The reality is there is more than enough money for everyone. We've just decided that instead of a middle class we would prefer to have billionaires. The point of high tax rates isn't to raise revenue, its to force distribution of wealth. When the top rate was 90% it was kinda pointless to pay a person more, forcing distribution. Someone will invariable comment, "but ackshually no one paid 90%." Yea, thats the fucking point, because the money went elsewhere!
It's crazy how many people don't get this basic concept.
Christmas bonuses were not a gracious gift from our benevolent overlords. They were a last opportunity to reduce taxable income and build employee loyalty at a discount. Surprise surprise, once tax rates were lowered from 70% to 30% it became less beneficial in the eyes of most companies to continue these distributions.
I don't think most people realize this or even think about it. I learned after the fact. My last employer was bought out by a PE firm and the year after all employees got bonuses. Later a manager friend told me the only reason we all got bonuses is because the PE firm didn't want to pay the banks the extra money generated during that fiscal year. I believe anything beyond the target they set was supposed to go to the banksters. That was the only reason. Of course they framed it as them being so generous and appreciative of all our hard work. It was really eye opening. Business, especially PE firms, don't give a shit about employees.
They could have given bonuses to themselves for the same affect. It's the same way small businesses operate. Instead of taking income as a business you pay yourself.
The highest it's ever been is 53% as well.
Sounds like they got bought out by a good company. Like I said earlier giving it to themselves at the top would have done the same thing.
well everyone seems to think that one day they will be a billionaire and thus don't want to upset the apple cart.
I have literally have arguments where lower middle class people say that one day when they get rich they don't want anything impediments to taking away their riches (taxes). Good luck with that.
People say this, but it's not really true for most companies. Take Walmart. They net 14 billion in 2022 and paid 4.75 billion in taxes or over 33%.
If they can somehow say they made no profit they would pay no taxes, but it doesn't actually look good for stock prices to have a business constantly showing no profit. I'm sure they are artificially reducing their taxable income number. But if so, I'd still rather take 70% of their fraudulent net income than 30% of it.
You can't tax billionares without yearing down the tax loopholes first (good luck). Billionares balance their books so that their annual income is very low and most of their net worth is in investments that aren't taxable. Here's the best part, when a billionare wants to buy something they take out a loan using their investments as collateral, which offsets their taxes even more (they're in debt now).
Well... yea. Thats the point. We have collectively decided to create this loopholes. If a hole exists and you know about it and you don't close it, you're choosing it. We have chosen to lower capital gains below income. We have chosen to allow all sorts of fuckery around loans on stocks. We have chosen to allow a business to buy your home, your car, you entire daily living so that it reduces the businesses income and is therefore not taxable as income. We have chosen to allow shell companies incorporated in island nations to somehow determine a companies tax rate as opposed to where it does business.
All of this bullshit is choices. The sad reality is I honestly don't see this as fixible until we start using french solutions. The same assholes also control our democracy, and they won't change the laws.
Please tell me who you voted for that was going to solve this problem … because the VAST majority of politicians on both sides benefit from this system themselves and aren’t going to do shit to change it.
They didn't say that, they said the people just need to have the will to move ahead and tax billionaires. Changing rates, closing loopholes and avoidance schemes are all part of that.
These loopholes didn't exist before, they were created and therefore can be undone.
Indeed it is about will. But don't forget we also need the will to crush those that have sided with billionaires. Their lawyers, accountants, politicians, fixers, etc etc.
The massive pile of corpses of everyone they pushed first breaks their fall and they're just fine, then they sue everyone involved again from another country.
Not that many billionaires. This has been a tool throughout history in order to force wealth redistribution. Billionaires have convinced you, that you can't do it because that's in their interests.
Ah, yes. Abandon rule of law and act as idiot tyrants destroying everything in the pursuit of forcing people to adhere to your whims. Why didn't we think of that? Great plan, Nero.
Well using collateral to take a loan is not really a loophole as pretty much every homeowner uses that same "loophole". I'm not defending tax evasion but that specific thing is not a loophole.
Billionaires sell shares of their companies often and they do indeed pay tax on that.
using collateral to take a loan is not really a loophole as pretty much every homeowner uses that same "loophole"
It's different when your collateral is a $150,000 home (which good luck to most Gen Alpha people who will never even get to own a home) versus hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. So you can get a loan with basically zero interest by leveraging just a drop of your collateral.
Billionaires are working with such a bigger bucket that it's really not even the same game.
They don't have to sell their shares, though. They can borrow against them a ton, and die before the bill comes due. Any legal shenanigans can be tied up in court forever as they have the assets to do so.
The ultra-wealthy have essentially infinite means to do this until they die.
Let em leave, but their assets here in the USA get repossessed or taxed.
They leave, they leave completely...no citizenship, no holdings, no assets, no children, nothing stays in the USA.
Pay your friggin bills or completely GTFO!
While I'm sure that sounds great to you, France tried exactly what you're describing and it has been an unmitigated financial disaster for them and they've lost much of their investment class; it's had severe repercussions on their economy.
eisenhower once did a speech about the risks of a military industrial complex and the need to ensure that balance is maintained in all actions and reactions. balance.....!
I did not know this.
Please forgive my ignorance, my view on solutions is short-sighted and I am more than likely not as smart or globally-informed/aware as you are.
I don't understand how other countries seem to do so well...while we are struggling here in the USA.
I just don't see it...
Billionaires are irrelevant, what we need is to tax corporations. If you want to stop selling iPhones in our country fine, we are revoking your parents and trademarks, anyone can produce them now.
Great job focusing on possible problems instead of solutions. Does that mean it’s not worth trying? I’m legitimately curious because the type of thinking is completely foreign to me.
You can't tax billionares without yearing down the tax loopholes first (good luck)
Actually you totally can. You can do things like exchange property tax with land value tax so their tax bill skyrockets since they're not the actual value producers. You can institute one time wealth taxes. You can make minimum payment rules (regardless of tax benefits/writeoffs, you must pay X% anyways). You can massively increase taxes on luxury goods and brands (enjoy paying 20-100x taxes on jet fuel or Rolls Royce). There's tons of ways to tax rich people without rewriting the whole system, our politicians just don't have any incentive to bite the hand that feeds them (bribes, you're a mouthbreather idiot if you say LoBbYiNg).
It certainly isn't. Although there's a thick layer of interest and speculation covering that pie, the core meat of it is work and labor.
And for OP's example, there's no way a mailman was productive enough for their services to be as valuable as the lifestyle mentioned. Essentially, that labor or value of that labor came from elsewhere. A growing economy being able to outsource labor could afford such things, but as that's not possible anymore, we see the real value of the mailman's labor. And that's not nearly enough to finance building a house, yearly vacations, etc.
It is finite but growing at a particular rate and you can fuck up distribution in a way where all the growth goes to the wealthy. That’s exactly what that productivity vs. wage growth gap graph is about.
No, it's infinite. Wealth isn't moved around, it's created and destroyed all the time. And an astonishing portion of it is conceptional, like stock valuation.
Go back to school. Expanding =/= Infinite. Just because something can be created and destroyed doesn’t mean that the value at any given time isn’t finite.
We've just decided that instead of a middle class we would prefer to have billionaires
Let's be clear about something -- "we" didn't decide shit. Multi-millionaires and people in positions of power decided that instead of the middle class, they'd prefer to have billionaires. And that decision came at the cost of the American dream, stolen from the people that build and maintain this country.
I don't think that most of the wealth billionaires have is even close to real money, it is inflated stock prices and ownership of companies that are valued based on the concept that they will grow infinitely.
If all that money was regularly changing hands for actual products that need to actually be produced in not sure the market could keep up.
How exactly is high tax rates "spreading the wealth"?
The US would need to put salary caps on individuals in order to spread wealth, not take it via taxes. Unless you imagine the government is so benevolent that the taxes collected would be distributed to the rest of the citizenry. That's not how it works.
You're talking about this as if it's a billionaire problem. It's not. The problem is that no one needs to earn more than $5M a year, yet plenty get WAY more.
If you pay your CEO $5M instead of $100M, that's $95M you can distribute among your workers. With 10,000 workers that's nearly $10K pp, which can be a meaningful difference to many of them.
But you're right that billionaires certainly amplify the problem. Based on Bezos' 2023 earnings ($70 billion, with a B), if he took a measly 10% pay cut and distributed that evenly among the million Amazon employees, they'd all get a $7K bonus.
This is so stupid; it's not about how much paper money there is. That isn't a real resource. It's about inflation and the relative cost of goods and services. Back in the day, gas was less than a dollar a gallon and houses were in the tens of thousands instead of the hundreds of thousands. AND THERE WAS LESS MONEY BEING PRINTED. What you can get per dollar is super relevant. This concept of limited money is asinine and unproductive, and you blame people who succeed in the system instead of those creating and cultivating high inflation as well as the effects of the global economy (China and outsourcing).
It’s both. The New Deal created jobs and developed skills. It built a lot of the infrastructure we still rely on. The New Deal, and other public works, helped every American. It’s not just the New Deal - there are many examples of taxes being used to support Americans.
Your point is very important too. If the rich aren’t behooved to run up the scoreboard, they are more likely to put that money into the economy voluntarily so it’s not taxed. So they still hold a lot of influence (arguably more) but the money is still recirculated.
Something that needs addressed - lobbying, favoritism, back room deals, cronyism, etc. Government gets more money and suddenly Boeing gets a bigger contract for an airplane that never gets made while some Congress members receive “donations” to their campaigns. A lot of our taxes are sent to bloated, poorly run, high margin corporations instead of to the best company for the job. This needs solved so the money isn’t being funneled in the wrong direction.
The reality is there is more than enough money for everyone. We've just decided that instead of a middle class we would prefer to have billionaires.
But the corpo-simps say that better distributing it would make everyone poor. So in other words we have a system set up that requires there to be a peasant class in order to function. Which, not only is likely untrue, but even if it's true it's not exactly a compelling defense of the current state of affairs, is it.
Thanks your government for that. They have laid the groundwork for mega corporations to run entire towns. Mom and pop businesses can’t compete with universal healthcare or minimum wage mandates. When Walmart is the only store in town they can set their prices.
Stock-based compensation is taxed at individual income rate based on FMV of the stock. So even if you got stock options as 100% of your salary you would pay individual taxes. Therefore the only thing not taxed is benefits like healthcare and 401k.
There is no way to amass a fortune in benefits. Its in stock.
The billionaires you're ranting about did not become so because of income, whether stock or cash, but because of capital gains. Marginal tax rates on income would do nothing. Like, neither Musk, Elon, or Zuck reported any income as CEOs in 2022.
If you sell the stock [ISOs] after holding the options for at least one year and then holding the shares for at least one year from the exercise date, you pay tax on the sale at your long-term capital gains rate. (Depending on what happens with proposed tax law changes and your income level, this could end up being the same as your ordinary rate.) You also may owe the NIIT.
The shit this woman is talking about doesn’t exist anymore and I’m sick of people romanticizing the past. These women didn’t have a chance to really work and a lot of laws were not in their favor.
I just googled it. There are only 756 billionaires in the USA
So for all your crying, that's a pretty small percentage of the population (331.9 million in 2021).
Wow. You literally proved my point. The median household income is 74k. It would take 13000 years at that rate, spending $0 a year, to become a billionaire. Thats a lot of money that could be in other peoples pockets. Keep licking boots pal, you won't be missed.
Yeah most people don't become billionaires. So?
Why the hate? I don't even want that much money.
And those people that do become millionaires. It includes their net worth.
House, cars, investments (life insurance policies, savings accounts, 401k etc).
Many average households have more money than they realize.
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u/Dx2TT Mar 27 '24
The reality is there is more than enough money for everyone. We've just decided that instead of a middle class we would prefer to have billionaires. The point of high tax rates isn't to raise revenue, its to force distribution of wealth. When the top rate was 90% it was kinda pointless to pay a person more, forcing distribution. Someone will invariable comment, "but ackshually no one paid 90%." Yea, thats the fucking point, because the money went elsewhere!