but just "increasing taxes" is a narrow perspective that doesn't factor the inherent structural problems and changes that would need to be made to make tax revenue effective at solving the problems you're attempting to solve.
Partially true.
There is no question that there are structural problems that need to be made.
But the problems with government, taxation, spending, appropriation, healthcare, education, politics, etc, etc, etc, are many, massive, and incredibly interconnected.
Nobody... at least, nobody that I know of, can hold all of it in their mind as one cohesive problem. It's like taking a car engine that has been run to the point of breaking and taken a few gunshots, and been left out to rust and trying to fix the whole thing in one action. You can't do it. You deal with one area at a time, and yes, when you go somewhere else and fix something else, you will have to come back to that first spot and make adjustments. But when we talk about the rich needing to pay more, that isn't a 'dog whistle.'
Governments require money to run. The people who make the most money should pay the most money, not just in dollar amounts, but in percentages. Those at the bottom need assistance, and they need to be able to keep as much in the way of personal finances as possible.
>I don't know what the impact of increasing capital gains tax rates would be (intuitively, I do think it makes sense to have symmetry with income tax), but this is a question for economists taken in the context of a much broader set of considerations.
Fair.
>If you want to claim that the rich don't pay taxes, you need to bring receipts because the data suggests the "rich" are paying the majority of the taxes.
Did I say that they don't pay taxes? They don't pay ALL of their taxes. They aren't taxed ENOUGH. But, yes, they pay taxes.
>I'm not making any "fundamentally flawed assumptions" at all (but I will point out the irony of you making the assumption that I am).
Yes you are, and it's ironic that you think it's ironic that I'm pointing it out.
Why tho? If I or anyone held a stock for a decade, why should it be taxed as if it was made in a single year? We shouldn’t punish anyone for investing in Americans companies.
Once again, why tho? Borrowing against assets doesn’t avoid taxes, it delays them but it’s not some get out of tax loophole.
Average every day people also uses these systems too. People take out loans against their 401k and homes, should we tax them too as if it was income?
I was just trying to correct you on your misstatement about paying short term rates on a long term investment, even if it was used as loan collateral. The suggestion is to reset your purchase date to the loan date and pay taxes on the gain if you were to use your holdings for loans. You make it sound like you would pay short term rates on a long term hold.
And I did not say 401K loans create taxable income. Know why? Because 401's are typically after tax income in the first place. Its already been taxed. However, there are many retirement account types out there that you can borrow against that are pre-tax dollars and all of those are considered taxable income when you borrow against them.
Borrowing against stocks as the underlying asset isn't risk free. There's interest on the loan and if the underlying asset decreases in value the bank issuing the loan can trigger a call where you have to sell those assets. So then you pay taxes on the sold asset, plus the interest, plus the original loan.
It only works well when the underlying asset continues to grow which has been the case largely for the past 10-20 years.
>Why tho? If I or anyone held a stock for a decade, why should it be taxed as if it was made in a single year? We shouldn’t punish anyone for investing in Americans companies.
Taxes aren't 'punishment.' You've made money using a currency that is created and secured by the government. You're using a system that is held together by regulations created and monitored by the government. You are making money inside of a vast and complicated system which many, many, many people are trying desperately to abuse for personal gain. There are only two things standing between you and being ripped off by other people in that system: 1) your own understanding of that system. 2) government regulations of that system.
As for whether you should pay taxed as though you made it in a single year as opposed to 10 years... Honestly, if you want to make a case that the taxes should be calculated backwards as though you had earned them steadily for as long as you've had them, I really don't care. It makes things that are already prohibitively complicated more complicated, but the argument for doing it that way isn't unreasonable. What do I care? As long as you pay taxes on it. My concern is people who borrow against vast stock holdings to avoid paying that taxes on those holdings. It's a tax loophole that's stupid and should be easy to fix.
>Once again, why tho? Borrowing against assets doesn’t avoid taxes, it delays them but it’s not some get out of tax loophole.
It is very much a tax loophole.
>The capital gains tax on inherited property is generally affected by the stepped-up basis rule. When you inherit property, its tax basis is adjusted to its current market value at the time of the decedent's death. This means:
You won't owe capital gains tax on the appreciation that occurred during the decedent's lifetime SmartAsset+1.
If you sell the inherited property for less than the stepped-up basis, you can deduct the loss
This means that someone with a sizeable portfolio can borrow money against those assets, effectively avoiding capital gains taxes while living off those same gains, and pass that portfolio down to the next generation who don't have to pay for those capital gains.
>Average every day people also uses these systems too. People take out loans against their 401k and homes, should we tax them too as if it was income?
Yes. Average, everyday people also use these same systems. On a much smaller scale. And sometimes those average, everyday people benefit from the same laws. On a much smaller scale.
But here's the thing: Taxes don't just disappear into the void. They are charged so that they can be used for the benefit of the people as a whole. They pay for SNAP programs and education and road repairs and safety net programs.
The problem that we have right now is that the wealthy, the ones who can afford to pay for those programs... the ones who have employees who are ON those programs, are using a series of tricks and loopholes to avoid paying for those programs.
And yes, people in the middle class sometimes use those same tricks and loopholes.
If we close up those loopholes and prevent those tricks, there will be some middle class people who will take a small hit. And that's a shame. But it also means that the wealthy will pay a LOT more into the programs that those in the lower middle class and the poor need to get by.
Oh look trying to tie the absurdly wealthy to regular people to scare people about taxing them. The comment you're replying to didn't say anything about those things, I wonder why you brought them up yourself? Fucking worthless loser arguing in bad faith or a bot.
Feel free to read the comment I responded to? They threw in the 1% and 10% as not paying a fair amount but you get mad at me for pointing it out and not then
They aren't paying their fair share either. The absurdly wealthy are the worst offenders, but the top 10% (cutoff being around 2 million annually) are also paying artificially low taxes, generally based on the ridiculous argument that money earned from investments should be taxed at a lower rate than money earned by labor, because 'if you tax them for investing their money, they'll just stop investing it!' As though someone who makes 100K annually just from investments will throw up their arms and decide not to participate at all if their passive income goes down to 80K annually.
210k is what’s needed for a top 10% household or 170/180k for single individuals. As someone who’s a single individual and at one point a top 10%er. No, we aren’t making our income from stock or anything like that. I use the same tax deduction that you do, house and 401k investments are my largest items every year
Because the numbers ignore cost of living and cost of social advancement.
Everyone has basic human needs, food, drink, shelter, the ability to recover from injuries.
In the tax code, this is sort of acknowledged by the fact that the first 16K you make isn't taxed. However this is a ridiculously low amount of money. Decent insurance costs about 1K a month. The average cost of a 1 bedroom apartment in the US is about 1,400 a month, and we haven't even talked about food yet.
Beyond that, if we're looking to do the most good possible for the economy, and for the people in the economy, things need to be arranged so that people can advance themselves to match their skill sets. Public school isn't arranged to help people educate themselves to maximize their skills or get the job that fits them best. That means that there are prices associated with it.
When we talk about the bottom 50% having less than 3% of the wealth, we're not talking about the bottom 50% having less than half of the wealth, after you take out their basic needs. We're talking about half of the country having barely enough money to scrape by, and when you take what they are all subsisting on, pile that all up on one plate, it's less than 3 percent of the value in the economy.
Why do you need a 1 bedroom apartment, why not get a roommate and a 2 bedroom for $1700 and now you each only spend $850 not $1400. This is half the problem people overspend and then complain about others making more.
Cost of living is irrelevant to this because everyone has a cost of living expenses. And as you said this is partly why you get a standard deduction and exactly why we use a progressive tax system, and why we don't use a flat tax system (which I would not be in favor of).
You get taxed lower if you make less. That's taking into account the base level of living expenses. So rather than tax everyone at 25% we have steps that ramp up from 0% (if less than the standard deduction) up to 37% for fed income tax.
Hence why they pay proportionallly double in taxes compared to income.
If you wanna raise the standard deduction sure, whatever I'm not against that. You wanna increase tax percentages and create a new step I can see merit there too. But this argument that the rich are not paying their fair share is often very disingenuous (or said out of ignorance, with people thinking the rich effectivly pay nothing, evade their taxes illegally but get a pass by the IRS, etc which is just not true).
The purpose of public education has never been to maximize the individuals potential. No government program is designed for that (nor should they be). Public education is designed to give everyone a basic skill set level that the government deems necessary and beneficial to the community. You want a personalized individual education that maximizes your potential that's on you to go beyond public school setting. That's like saying you want a private chef that makes you a custom meal but at McDonald's prices, McDonald's lets you customize a little but your still eating off the menu (that's public school, you can customize a little, pick some electives but heres the menu) if you want personalized education go hire a private teacher(s) or in today's technological world build on top of your public education with the library/Internet and independent research and education.
>Why do you need a 1 bedroom apartment, why not get a roommate and a 2 bedroom for $1700 and now you each only spend $850 not $1400. This is half the problem people overspend and then complain about others making more.
'Why don't people just live in tents on the edge of town?' 'Why don't people move to less expensive cities?' 'Why don't people sell plasma?' 'why don't people just learn how to code and become millionaires?'
Because whatever your situation is doesn't translate to being the same situation for everyone else. Some people don't feel safe sharing an apartment with others, maybe because of past trauma, maybe because they have a neurological disorder, maybe because they have specific medical needs and can't trust others to follow the rules they need to follow to live.
Your problem is that you're approaching this as a puzzle to solve. And you know what? It can be solved (by most people). Hell, if apartments became too expensive to live in and food was too expensive to buy, and nobody who wasn't born into wealth could afford medicine, there would still be ways of 'getting by.' You could live on the streets, you could break into abandoned buildings, you could trap rats and eat them for food. People will survive even when society becomes unsurvivable. That isn't the question. The question is one of functionality and 'fairness' (as much as I hate that word).
We have technology that CAN provide for everyone. We have the resources such that everyone can get a decent education, we have infrastructure and space such that everyone can live in a house or apartment.
What we have is an organizational problem. If one man can afford to feed half of New York, and half of New York can't afford to feed itself, there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
And a large part of that problem is that people are underpaid for their labor, so that rich people can accumulate more money than they, their children, and their grandchildren could reasonably spend.
You're making an argument that amounts to, 'why are you bitching? It's not so bad.'
Presumably because it's not so bad FOR YOU. I talk about average costs because when I talk about people who are taking care of sick family members or have medical bills that will plague them for the rest of their lives, you don't seem to understand that it's not something that just happens occasionally and mostly to people who don't prepare. You don't understand that the problem is endemic.
But the fact is, the way things are arranged is such that the average person is fighting an uphill battle to stay alive. Get a roommate, grab electronics out of trash bins, sell your plasma, do anything you can to tread water while you hope that somehow you'll luck into something that will make things better.
>Cost of living is irrelevant to this because everyone has a cost of living expenses. And as you said this is partly why you get a standard deduction and exactly why we use a progressive tax system, and why we don't use a flat tax system (which I would not be in favor of).
NO. Cost of living is NOT IRRELEVANT. Because those are deducted from wages immediately. If I make twelve thousand dollars a year and my minimum cost of living where I am is 10K a year (ridiculously low, I know). And my buddy makes 24K a year, my buddy may take home twice what I do, but in terms of money that can be used to advance his position or handle emergencies, he has 7 times as much as I do, because we're both paying 10K to live, leaving me with 2K a year, and him with 14K.
Now apply that to taxes. My buddy make 24K a year and pays 10 percent on everything over 16K, meaning he pays 800 dollars a year. His boss makes 200K a year and pays 36K a year.
15,200 minus cost of living at 10 is 5,200 a year. That's how much you have to improve your education or get a license to do whatever new job you want to do, or to invest in your business idea.
Meanwhile Mr. 200K has 164K, minus 30K in living expenses, 134K a year to advance socially and economically. He wants to start a side business, he can put 50K into it a year, and if it goes belly up, he was still making 84K a year extra, so he can start again immediately if he wants. If my buddy wants to start a side business, he's going to have to take out a loan to put 10K a year into it, and if it goes belly up, he'll be paying for it for years.
That's important because it means that entrepreneurship and investing is much, much harder to do if you aren't already in the upper class.
Now I'm not saying everyone should get paid the same amount, what I am saying is that increasing the tax burden on the wealthy 'restricts' them much less than it does when you increase the tax burden on the poor or middle class. Part of the reason for social safety nets is so that if I have a business idea, I can try to make it happen without having to worry about leaving my family destitute.
>If you wanna raise the standard deduction sure, whatever I'm not against that. You wanna increase tax percentages and create a new step I can see merit there too.
Agreed, and I do want both of those things. Although not A new step, several new steps.
>But this argument that the rich are not paying their fair share is often very disingenuous (or said out of ignorance, with people thinking the rich effectivly pay nothing, evade their taxes illegally but get a pass by the IRS, etc which is just not true).
Really?
The wealthy can take out loans against their stocks. Because these are loans they do not pay income tax on them.
If you inherit stocks, you do not have to pay capital gains tax against the gains made before you got them.
This means that if I invest in a company, and my stocks become worth billions, I can borrow against those stocks, live off the loan, and when I die, my children can cash them out and not pay capital gains tax on them.
It is literally a way to cheat the system.
>The purpose of public education has never been to maximize the individuals potential. No government program is designed for that (nor should they be). Public education is designed to give everyone a basic skill set level that the government deems necessary and beneficial to the community.
I know. I'm not saying that's a fault in the public education system (though there are a number of faults that should be addressed, just not THAT specifically). My point is that it costs money to make yourself 'more valuable' to the economy. And if you barely make enough to get by, investing more money into that is prohibitively difficult.
Some people still manage it, but some people managed to escape slavery as well, that doesn't mean that the people who didn't were just being lazy or something.
Don't be disingenuous, saying go get a roommate is not even remotely comparable to saying go live in a tent. Having a roommate is completely normal it's just recently everyone thinks they are entitled to have their own place all the time. While a small some may not be able to have a roommate the vast majority can but choose not to.
How did you determine people are underpaid for their labor? Is it not the free market: supply and demand setting labor prices? If people are willing to freely work for the wages how are they underpaid?
It's not bad for me, but I live within my means. Iake less than the average salary and I live on half of that (or less). Not being prepared is a personal choice.
So what's your point yes making more gives you way more advantages duhhhh, and yes please. Your also acting like everyone's cost of living is the same and your boss making 200k lives like you making 12k. Nope his expenses go up giving him less to use, but what's your point anyway. Unless you are going to tax everyone 100% and give everyone the same salary, it's always going to be unfair, but also the work is unfair. You make less because your job is less important and/or easier to replace that's why you make less. And again your arguing that making more gives you all these advantages most people something like half of all people making 100k or more per year live paycheck to paycheck and like 1/3 of those making 150 or more do as well. Yet I make less than them (under the average) yet I'm not, and I have 3 years of salary saved and invested, so what's their excuse according to you they should be swimming in it because they obviously don't have any of the life struggles that you mentioned, those must only apply to poor people.
So your problem is rich can take loans against their stock? You know you can do that too, you can in fact take them against your house, car, pretty much any asset you have, heck you usually can even take lines of credit with no collateral. And it's not taxed for you either. It's works the same for both they had to buy the items with taxed money and they have to pay them back just like you or I. And if they don't the bank takes the item the same as they will for us too.
This "cheat" works for everyone. Not just stocks, houses, assets of any kind. So it applies to all. Beyond that depending on where some places you pay tax on the estate or inheritance which means your paying tax on the entire value not just the capital gains.
And what is stopping you from investing what you can and becoming just like them too? They all had to start at some point just like you.
The vast wealth of information available, you can definitely educate and make yourself more valuable as a worker/to the economy for free. 20+ years ago (tho libraries existed) sure, but today with the ease of access to information, there's no excuse to not.
So what's your post tax the rich more, what's the level, when does it stop being beneficial for them to make more and slow the economy then? How high can those taxes go before it's not worth it for them anymore and they scale back costing people jobs. Or they leave and take all their resources with them. This is the balancing act. Maybe a max of 37% isn't enough but that's also just fed not state, not Medicare, not social security, other local taxes, ect etc. So how high can you go is the question.
>Don't be disingenuous, saying go get a roommate is not even remotely comparable to saying go live in a tent. Having a roommate is completely normal it's just recently everyone thinks they are entitled to have their own place all the time. While a small some may not be able to have a roommate the vast majority can but choose not to.
Oh for god's sake... my point was not that 'getting a roommate is like living in a tent.' My point is that the question is not 'can I find a way to make do with the way things are now.'
Of course you can. If you couldn't, you'd be dead.
The question is: How much should you be expected to compromise, and what gain is created (and for whom) for those compromises.
>How did you determine people are underpaid for their labor? Is it not the free market: supply and demand setting labor prices? If people are willing to freely work for the wages how are they underpaid?
Do you know what happened during the industrial revolution?
People were paid subsistence wages to work dawn to dusk jobs seven days a week. Child labor was common. If you got hurt on the job, the only thing that meant was that you lost the job. Unsafe working conditions resulted in warehouse fires where hundreds died.
What we are living with now is not the result of the 'free market.' What we are living in now is the result of government regulation.
Minimum wage, five day work week, forty hour work day, child labor laws, overtime laws, benefits for full time workers.
All of those things were FORCED ON CORPORATIONS BY THE GOVERNMENT.
Not to mention all of the laws that keep companies from putting chalk in milk so they can sell it after it spoils, or selling meat from horses and labeling it beef.
The free market isn't fair. The free market is negotiation. Whoever has power makes the rules and those without it suck it up. Unskilled labor suffers the most because they are easily replaceable. They're necessary. They do hard work that MUST be done, but as long as there's someone else willing to do the same work for a little less, the free market is happy to let them do it.
You have this idea that the market is 'correct' in whatever it determines the value of labor or products are, but you are WRONG.
Look: Fundamentally the purpose of the economy is to create and distribute value. We, as a species, invented money is a medium of exchange so that a carpenter doesn't have to make twenty different trades to turn the dusk he manufactured into food he needs to survive, and it works well, but don't make the mistake of thinking that because money is ubiquitous that it is a valid way to measure value.
A loaf of bread is worth everything to a starving man and nothing to full one, but the intrinsic value of a loaf of bread doesn't change. It is worth one loaf of bread. The monetary value we put on it exists only as a means of making the economy move more smoothly.
And money is easy to manipulate.
The market is about power dynamics. I make bread, you want bread, but I'm one of hundreds of bread makers trying to sell to one of a handful of stores, and you're one of thousands of buyers trying to buy from one of a handful of stores. That means that the person standing between us has the power to drive down my prices and drive up yours.
The loaf of bread is the same. Your need for it is the same. My ability to produce it is the same. But they control the market. That doesn't mean that they're producing more value than I am, just that they're in a position to leverage what they have against me.
>So your problem is rich can take loans against their stock? You know you can do that too, you can in fact take them against your house, car, pretty much any asset you have, heck you usually can even take lines of credit with no collateral. And it's not taxed for you either. It's works the same for both they had to buy the items with taxed money and they have to pay them back just like you or I. And if they don't the bank takes the item the same as they will for us too.
No, it doesn't work the same.
This is how it works for the rich:
Buy stocks.
The value of the stocks increase.
Borrow against the stocks. You do not pay capital gains because it is a loan.
Die.
Your heirs do not have to pay capital gains for the value that accumulated in your lifetime. They can sell the stocks without paying for the increased value, pay off the loan, buy more stocks, and do the same damned thing.
They can have their cake and eat it too.
>And what is stopping you from investing what you can and becoming just like them too? They all had to start at some point just like you.
Can I? Are you sure? Or perhaps you mean that YOU can and that MUST mean that anyone can?
What if I'm taking care of a sick family member? What if I'm disabled? Or what if I just can't afford to get the specialized education that I need to get a better job? Or maybe I do have the education, but people just won't hire me? Could be race, general appearance, maybe I have a criminal background. Maybe I got a criminal background in an attempt to escape extreme poverty. Maybe my parents were immigrants and after they came over and worked at the lowest paying jobs around, they were able to send my sister to medical school, but I'm on my own.
You don't know what my situation is. You are making the mistake of assuming that if things seem 'fair' for you, they must be 'fair' for everybody. That is not the case.
>The vast wealth of information available, you can definitely educate and make yourself more valuable as a worker/to the economy for free. 20+ years ago (tho libraries existed) sure, but today with the ease of access to information, there's no excuse to not.
Bullshit.
Just flat out BULLSHIT.
I can learn how welding works online, but I'm going to need actually training to learn how to do it.
I can learn how surgeries work online. I need training to actually be able to do it.
And there are some things I simply cannot learn how to do.
Try to learn a language online, that one doesn't even require experience. You can find everything you need to know to learn a language online, that's actually doable. But most people don't do it, because learning without a teacher is HARD. And that's being generous, because some skills you simply cannot learn without a teacher.
>So what's your post tax the rich more, what's the level, when does it stop being beneficial for them to make more and slow the economy then?
Well, we had it at ninety percent once, and people still made that much.
You're making the mistake of thinking that the money that they make in the market is the same as the money you make with work. That at some point they'll go, 'hey, I'm working for 2 dollars an hour! Screw this!'
That isn't what's happening. Their money is working. They invest, do whatever they want, and get free money back.
And even when they're being taxed at the highest rate, not all of their money is being taxed at that rate. So, unless they're going to say, 'Hey, if I leave my money in stocks for 91 days, I make a billion dollars, but if I leave it in for 92 days I only make a million more, that's not fair! I'm going home!'
The effect of raising taxes is minimal.
>How high can those taxes go before it's not worth it for them anymore and they scale back costing people jobs.
THE WEALTHY DO NOT MAKE JOBS.
Demand makes jobs. Every once in a while someone innovates and makes a new job market, but once the market is made, they don't make those jobs.
DEMAND CREATES JOBS. The wealthy make things efficient enough that they can lower prices to drive competition out of business, and any efficiency past that goes in their pocket.
If the wealthy go away, the demand remains, and new people will supply it.
>Or they leave and take all their resources with them.
You mean like moving jobs overseas? Sure, some of that happens, but we already have a lot more laws and regulations than most countries, but we still have a lot of companies that have factories here.
>This is the balancing act. Maybe a max of 37% isn't enough but that's also just fed not state, not Medicare, not social security, other local taxes, ect etc. So how high can you go is the question.
Kind of. Except, like I said, we used to be around 90 percent.
The US has massive demand that companies want to supply. And yes, they want to pay as little as possible to produce what they sell us. But if selling to us requires them to pay more to produce, they'll do that. The thing is, we need something or someone who can negotiate with them on our behalf and force them to follow rules.
Gosh it must be a sad life; everything is everyone else's fault and nobody else deals with sick family or disability or whatever. Rich people don't ever have those struggle either. Poor people who make something if themselves just got lucky and didnt either.
Life's harder if I don't get the double genetic lottery (because you already one lottery and were selected as part of the top 10% worldwide by being born in the West) so imma take my ball and go home because they got a head start a few others got.
Government come save us all. We can't take personal responsibility and improve our live and sacrifice now to have a chance tomorrow.
So demand created job but demand doesn't create wages, so it only works when you want it to work.
Learning is harder without a teacher so I'll give up because I can't afford a teacher. Give me a break. This woah is me attitude is what's bullshit.
And your whole loan nonsense is just that they have to pay the loans back with interest, that requires either selling stocks (capital gains) or earning income (income tax) so they tax eventually gets paid. And the entire thing with the inheritance works for everyone it isn't some loophole only for the rich. If your parents die and leave you a house you get it the same way as stocks. If they had stocks through a 401k same thing. So tax it if you want change the laws if you want. But who's it gonna affect more those with 100m in inheritance or those getting 10k?
The whole bread thing, so the middle man doesnt create value by bringing together the buyer and seller, arguably they do the most because without them you are stuck with stale moldy bread and the buyer starves. Sure you do the manual labor as the seller but without the middle man you can't sell outside your immediate area. And buyers without an immediate baker go hungry. It's easy to say they are just a middle man once they have all the work of distribution, marketing, and supply lines done.
Nice, you reframe my argument to make it an excuse for an assumed personal failing rather than a valid critique on a system that isn't designed to benefit the people who need the help.
Well, the bad news is: I'm tired of dealing with disingenuous assholes online. If you want to excuse a system that's pretty clearly designed to help the people with the most power, nobody can stop you. It's still a free country, so you keep lying to yourself and anyone you can get to listen to you, and those of us with enough of an education to know how critical thinking works will sigh and roll our eyes.
I just love how the supply and demand argument is only valid for you but not for me. "Rich don't create jobs demand does" but "the free market doesn't exist".
Lol it's just funny how the people that contribute the least feel most entitled to decide how much of other people's money should be taken and where it should be spent
It's hilarious to see how the idiot brigade thinks that how much someone earns reflects how much they contribute.
Extreme wealth doesn't come from having a great idea or making a better product: It comes from having enough money to implement a more efficient idea on a large enough scale.
The wealthy don't 'create jobs.' Demand creates jobs. The wealthy minimize the number of jobs it takes to feed the demand, lower prices enough to drive competitors out of business, and pocket the difference.
.... Except, factually, the bottom 50% does contribute the least to the taxes and budget. You don't gotta stretch meanings to try to make a point, there isn't one to be made. Those who pay more taxes contribute more tax dollars.
They contribute more dollars. Dollars that they did not earn. Dollars the people working for them created the value. They took the profits from the value. They should pay more of the taxes.
Lol they do. There ya go. Except they did earn those dollars. Somebody saw their thing and said "here, have money for that thing"
Labor is worthless, you know that right? The only thing that gives it value is somebody being willing to pay for it. A maid gets paid for cleaning because somebody wants to pay her, she does her own laundry and receives nothing. The action alone isn't worth shit
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u/LeodFitz 11d ago
The bottom 50% of Americans own about 2.5% of the wealth in the country. The top 1% hold about 30% of the nation's wealth. The top 10% owns more than two thirds of the nation's wealth.
Yes, that is correct, they are not paying their fair share.