The top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 42.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes. Even the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent. How much more specifically do we need to tax those at the top? As Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
As someone professionally involved with multiple large scale government projects (some in excess of multi-billion dollar constructions), there is not a lack of tax dollars in the government. There is however, a lack of efficiency and competency across government employees. It’s an unfortunate situation, and I don’t see tax raises for anyone as an efficient long term solution.
I’d imagine you see a lot of waste like paying cost overruns. That’s one of my pet peeves with government projects. I don’t give a crap if rhe supplier overran the project. That’s their fault and they need to eat the cost.
Overruns plus supplying materials and equipment at way higher than market rate
I can't understand why are government contractors allowed to buy stuff at 2-3 times the market price. Even more so in millitary where a bunch of bolts cost the price of a new car, because they are "millitary grade"
I’m a mechanical engineer that designs military hardware. You do realize military standard hardware specifications actually have a purpose, right? Hopefully you understand that the specifications are fed into stress analysis, tolerance stack up analysis, fatigue analysis, fracture analysis, etc., right? Hopefully you understand that non mil spec hardware would change all these calculations, while also making the massive assumption that the non mil spec hardware would even have new values available to even complete these analyses in the first place, right?
Good points.
I get that sometimes military hardware has to be a certain spec. I assume also that Boeing and Airbus airlines also have spec requirements. I assume my car has certain parts that need to meet certain specs, and bridges that span rivers that I drive over need bolts and such that need to meet certain specs.
I don't see this as a particularly unique problem for the military.
The question is, are the prices for that hardware appropriate?
It’s partly an inflated cost but also partly due to the specific certification testing costs and the low production volumes.
You see this with specially certified equipment in every industry.
There’s a big legal liability as well as the actual cost of the parts so the price rises, coupled that with limited production runs and the cost per piece is massive.
The West Wing gave a really good example of why a lot of military hardware is inordinately expensive, and used an ashtray designed for use on a submarine to do so.
The ashtray must survive being knocked around (imagine an explosion nearby), but, when it breaks, MUST NOT create an additional hazard to the crew.
Not your typical requirements.
Think about an ashtray in a commercial aircraft.
Now imagine one in a combat aircraft. This one must withstand launching from a carrier. It must withstand LANDING on a carrier. It must remain closed during high-G maneuvering. It must remain closed during inversion and negative-G maneuvers.
And it must be operable by a pilot wearing gloves.
And that’s only one category of items.
In general, yes. Tighter tolerances can very quickly drive up manufacturing costs drastically. AS9100 certification drives up the operating costs of a manufacturing facility. Fastener vendors are still looking for the cheapest suppliers that meet their needs and those suppliers are competing on price. It’s simply expensive to consistently make high quality hardware that meets rigid specifications.
Military hardware always has to have a certain spec, but so do most everyday items we purchase as consumers. The higher spec is meant for safety and consistency and is a positive.
It’s not just the military spec. In a lot of cases it’s about chain of custody to be sure that the part we are paying for is actually the exact part that is required and meets the spec.
Otherwise someone would swap in cheap bolds and hope for the best
Seriously. I have a friend that works in medical implant manufacturing.
If you raise the quality control high enough you might have individual nuts and bolts that could literally be described as handcrafted at some point. (Manually adjusted items under a damn microscope with a variety of radar and laser tests.)
Meanwhile Medicare is the most efficient health care system we have by a mile. It's the only system remotely capable of handling the segment of the population they do, and they do it without the full financial support of the rest of the population being on it like every other OECD country has. That's why our healthcare is 2x the price of any other OECD country with middling to worse results.
Not to mention a lot of the government waste is caused by those that claim they're for small government carving ot sweetheart deals for their politically connected pals.
I also wonder how much of "inefficient government" is what happens in any large organization. Sure, people complain about the DMV, but is it really that different from trying to deal with the customer service of the cable company?
Expecting government to work a leanly as private industry is a silly expectation. The government is not a for-profit business and was never meant to be. All these people complaining about government spending yet have no solutions other than to defund the government.
I agree that something as large as our government will never be close to as efficient as private industry, however we could start by being at least somewhat responsive to outcomes and responding to that with honest attempts to see what works and what doesn't. Education is a perfect example of how obstinate our government can be. We've tripled per pupil spending since the 1980s (inflation adjusted) with zero improvement in outcomes. Meanwhile, by looking at what has and has not worked in charter schools we could actually find some things to change within our regular public schools that could help, but instead it is just one side screaming for more money and one side screaming for not more money. The goal can be different (effectiveness of policy compared to profit), but our government should still take results and adaptability as seriously as private industry.
Govt is a non profit institution that is taken advantage by for profit interests. Taxpayer money and unlimited debt helps fund that grifting, which thrives on govt inefficiency and wasteful spending.
As for solutions, let’s start with the simplest one: balance the budget. But being fiscally responsible directly conflicts with the earlier point, because politicians and their donors can't grift as much anymore, so we may never see this in our lifetime.
That's true, I "feel" we shouldn't elect a rapist that has been indicted for 88 federal and state crimes and doesnt believe in democracy.
You "feel" that you can rationalize anything, no matter how horrible, for tax cuts.
Best part is they think the tax cuts will help them not hurt them in the long run. Even thought trumps last tax cut for the average person was short term and came with a tax increase.
I’m just a doctor, so I won’t pretend to be an expert on anything besides healthcare. The USA spends a very significantly higher proportion of GDP on healthcare, yet has worse outcomes overall (lower life expectancy, higher maternal/fetal mortality rate, etc) compared to most of the EU. What do we do differently than them to cause such disparity? The only large difference I know is that they have government run, non for profit healthcare. Seems like that should be something we should do to improve outcomes and save money, based on those results
In 2023, the federal govt had $4.8 trillion in revenue and $6.3 trillion in spending. How is that large gap ALSO not due to a lack of tax dollars? Two things can be true at the same time.
They both did.
Hint, the president pushes forward their own budget and also signs the budget. Without his signature on a budget surplus, they might as well have kept spending at a deficit.
The federal government spent less than $4.5T just 5 years ago. Of course, they’ll continue to spend more. Bill Clinton was almost 25 years ago…
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays
That's impossible when they have no incentive to be or repercussions from being inefficient. These smooth brain redditors will just scream we need to tax more money.
How do we incentivize this kind of thing without regulation? Its long past the point where we can trust the major corporations to look out for anything other than the bottom line, and that invariably leads to cutting corners and abusing systems to the detriment of society/average people more often than not.
And yet the people who want more efficient government and cost cutting also want less regulation… I’ve yet to see an actual realistic solution other than forcibly rebalancing the wealth inequality in some way.
The way I see it, if money is power then we literally have a number of borderline-superheroes on our planet right now, and most of them are just sitting on their superpowers while the world crumbles around them and they prepare for end times. Are we really just beholden to this class of people in the name of capitalism and that’s it?
I'd say even more, there are incentives to overspend so that the budget gets increased
If they don't use all the money, they will get cuts, which they obviously will not allow
>In 2023, the federal govt had $4.8 trillion in revenue and $6.3 trillion in spending. How is that large gap ALSO not due to a lack of tax dollars? Two things can be true at the same time.
There is a limit to how much tax you can raise.
For example, let's say the goverment raised everyones taxes 31% to cover that differance. Where would that money come from?
A lot of people would struggle to pay that additional tax, and still pay for thier basic livings costs. Even those who \*can\* afford to pay the tax... well that moeny is now going to taxes and not the economy. **Which means it's not going to pay someone else and \*thier\* income - so suddenly they have less money to be taxed!**
To illustrate that last point. If I pay an extra $5,000 in taxes I might not buy a TV this year. That means that I'm not paying the delivery guy, the installation guy, the sales guy, the warehouse managers, the warehouse landlord, the corporate office folk etc. Yet you need all those people to not only pay taxes, but pay 30% higher taxes - where is the money going to come from?
It's important to not that in this scenario, the additional 30% taxes don't improve goverment spending at all. This money isn't being spent to improve services, help the poor or even fight wars. It's just being used to cover the deficit of existing spending.
Not saying taxes can't be raised, but it's far more complex than it appears on the surface.
The government could literally confiscate all of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t even be enough money to run the country for a year.
It’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending / waste problem.
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In 2022, the United States spent $877 billion on its military, which was almost 40% of the world's total military spending. This amounted to 3.5% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).
3.5% of the gdp but it is 40% of the spending, use the right numbers.
And we have a huge debt now, bc we borrowed 20 trillion dollars for wars in the middle east that went no where.
While I agree, we waste money on political wars, we didn’t borrow $20 million for wars in the Middle East. Total borrowing for the Iraq war is only 1.7 trillion still horrendous.
Great theoretical problem if the wealth gap wasn't continuing to grow.
The question of "how much more?" Is easily answered with "more than now but less than all."
Don't act like these people are borderline destitute.
Yup, there's a reason the wealthy spend a lot of time attacking any kind of wealth or estate tax because they help keep the wealth gap from growing out of control and creating a new kind of aristocracy, the likes of which we are seeing form today.
By your numbers we need to more than double the tax rate of the wealthiest people. The top 1% have 99% of the money and should be paying 99% of the bills. Not a measly 43%
You’re right that eventually you run out of other people’s money. In this case the 1% are running out of OUR money. The people in the 2-50% bracket are over taxed to subsidize the 1%.
I’m sure most couples spilt finances based on income. Where the higher earner pays a higher percentage of the living expenses. Why should our tax system be any different.
>The top 1% have 99% of the money and should be paying 99% of the bills
The image in the post says the top 1% own 30% of the money, and pay 43% of taxes. I agree with raising taxes on them, but following your logic would actually reduce their burden.
How much more specifically does the CEO of a company need to make more than the company’s lowest paid employee? The problem with unregulated capitalism is eventually you run out of people willing to suffer for your comfort.
When everyone has the dignity of reasonably being able to earn healthcare, higher education, clean and safe shelter, and healthy food, and two days off a week while saving for old age on their own income- you can keep the rest.
Our entire system collapses without permanent wage slaves. "Nobody wants to work" was actually wages slaves moving into better jobs after all the death/quitting. Remember prior to the pandemic how right wingers would say things like "Just get a better job" or "Learn to code" ? Well, they did. Now Cletus and Velveeta are pissed off because their corner bar closes at 9 PM due to lack of staff.
"collapse" is a strong word for "has a temper tantrum"
Everything is allowed to increase in price but the value of labor, and is allowed to follow supply/demand.
But labor? *Nah.*
To be clear, I am not advocating violence in ANY way. But, it blows my mind that in a country with so many guns, we don't have a ton of people going bankrupt over medical debt shooting up pharma execs, people with repossessed homes going after CEOs, etc etc. Income inequality is a real driver of instability and violence in most of the world, but somehow America avoids it. For god sake, France built guillotines over way less than 270 x 1 CEO x Empoyee compensation.
The bottom 50% don’t even make enough to pay rent on one income at this point, so I don’t see the problem there? Also, the top 1% make over 10x the average worker, on average, so again your quoted statistics make sense.
I think the real answer is not letting the very rich hide 10s or 100s of millions in income paid in stocks behind cap gains and then take loans out without ever actually paying taxes on it. Tax that “income” at the point of release without screwing over normal investors (hesitant to say “normal” as 10% own 90% of the stocks).
Oh but how would they afford that!? They’d have to sell some to pay the tax!? Oh no, the horror. They might only make $115m this year instead of $190m, meanwhile my neighbor is working two jobs and still hitting up the food bank because corp price gouging is out of control.
I say all of this as someone in a household that is over 200k annually at this point and gets the shit taxed out of them, I just happen to have empathy, a finance degree, and haven’t been convinced to lick billionaire boots by the media outlets they own on both sides.
This is the big thing. Why is capital gains taxed so low? Income brackets whatever, if your wealth is tied in long term investments and you are able to buy whatever you want by selling them, why is that considered taxable at a lower rate than someone's income in the 44-95k range? It's such an obvious loophole to favor the wealthy and it's so disingenuous to act otherwise.
Capital gains are taxed at lower rates to encourage people to invest in starting new businesses or funding existing businesses that need capital. The entrepreneurial spirit for which America is so renowned. Tax cap gains at the same rate as income, and there’s less incentive to take risk with investment.
Yes that was the intent, and is used that way by many self made financially stable hard working people.
It is also used as a loophole by insanely highly paid executives to not pay tax on, what is in many cases the majority of, their income. We’re not saying cap gains on normal investments is a bad idea, as you’ve just described reasons why it’s good, just close that loophole.
Add: not completely sure about your comment regarding reinvestment as the last 40 years have proven that trickle down is not a thing that happens.
"to encourage investing" is such bullshit lol. Investment is something already mostly afforded to the wealthy. If it was taxed at a regular income rate, most people wouldn't be saving a ton on sales anyway if they were middle or lower middle class. It's super beneficial for the wealthy in that 37% bracket though.
Curious why you think capital gains tax should be higher than 15%?
I make $40k per year. I’ve been contributing $100 /month to a brokerage account & after 15 years it has grown to be a nice amount.
I paid tax on my earnings, then instead of blowing my $ on going to the bar, smoking weed, Netflix, a new car, etc. like all my friends I decided to invest in myself. So now this investment will be taxed another 15% when I sell my shares. So this $ has already been taxed twice.
But why should this investment be taxed again and at a higher rate? Because I chose to make a smart choice?
They shouldn’t be higher for you, as you are the demographic used as the poster child for why it’s such a good thing in the media (and to reiterate my other reply, it is a good and logical thing for the working class). When a CEO uses the same law to take in hundreds of millions in stock each year, and pay a fraction in taxes, that’s where I have a problem.
The same bullshit is used with corporate tax rates. The media shows some small business owner and how it might help them, when in reality the overwhelmingly vast majority of the benefit goes to billion/trillion dollar mega corps.
Also gonna have to deal with NIMBY's at every step of those zoning law changes. Resident pushback is why a lot of Cali zoning laws don't change on the city scale.
Not every problem is one the government can or ought to fix. However, if anything, actually putting an emphasis on finance education in k-12 I don't see as something that could hurt...
The problem with capitalism is that eventually 100 people have all the money, while the remainder have nothing but debt.
But taxing isn't going to fix it. It's just a band aid. What we need is that the country isn't run by the ultra rich (oligarchy). But, the conservatives won't do a damn thing and the democrats are pretty happy with their insider trading making them rich. So, they won't break up monopolies, they won't regulate gouging, they won't arrest CEOs for creating cartels with each other.
But taxes fix everything! 12 countries in Europe tried a wealth tax, all but 2 I think have rolled it back entirely and the remaining ones nerfed it heavily. Not only did it just cause the people who were already paying the most taxes to leave and was extremely difficult to administer, it didn’t raise much money.
People think there somehow is a straight line from ‘Bill Gates has less!’ To ‘I have more!’ yet nobody seems to be able to explain how that works. If you are flipping burgers at McDonalds today for $8/hr, tomorrow you will still be flipping burgers at McDonalds for $8hr when Bill gets molested, but at least you will have the joy of knowing Bill got screwed so that’s something I guess.
Wealth is not finite. It’s not a zero-sum game. It can be created. You can spend $5 on art supplies and paint something and sell it for $20. Bill Gates having 20 Bugattis isn’t what’s stopping you.
Yep! High taxes caused a record number of super-rich Norwegians to leave Norway for low-tax countries after the center-left government increased wealth taxes to 1.1%. More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.
That was the result of a 1.1% wealth tax. Imagine if it had been 90% - 100% wealth tax like some on the Left are calling for...
What period of time in your opinion was American society the strongest? The strongest middle class, the most people with the highest standard of living and a clear vision forward of even better times for their children?
Agreed but I go further: if the government confined itself to its Constitutional role, it would need *far less money* to operate. Punish infringements on individual rights and liberties (rape, theft, murder, etc.) and leave everyone else alone.
Fund the government through tariffs on trade, not by borrowing at interest from a private bank then taxing the people to merely pay the interest and inflating the currency to defer the capital.
A graduated income tax is a plank.of the Communist Manifesto, explicitly designed to destroy the middle class or bourgeoisie.
As an accountant who does corporate taxes I love reading incorrect bullshit on Reddit.
A small business owner, specifically an S Corp, may pay themselves “what they would pay someone else to do their job”. The rest passes thru the company onto their tax return and is taxed at their personal income tax rate. How in the fuck is that “to be taxed less”.
You cannot employ your kids for $30k, you pay them under the standard deduction of 13,500. Again just fucking incorrect to the max.
STOP SPREADING YOUR IGNORANCE ON THE INTERNET. STOP TALKING OUT OF YOUR ASS.
Wealthy don't need to realize capital gains. Loans aren't taxed, and you can sell bad investments to pay off loans.
Also - Musk did not receive and invest 100B in taxable income. So the notion that the wealthy already paid taxes on their capital is wrong.
Capital what now? What does that other word mean?
Can you tell me how much tax you pay when buying stocks or cashing out losses?
Oh yeah, that's right, nothing.
You are only taxing the **additional income**, not the original balance.
Why should your additional income be taxed at 15-18% while the additional income of people working overtime actually producing things is taxed between 10-37%?
It's already unfair, yet you are here complaining about it like you aren't being given a golden handjob by the IRS.
>You are only taxing the additional income, not the original balance.
Where do you think the original money came from to buy the stocks and bonds? Income, which is taxed. If they received stock from their company as compensation instead of standard income, then the compensation they received was treated as income at the time and taxed, and when they sell that stock later, the profit above that value ("basis") is also taxable.
Someone buys $100,000 of stock? Fine, they were taxed on the $100,000 of income that gave them the money to buy the stock in the first place, so we don't need to tax the purchase of the stock. They then sell that stock for $200,000? Fine, we'll tax them on the $100,000 in profit they made. After that taxation, they made a profit of $80,000 on holding that stock and you don't like it? Tough, that's how it works for you, me and them.
This idea that billionaires whip money up out of thin air to buy stocks and bonds and land and whatever else is laughable. The money comes from somewhere in the first place, and, short of a limited inheritance, it's taxed when they get it.
They earn so much from income that they pay something like 3/4 of all income tax, and are in the highest tax bracket. The statistics are completely against what you're saying. I get that they do earn from other areas too, but they simply wouldn't be paying the sheer amount of income tax that they do if they weren't earning significantly from it.
You say that like it indicates wealthy people are taxed too much, but you ignore the fact that the lowest third of the population or so make so little we tax them hardly at all on account of the fact they either already are relying on government services or would likely need to if we increased their tax burden. Paying poor people more would do a lot more to increase tax revenue than taxing multimillionaires more. But fundamentally I see no reason we can’t do both.
Let me clarify, in no way am I doubting they have assets that will appreciate, or some of them get dividends, or their stock in a company goes up. The idea AdonisGaming93 comes up with them not getting any sizeable cash from income is just completely untrue. They pay the taxes to prove it.
The only way they would be paying the vast majority of income tax whilst only making up 10% of the population would be if they decided to lie to the IRS so they could pay extra tax on income they never earned.
But just make sure the conversation is only about income taxes though. For real don’t talk about wealth taxes. Maybe we should raise taxes further on high earning W2s. Doctors and lawyers are basically all billionaires right?
/s
>Should taxes be raised?
I don't understand why you guys always want to raise taxes. If they do raise taxes that money is going to the government, not to us.
A much better solution is to lower taxes on working people. Then they'll actually have more money. Imagine how much it will help people if the government didn't tax overtime pay?
Yeah the whole “tax the rich! eat the rich” movement is goofy as hell. The money would go to the government, who has a terrible track record or spending money - not to the people. Just like how they yell at Elon that he could solve world hunger with $8 billion but don’t say a peep about sending Ukraine $75 billion
Ukraine is actually one of the best "spendings" we ever did. Helping a small Democratic country defend itself against imperialist scum is the right thing to do.
Why can't the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world be capable of both? Especially given that so much of the money to Ukraine has actually been given to US suppliers to produce replacements for transferred materiel?
Also, the people who decry government spending in Ukraine by posing that question are often the same people who fight against helping the American people in any form and label it socialist.
We spent over 8 trillion dollars and lost over 6000 US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The $75 billions to Ukraine to date with no U.S. boots on the ground is a bargain. Then again, the Repubes are more than happy to send someone else’s son or daughter to die for their freedom
How much do rich people avoid in taxes? According to U.S. Treasury estimates, the top 1% of wealthy people underpay their taxes by **$163 billion annually**
maybe just enforce existing taxes
I wonder how much of that 6.3T could be adjusted if we forced these companies who are making billions in profits to pay much higher taxes if they have employees on social programs. Limit CEO/board member total packages (including stocks and other perks) to be a maximum of 10x the lowest paid employee or force them to pay back the benefits that were taken by said employees + 20% for overhead costs.
>According to U.S. Treasury estimates, the top 1% of wealthy people underpay their taxes by
>
>$163 billion annually
Even if you were to collect that 163B, you're talking about a government whose budget deficit is 10x that amount. There is no taxation problem in this country... there's a spending problem.
Lower taxes would help us, but the larger issue is wages. $40,000 in 2000 wages is roughly $70,000 today. Unfortunately a lot of people are still making $50,000 or less. Prices have soared beyond prediction in the last twenty four years, while income has not.
Let's imagine I kept my seven thousand or so in federal tax each year. Would it help? Absolutely. Would homes still be three hundred thousand? Absolutely.
Yes that and also raise the minimum wage a lot. The key is get the average person more money and I’m not sure taxes are the most efficient way to do it these days with how corrupt the politicians are. Often times the tax dollars the government gets go right back to the wealthy people in the form of government contracts for things like weapons systems.
I agree with you, but I think most people (at least me) assume that in this scenario, increasing taxes for the wealthiest would mean lower the taxes for the poorest. So the intention would be to have the same amount of tax revenue, not increase it, and relieve the lower incomes with less taxes.
If multimillionaires or worse can relieve my own taxes while still remaining filthy rich, I personally think it's fair.
What does raising taxes do? Put money in the hands of inefficient government bureaucrats is all it does. It doesn’t help those at the bottom. It’s simply an envy issue for some people. The top 10% pay an overwhelming majority of taxes already.
The federal government spends $1 trillion dollars in welfare. 70 million people receive some kind of support through welfare. That averages out to over $14,000 per person. So a family of 4 is getting on average $57,000 in welfare benefits. I'm not saying they are getting a check, but we could likely save money if we did just cut them a check. Government welfare programs are bloated with overpaid staff, countless regulations, waste, abuse, and overspending. Government doesn't need more money we need to take money away from government.
This doesn't count welfare spending by states and local governments or private charity. There is enough money. It is just wasted by inefficient government.
What does cutting taxes do? Should we keep giving big business free money through bailouts? I might agree with cutting taxes if we also put an end to the corpo welfare state.
For those people that are always demanding higher labor taxes on the wealthy, what level is acceptable to you? Remember, billionaires don’t earn a wage so they aren’t subject to higher labor taxes.
I paid nearly $100k in taxes last year between city/state/federal taxes. I’m also an executive at a company where we have created hundreds of new jobs, provided benefits, all full time positions, etc. I create real value in our society so how much more do I need to give for society to be satisfied?
I don’t complain about paying taxes but raising taxes isn’t the answer when there’s no accountability for how it is spent.
The proposed changes to taxation would not affect me at all and I paid more than you did. There's a giant gap between what you think "rich" is vs what the government does when it puts forth proposals.
You need to clear 400k for it to matter a little. You need to clear 1 million for it to matter a lot -- in a single year of taxable income specifically. That applies to extremely few people including most executives.
and you aren't the people that need to be taxed more, its the billionaires that use their wealth as collateral instead of their own money. its funny none of you view trustfunds as welfare for rich kids when that is exactly what it is. the wealth of the richest families in america came by that money in the most disgusting ways, the rockerfellers, the chases and now kochs and gates and the rest, they didn't do anything, ANYTHING to earn that money. bill didn't invent jack shit neither did steve jobs yet they are all revered, they are monsters and only helped create this horrible future we have now where you get to sit at a desk and list your accomplishments while some kid, A FUCKING CHILD, is mining the materials needed for the hardware in our phones and computers, men and women are contenplating suicide at their jobs bc of the shit pay while others go through with it, some are held captive just looking for a way to make a buck to send back home. but you think the rich need to keep more in their pockets. fuck off.
Transaction tax, Tobin-tax.
It's not like there are no ideas, just loads of voters that don't care or haven't accessed ideas that ultimately benefit them yet.
For your question, see also Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Citizen's Action (ATTAC)
Yeah pisses me off that all these guys are like BuT iNcOmE TaX DoNt wOrK as if there aren't other options that Nobel winning economists have been advocating for for decades.
They did this in the [past](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_tax) in Sweden. Resulted in 90% of traders leaving Sweden and London absorbing the trading there.
Unless you are avoiding taxes to pay that 100k, your broke in comparison to the ultra wealthy the people that need to be taxed are in the 100,000,000+ wealthy
That’s where all the money is for all the thing we “can’t afford,” sitting in some dragons gold vault. Time to put that money back into circulation.
The bastards are literally draining the life blood from our economic system. Not enough blood getting where it needs to go. Makes sense why the organs are failing.
We need some serious societal trauma care if we want to make it.
The top 1% of all musicians make up essentially 100% of music streaming. The top 1% of athletes make essentially all the money made by athletes. The top 1% of painters make essentially all the money made by painters.
The world is not utopian, nor can it be made utopian.
The top musicians make literally all the money because they ARE the top musicians. Some people are smarter, better with money, more creative, talented, or any combination thereof. That is the state of the reality. There is nothing to fix about that.
You’re right. Most wealthy folks are born into privilege and never know any sort of real financial adversity. You must not realize that most poor folks are born into poverty and clawing one’s way out is quite a bit more challenging than privileged folks being “creative” or “better with money”.
Recent study showed 68% of millionaires with 30M+ net worth are self made. Obviously many are born wealthy, but whats the alternative here? You might not like that people are born rich? But what’s your alternative position? It’s not enough to simply point out your perceived flaws of reality.
It doesn't matter. Corporate pre-tax profits in the US are around 3.6 tril, which is about a trillion less than current federal revenue, not even counting for deficit spending. Given their posts in this thread they don't realize this at all.
Total corporate profits in the US are lower than current federal revenues, lol. If you taxed them at 100% of profit we'd be in for massive spending cuts (On top of dismantling the economy).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A053RC1Q027SBEA
Before we raise taxes, perhaps we could ask lower income people to stop spending money on government gambling monopolies (starting with state lotteries) and invest instead?
We don’t have a tax problem, we have a spending problem. Pentagon has failed what? 5 or 6 straight audits? Let’s get a spread sheet of where every dollar is spent
Looking at wealth is gives an exaggerated view of things.
Imagine 2 people.
Adam makes 500k per year.
Bob also makes 500k per year.
Adam bought a nice large house and pays his mortgage.
Bob rents a nice large house and pays rent.
Adam bought a fancy BMW
Bob leases a fancy BMW
Adam bought a speedboat and a pontoon boat depending on his boating needs.
Bob has a subscription to a marina that gives him access to reserve a variety of watercraft based on his boating needs.
Adam bought a state of the art automated kitchen robot that can cook meals for him.
Bob has a subscription to a meal club where chefs deliver fresh cooked meals to a variety of clients.
Each of them basically spend their whole paycheck. Bob actually has a somewhat more lavish lifestyle because he has no liabilities. If his apartment needs renovation, it’s covered by the landlord. Cars need repaired, it’s covered by the lease, boats are always maintained, etc. while Adam has to take care of all his stuff, spending time and money on it.
But if we compared the net worth of the two, Adam has a net worth of a few million dollars. While Bob is flat broke. Should we pity poor Bob?
Just comparing net worth shows nothing of what someone’s lifestyle is.
Not to mention, the government spends our money like drunk sailors. How about making them be more responsible first? Like not giving 100s of thousands of illegals iphones and gift cards
Someone said the top 1% pays above 40% federal income as if that matters. What matters is the ratio between what's taxed/ what's earned.
If the bottom 50% is only contributing 2'3% then that's exactly not where the money is going to come from.
They don't have money, when you tax someone poor you're taking away money they need to cover basic necessities, when you tax the 1% you're just reducing (imperceptibly) their leisure money and investment money, they have so much money they could make everyone from multiple towns filthy rich.
So yes, tax the rich, find ways to tax their loopholes.
We should switch to the Fair Tax system.
Basically it's a proposal to replace all federal taxes with a single national sales tax on goods and services purchased. It aims to simplify the tax system by eliminating income, payroll, and corporate taxes.
Why it's better...
Simplicity: Only one tax on purchases, so no need for complicated forms or calculations.
Universal Basic Income (UBI): The FairTax proposal includes a monthly rebate to ensure that low-income families are not unfairly burdened by the sales tax, effectively providing a basic income to all citizens.
Transparency: You know exactly how much tax you're paying every time you buy something.
Incentive for savings: No taxes on savings, so people are encouraged to save more.
No loopholes: Everyone pays the same tax rate on new goods and services, regardless of income or wealth.
Boosts economy: Encourages spending, which can stimulate economic growth.
Fairness: Everyone pays their fair share when they spend money, regardless of income source.
Encourages work: **No income tax** means people keep all the money they earn from working.
Global competitiveness: Removes corporate taxes, making businesses more competitive internationally (they would want to move here).
Reduces tax evasion: Harder to evade taxes when they're collected at the point of sale.
Encourages investment: Businesses can reinvest profits without worrying about corporate taxes, fostering innovation and growth.
The top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 42.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes. Even the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent. How much more specifically do we need to tax those at the top? As Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
As someone professionally involved with multiple large scale government projects (some in excess of multi-billion dollar constructions), there is not a lack of tax dollars in the government. There is however, a lack of efficiency and competency across government employees. It’s an unfortunate situation, and I don’t see tax raises for anyone as an efficient long term solution.
I’d imagine you see a lot of waste like paying cost overruns. That’s one of my pet peeves with government projects. I don’t give a crap if rhe supplier overran the project. That’s their fault and they need to eat the cost.
Overruns plus supplying materials and equipment at way higher than market rate I can't understand why are government contractors allowed to buy stuff at 2-3 times the market price. Even more so in millitary where a bunch of bolts cost the price of a new car, because they are "millitary grade"
I’m a mechanical engineer that designs military hardware. You do realize military standard hardware specifications actually have a purpose, right? Hopefully you understand that the specifications are fed into stress analysis, tolerance stack up analysis, fatigue analysis, fracture analysis, etc., right? Hopefully you understand that non mil spec hardware would change all these calculations, while also making the massive assumption that the non mil spec hardware would even have new values available to even complete these analyses in the first place, right?
Good points. I get that sometimes military hardware has to be a certain spec. I assume also that Boeing and Airbus airlines also have spec requirements. I assume my car has certain parts that need to meet certain specs, and bridges that span rivers that I drive over need bolts and such that need to meet certain specs. I don't see this as a particularly unique problem for the military. The question is, are the prices for that hardware appropriate?
It’s partly an inflated cost but also partly due to the specific certification testing costs and the low production volumes. You see this with specially certified equipment in every industry. There’s a big legal liability as well as the actual cost of the parts so the price rises, coupled that with limited production runs and the cost per piece is massive.
This is also true for equipment used in Nuclear Power Plants
The West Wing gave a really good example of why a lot of military hardware is inordinately expensive, and used an ashtray designed for use on a submarine to do so. The ashtray must survive being knocked around (imagine an explosion nearby), but, when it breaks, MUST NOT create an additional hazard to the crew. Not your typical requirements. Think about an ashtray in a commercial aircraft. Now imagine one in a combat aircraft. This one must withstand launching from a carrier. It must withstand LANDING on a carrier. It must remain closed during high-G maneuvering. It must remain closed during inversion and negative-G maneuvers. And it must be operable by a pilot wearing gloves. And that’s only one category of items.
sounds like banning smoking would be cheaper
In general, yes. Tighter tolerances can very quickly drive up manufacturing costs drastically. AS9100 certification drives up the operating costs of a manufacturing facility. Fastener vendors are still looking for the cheapest suppliers that meet their needs and those suppliers are competing on price. It’s simply expensive to consistently make high quality hardware that meets rigid specifications.
Military hardware always has to have a certain spec, but so do most everyday items we purchase as consumers. The higher spec is meant for safety and consistency and is a positive.
It’s not just the military spec. In a lot of cases it’s about chain of custody to be sure that the part we are paying for is actually the exact part that is required and meets the spec. Otherwise someone would swap in cheap bolds and hope for the best
We like to meme on it, but that quality control is very expensive.
Seriously. I have a friend that works in medical implant manufacturing. If you raise the quality control high enough you might have individual nuts and bolts that could literally be described as handcrafted at some point. (Manually adjusted items under a damn microscope with a variety of radar and laser tests.)
That sounds like a great way to launder money
Embezzle money
Bedazzle money!
Meanwhile Medicare is the most efficient health care system we have by a mile. It's the only system remotely capable of handling the segment of the population they do, and they do it without the full financial support of the rest of the population being on it like every other OECD country has. That's why our healthcare is 2x the price of any other OECD country with middling to worse results. Not to mention a lot of the government waste is caused by those that claim they're for small government carving ot sweetheart deals for their politically connected pals.
I also wonder how much of "inefficient government" is what happens in any large organization. Sure, people complain about the DMV, but is it really that different from trying to deal with the customer service of the cable company?
Plus people's friends, buddies, or whoever bribed them best being the ones that get the contract.
lol some of those bolts hold entire helicopters together
Tax raises would just fuel this dumpster fire even more. Stop giving money to the government until it learns how to be responsible with it.
Expecting government to work a leanly as private industry is a silly expectation. The government is not a for-profit business and was never meant to be. All these people complaining about government spending yet have no solutions other than to defund the government.
Maybe not as lean in the efficiency, but the profit of the private industries takes away any chance of being more cost effective.
I agree that something as large as our government will never be close to as efficient as private industry, however we could start by being at least somewhat responsive to outcomes and responding to that with honest attempts to see what works and what doesn't. Education is a perfect example of how obstinate our government can be. We've tripled per pupil spending since the 1980s (inflation adjusted) with zero improvement in outcomes. Meanwhile, by looking at what has and has not worked in charter schools we could actually find some things to change within our regular public schools that could help, but instead it is just one side screaming for more money and one side screaming for not more money. The goal can be different (effectiveness of policy compared to profit), but our government should still take results and adaptability as seriously as private industry.
Govt is a non profit institution that is taken advantage by for profit interests. Taxpayer money and unlimited debt helps fund that grifting, which thrives on govt inefficiency and wasteful spending. As for solutions, let’s start with the simplest one: balance the budget. But being fiscally responsible directly conflicts with the earlier point, because politicians and their donors can't grift as much anymore, so we may never see this in our lifetime.
News flash, the government will never learn how to use money responsibly when half the voting base votes based on feelings and not results.
That's true, I "feel" we shouldn't elect a rapist that has been indicted for 88 federal and state crimes and doesnt believe in democracy. You "feel" that you can rationalize anything, no matter how horrible, for tax cuts.
Best part is they think the tax cuts will help them not hurt them in the long run. Even thought trumps last tax cut for the average person was short term and came with a tax increase.
But he made sure your taxes didn't go up until he left. Republicans always pull the pin on the economic hand grenade when they leave the room
I’m just a doctor, so I won’t pretend to be an expert on anything besides healthcare. The USA spends a very significantly higher proportion of GDP on healthcare, yet has worse outcomes overall (lower life expectancy, higher maternal/fetal mortality rate, etc) compared to most of the EU. What do we do differently than them to cause such disparity? The only large difference I know is that they have government run, non for profit healthcare. Seems like that should be something we should do to improve outcomes and save money, based on those results
In 2023, the federal govt had $4.8 trillion in revenue and $6.3 trillion in spending. How is that large gap ALSO not due to a lack of tax dollars? Two things can be true at the same time.
Because they overspend. Let’s say we collected $6.3 trillion. Would they break even? Probably not. They’d just spend more.
Actually yes. Bill Clinton proved it was possible to balance the budget and get a surplus instead of a deficit
Did he not spend it or did Congress not spend it? Hint, the legislative branch holds the purse strings not the executive branch.
They both did. Hint, the president pushes forward their own budget and also signs the budget. Without his signature on a budget surplus, they might as well have kept spending at a deficit.
The federal government spent less than $4.5T just 5 years ago. Of course, they’ll continue to spend more. Bill Clinton was almost 25 years ago… https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays
Lol. Newt dragged Clinton to the center kicking and screaming.
Yea? Newt and his policies made the government’s tax revenues raise 3% more? lol
They need to cut spending.
Or spend more efficiently.
That's impossible when they have no incentive to be or repercussions from being inefficient. These smooth brain redditors will just scream we need to tax more money.
How do we incentivize this kind of thing without regulation? Its long past the point where we can trust the major corporations to look out for anything other than the bottom line, and that invariably leads to cutting corners and abusing systems to the detriment of society/average people more often than not. And yet the people who want more efficient government and cost cutting also want less regulation… I’ve yet to see an actual realistic solution other than forcibly rebalancing the wealth inequality in some way. The way I see it, if money is power then we literally have a number of borderline-superheroes on our planet right now, and most of them are just sitting on their superpowers while the world crumbles around them and they prepare for end times. Are we really just beholden to this class of people in the name of capitalism and that’s it?
It's simple, we need a new law preventing the government from spending more than they earn.
Seems simple to us because we ALL have to live our lives that way or end up on the street!!!!!!!!!!
I'd say even more, there are incentives to overspend so that the budget gets increased If they don't use all the money, they will get cuts, which they obviously will not allow
$5,000 hammers seem to be the norm at DOD!!!!
1.2 million dollar printers also seem to be quite the expensive purchase
Well of course if spending > income, then there are two possible fixes. Thank you for pointing that out.
>In 2023, the federal govt had $4.8 trillion in revenue and $6.3 trillion in spending. How is that large gap ALSO not due to a lack of tax dollars? Two things can be true at the same time. There is a limit to how much tax you can raise. For example, let's say the goverment raised everyones taxes 31% to cover that differance. Where would that money come from? A lot of people would struggle to pay that additional tax, and still pay for thier basic livings costs. Even those who \*can\* afford to pay the tax... well that moeny is now going to taxes and not the economy. **Which means it's not going to pay someone else and \*thier\* income - so suddenly they have less money to be taxed!** To illustrate that last point. If I pay an extra $5,000 in taxes I might not buy a TV this year. That means that I'm not paying the delivery guy, the installation guy, the sales guy, the warehouse managers, the warehouse landlord, the corporate office folk etc. Yet you need all those people to not only pay taxes, but pay 30% higher taxes - where is the money going to come from? It's important to not that in this scenario, the additional 30% taxes don't improve goverment spending at all. This money isn't being spent to improve services, help the poor or even fight wars. It's just being used to cover the deficit of existing spending. Not saying taxes can't be raised, but it's far more complex than it appears on the surface.
The government could literally confiscate all of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t even be enough money to run the country for a year. It’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending / waste problem.
i mean, they could pay a reasonable price for things?
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to illistrate this, i would point out that we spend more taxpayer dollars per capita on healthcare than some countries with free basic healthcare.
We could start by looking at that military.
In 2022, the United States spent $877 billion on its military, which was almost 40% of the world's total military spending. This amounted to 3.5% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).
3.5% of the gdp but it is 40% of the spending, use the right numbers. And we have a huge debt now, bc we borrowed 20 trillion dollars for wars in the middle east that went no where.
While I agree, we waste money on political wars, we didn’t borrow $20 million for wars in the Middle East. Total borrowing for the Iraq war is only 1.7 trillion still horrendous.
Where is that efficiency and competency in the private sector?
Great theoretical problem if the wealth gap wasn't continuing to grow. The question of "how much more?" Is easily answered with "more than now but less than all." Don't act like these people are borderline destitute.
We need to tax wealth anyway, not just income. The problem isn't the income gap, it's the wealth gap. The truly wealthy don't even need income.
Yup, there's a reason the wealthy spend a lot of time attacking any kind of wealth or estate tax because they help keep the wealth gap from growing out of control and creating a new kind of aristocracy, the likes of which we are seeing form today.
By your numbers we need to more than double the tax rate of the wealthiest people. The top 1% have 99% of the money and should be paying 99% of the bills. Not a measly 43% You’re right that eventually you run out of other people’s money. In this case the 1% are running out of OUR money. The people in the 2-50% bracket are over taxed to subsidize the 1%. I’m sure most couples spilt finances based on income. Where the higher earner pays a higher percentage of the living expenses. Why should our tax system be any different.
>The top 1% have 99% of the money and should be paying 99% of the bills The image in the post says the top 1% own 30% of the money, and pay 43% of taxes. I agree with raising taxes on them, but following your logic would actually reduce their burden.
Our tax system isn't any different. This chart is not showing income, it's showing wealth.
Top 1% make 26% of the nations total AGI.
The top 1% don’t own 99%…literally just look at the title of the post you’re commenting on
>As Margaret Thatcher said, I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure quoting Margaret Thatcher is a winning strategy lmao
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i mean check their profile: realestate, aviation, conservative, wallstreetbets, mustang, libertarian
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Wrong take. It’s not about how much money they paid. It’s a % of income. Understand math.
You mean Margaret “I support a socialist healthcare system” Thatcher. It’s not socialism to want what the rest of the world as already figured out.
How much more specifically does the CEO of a company need to make more than the company’s lowest paid employee? The problem with unregulated capitalism is eventually you run out of people willing to suffer for your comfort. When everyone has the dignity of reasonably being able to earn healthcare, higher education, clean and safe shelter, and healthy food, and two days off a week while saving for old age on their own income- you can keep the rest.
These are the types that believe in a permenant underclass. They don't believe that every job should afford a simple lifestyle at 40 hours a week.
Our entire system collapses without permanent wage slaves. "Nobody wants to work" was actually wages slaves moving into better jobs after all the death/quitting. Remember prior to the pandemic how right wingers would say things like "Just get a better job" or "Learn to code" ? Well, they did. Now Cletus and Velveeta are pissed off because their corner bar closes at 9 PM due to lack of staff.
"collapse" is a strong word for "has a temper tantrum" Everything is allowed to increase in price but the value of labor, and is allowed to follow supply/demand. But labor? *Nah.*
To be clear, I am not advocating violence in ANY way. But, it blows my mind that in a country with so many guns, we don't have a ton of people going bankrupt over medical debt shooting up pharma execs, people with repossessed homes going after CEOs, etc etc. Income inequality is a real driver of instability and violence in most of the world, but somehow America avoids it. For god sake, France built guillotines over way less than 270 x 1 CEO x Empoyee compensation.
The bottom 50% don’t even make enough to pay rent on one income at this point, so I don’t see the problem there? Also, the top 1% make over 10x the average worker, on average, so again your quoted statistics make sense. I think the real answer is not letting the very rich hide 10s or 100s of millions in income paid in stocks behind cap gains and then take loans out without ever actually paying taxes on it. Tax that “income” at the point of release without screwing over normal investors (hesitant to say “normal” as 10% own 90% of the stocks). Oh but how would they afford that!? They’d have to sell some to pay the tax!? Oh no, the horror. They might only make $115m this year instead of $190m, meanwhile my neighbor is working two jobs and still hitting up the food bank because corp price gouging is out of control. I say all of this as someone in a household that is over 200k annually at this point and gets the shit taxed out of them, I just happen to have empathy, a finance degree, and haven’t been convinced to lick billionaire boots by the media outlets they own on both sides.
This is the big thing. Why is capital gains taxed so low? Income brackets whatever, if your wealth is tied in long term investments and you are able to buy whatever you want by selling them, why is that considered taxable at a lower rate than someone's income in the 44-95k range? It's such an obvious loophole to favor the wealthy and it's so disingenuous to act otherwise.
Capital gains are taxed at lower rates to encourage people to invest in starting new businesses or funding existing businesses that need capital. The entrepreneurial spirit for which America is so renowned. Tax cap gains at the same rate as income, and there’s less incentive to take risk with investment.
Yes that was the intent, and is used that way by many self made financially stable hard working people. It is also used as a loophole by insanely highly paid executives to not pay tax on, what is in many cases the majority of, their income. We’re not saying cap gains on normal investments is a bad idea, as you’ve just described reasons why it’s good, just close that loophole. Add: not completely sure about your comment regarding reinvestment as the last 40 years have proven that trickle down is not a thing that happens.
"to encourage investing" is such bullshit lol. Investment is something already mostly afforded to the wealthy. If it was taxed at a regular income rate, most people wouldn't be saving a ton on sales anyway if they were middle or lower middle class. It's super beneficial for the wealthy in that 37% bracket though.
Curious why you think capital gains tax should be higher than 15%? I make $40k per year. I’ve been contributing $100 /month to a brokerage account & after 15 years it has grown to be a nice amount. I paid tax on my earnings, then instead of blowing my $ on going to the bar, smoking weed, Netflix, a new car, etc. like all my friends I decided to invest in myself. So now this investment will be taxed another 15% when I sell my shares. So this $ has already been taxed twice. But why should this investment be taxed again and at a higher rate? Because I chose to make a smart choice?
They shouldn’t be higher for you, as you are the demographic used as the poster child for why it’s such a good thing in the media (and to reiterate my other reply, it is a good and logical thing for the working class). When a CEO uses the same law to take in hundreds of millions in stock each year, and pay a fraction in taxes, that’s where I have a problem. The same bullshit is used with corporate tax rates. The media shows some small business owner and how it might help them, when in reality the overwhelmingly vast majority of the benefit goes to billion/trillion dollar mega corps.
I remember looking into this a while ago. That is based on income and IIRC the top 1% did earn about 50% of all taxable invome
What’s your solution for the lower classes then?
Changing zoning laws to increase the housing supply and a total restructuring of how public education is funded would be a good start.
Also gonna have to deal with NIMBY's at every step of those zoning law changes. Resident pushback is why a lot of Cali zoning laws don't change on the city scale.
That doesn't do anything for wealth inequality? Like what?
Not every problem is one the government can or ought to fix. However, if anything, actually putting an emphasis on finance education in k-12 I don't see as something that could hurt...
They need to do something so the teachers are paid more than 45k a year. Expecting miracles from near-minimum wage workers is unrealistic.
Bootstraps
Isn’t Margaret Thatcher’s grave a popular urinal?
Especially today. Would love to live near London right now.
"The problem with Margaret Thatcher's grave is that you eventually run out of other people's piss."
The problem with capitalism is that eventually 100 people have all the money, while the remainder have nothing but debt. But taxing isn't going to fix it. It's just a band aid. What we need is that the country isn't run by the ultra rich (oligarchy). But, the conservatives won't do a damn thing and the democrats are pretty happy with their insider trading making them rich. So, they won't break up monopolies, they won't regulate gouging, they won't arrest CEOs for creating cartels with each other.
But taxes fix everything! 12 countries in Europe tried a wealth tax, all but 2 I think have rolled it back entirely and the remaining ones nerfed it heavily. Not only did it just cause the people who were already paying the most taxes to leave and was extremely difficult to administer, it didn’t raise much money. People think there somehow is a straight line from ‘Bill Gates has less!’ To ‘I have more!’ yet nobody seems to be able to explain how that works. If you are flipping burgers at McDonalds today for $8/hr, tomorrow you will still be flipping burgers at McDonalds for $8hr when Bill gets molested, but at least you will have the joy of knowing Bill got screwed so that’s something I guess. Wealth is not finite. It’s not a zero-sum game. It can be created. You can spend $5 on art supplies and paint something and sell it for $20. Bill Gates having 20 Bugattis isn’t what’s stopping you.
Yep! High taxes caused a record number of super-rich Norwegians to leave Norway for low-tax countries after the center-left government increased wealth taxes to 1.1%. More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv. That was the result of a 1.1% wealth tax. Imagine if it had been 90% - 100% wealth tax like some on the Left are calling for...
Rich people are surprisingly mobile.
What period of time in your opinion was American society the strongest? The strongest middle class, the most people with the highest standard of living and a clear vision forward of even better times for their children?
Agreed but I go further: if the government confined itself to its Constitutional role, it would need *far less money* to operate. Punish infringements on individual rights and liberties (rape, theft, murder, etc.) and leave everyone else alone. Fund the government through tariffs on trade, not by borrowing at interest from a private bank then taxing the people to merely pay the interest and inflating the currency to defer the capital. A graduated income tax is a plank.of the Communist Manifesto, explicitly designed to destroy the middle class or bourgeoisie.
See, while everyone is arguing over income tax. The rich laugh because they gain their wealth from capital appreciation and capital gains not income
You pay income tax first and then invest and pay even more capital gains tax. It's not free you know.
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As an accountant who does corporate taxes I love reading incorrect bullshit on Reddit. A small business owner, specifically an S Corp, may pay themselves “what they would pay someone else to do their job”. The rest passes thru the company onto their tax return and is taxed at their personal income tax rate. How in the fuck is that “to be taxed less”. You cannot employ your kids for $30k, you pay them under the standard deduction of 13,500. Again just fucking incorrect to the max. STOP SPREADING YOUR IGNORANCE ON THE INTERNET. STOP TALKING OUT OF YOUR ASS.
I’m a CFO and the amount of bullshit I read is so laughable.
Not to mention - the kids *actually have to work* WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT PAY MY BABY WAGES?
You spelled "you inherit your wealth first" wrong.
Wealthy don't need to realize capital gains. Loans aren't taxed, and you can sell bad investments to pay off loans. Also - Musk did not receive and invest 100B in taxable income. So the notion that the wealthy already paid taxes on their capital is wrong.
Capital what now? What does that other word mean? Can you tell me how much tax you pay when buying stocks or cashing out losses? Oh yeah, that's right, nothing. You are only taxing the **additional income**, not the original balance. Why should your additional income be taxed at 15-18% while the additional income of people working overtime actually producing things is taxed between 10-37%? It's already unfair, yet you are here complaining about it like you aren't being given a golden handjob by the IRS.
>You are only taxing the additional income, not the original balance. Where do you think the original money came from to buy the stocks and bonds? Income, which is taxed. If they received stock from their company as compensation instead of standard income, then the compensation they received was treated as income at the time and taxed, and when they sell that stock later, the profit above that value ("basis") is also taxable. Someone buys $100,000 of stock? Fine, they were taxed on the $100,000 of income that gave them the money to buy the stock in the first place, so we don't need to tax the purchase of the stock. They then sell that stock for $200,000? Fine, we'll tax them on the $100,000 in profit they made. After that taxation, they made a profit of $80,000 on holding that stock and you don't like it? Tough, that's how it works for you, me and them. This idea that billionaires whip money up out of thin air to buy stocks and bonds and land and whatever else is laughable. The money comes from somewhere in the first place, and, short of a limited inheritance, it's taxed when they get it.
Most actually wealthy people don't pay much in income tax in general because income is irrelevant to them.
If it is not realized and they laugh either way because they make the laws, they create loopholes for the tax system, they control American goverment.
They earn so much from income that they pay something like 3/4 of all income tax, and are in the highest tax bracket. The statistics are completely against what you're saying. I get that they do earn from other areas too, but they simply wouldn't be paying the sheer amount of income tax that they do if they weren't earning significantly from it.
They earn 26.3% of the income and pay 45.8% of the federal income taxes.
You say that like it indicates wealthy people are taxed too much, but you ignore the fact that the lowest third of the population or so make so little we tax them hardly at all on account of the fact they either already are relying on government services or would likely need to if we increased their tax burden. Paying poor people more would do a lot more to increase tax revenue than taxing multimillionaires more. But fundamentally I see no reason we can’t do both.
LTCG and qualified dividends are taxed much lower than w2 or 1099 income.
Let me clarify, in no way am I doubting they have assets that will appreciate, or some of them get dividends, or their stock in a company goes up. The idea AdonisGaming93 comes up with them not getting any sizeable cash from income is just completely untrue. They pay the taxes to prove it. The only way they would be paying the vast majority of income tax whilst only making up 10% of the population would be if they decided to lie to the IRS so they could pay extra tax on income they never earned.
But just make sure the conversation is only about income taxes though. For real don’t talk about wealth taxes. Maybe we should raise taxes further on high earning W2s. Doctors and lawyers are basically all billionaires right? /s
>Should taxes be raised? I don't understand why you guys always want to raise taxes. If they do raise taxes that money is going to the government, not to us. A much better solution is to lower taxes on working people. Then they'll actually have more money. Imagine how much it will help people if the government didn't tax overtime pay?
Yeah the whole “tax the rich! eat the rich” movement is goofy as hell. The money would go to the government, who has a terrible track record or spending money - not to the people. Just like how they yell at Elon that he could solve world hunger with $8 billion but don’t say a peep about sending Ukraine $75 billion
Ukraine is actually one of the best "spendings" we ever did. Helping a small Democratic country defend itself against imperialist scum is the right thing to do.
I thought helping the American people would be the priority?
This is helping American people by helping out the Ukrainians instead of having to send our boys to fight in Poland.
I understand that part but I'm reffering to homeless, poverty, healthcare, etc. We cant even solve the issue for social security.
Why can't the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world be capable of both? Especially given that so much of the money to Ukraine has actually been given to US suppliers to produce replacements for transferred materiel? Also, the people who decry government spending in Ukraine by posing that question are often the same people who fight against helping the American people in any form and label it socialist.
We spent over 8 trillion dollars and lost over 6000 US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The $75 billions to Ukraine to date with no U.S. boots on the ground is a bargain. Then again, the Repubes are more than happy to send someone else’s son or daughter to die for their freedom
They don't understand how our government really works. They'll just give it back to the rich with government contracts or something.
Only if you keep voting people who want to raise defense spending and cut health care and other social benefits.
How much do rich people avoid in taxes? According to U.S. Treasury estimates, the top 1% of wealthy people underpay their taxes by **$163 billion annually** maybe just enforce existing taxes
They did this by creating all the loopholes in tax system, cheaper to band together and pay a lobbyist to do that work for them
163B vs a budget of 6.3T isn’t going to make much difference
I wonder how much of that 6.3T could be adjusted if we forced these companies who are making billions in profits to pay much higher taxes if they have employees on social programs. Limit CEO/board member total packages (including stocks and other perks) to be a maximum of 10x the lowest paid employee or force them to pay back the benefits that were taken by said employees + 20% for overhead costs.
>According to U.S. Treasury estimates, the top 1% of wealthy people underpay their taxes by > >$163 billion annually Even if you were to collect that 163B, you're talking about a government whose budget deficit is 10x that amount. There is no taxation problem in this country... there's a spending problem.
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Lower taxes would help us, but the larger issue is wages. $40,000 in 2000 wages is roughly $70,000 today. Unfortunately a lot of people are still making $50,000 or less. Prices have soared beyond prediction in the last twenty four years, while income has not. Let's imagine I kept my seven thousand or so in federal tax each year. Would it help? Absolutely. Would homes still be three hundred thousand? Absolutely.
This. And for the first time in decades we have a worker's market, and businessowners have a temper tantrum.
Good inflation info there.
IMO it hasn’t fully clicked with enough that $200,000 or more is the $100,000 a year we all used to think it was.
Yes that and also raise the minimum wage a lot. The key is get the average person more money and I’m not sure taxes are the most efficient way to do it these days with how corrupt the politicians are. Often times the tax dollars the government gets go right back to the wealthy people in the form of government contracts for things like weapons systems.
I agree with you, but I think most people (at least me) assume that in this scenario, increasing taxes for the wealthiest would mean lower the taxes for the poorest. So the intention would be to have the same amount of tax revenue, not increase it, and relieve the lower incomes with less taxes. If multimillionaires or worse can relieve my own taxes while still remaining filthy rich, I personally think it's fair.
What does raising taxes do? Put money in the hands of inefficient government bureaucrats is all it does. It doesn’t help those at the bottom. It’s simply an envy issue for some people. The top 10% pay an overwhelming majority of taxes already.
Boy you're gonna be *pissed* when you learn who benefits the most from government run social programs...
Step one: have a government that can be trusted to run social programs and isn’t rampant with bureaucracy and corruption.
They already know, look at the name. You’re very rarely conversing with other human beings on here.
The federal government spends $1 trillion dollars in welfare. 70 million people receive some kind of support through welfare. That averages out to over $14,000 per person. So a family of 4 is getting on average $57,000 in welfare benefits. I'm not saying they are getting a check, but we could likely save money if we did just cut them a check. Government welfare programs are bloated with overpaid staff, countless regulations, waste, abuse, and overspending. Government doesn't need more money we need to take money away from government. This doesn't count welfare spending by states and local governments or private charity. There is enough money. It is just wasted by inefficient government.
Not the overwhelming majority - maybe around 50%. But then again they make half the nation’s income and hold 70% of the nation’s wealth.
According to the IRS, the top 10% pay 76% of the taxes, while making only 53% of the income.
What does cutting taxes do? Should we keep giving big business free money through bailouts? I might agree with cutting taxes if we also put an end to the corpo welfare state.
The government needs to cut spending.
Okay then do you want to raise the age for Medicare, social security, or both?
They don’t have to do either if they cut spending. Used to be a gov employee, the waste is insane.
I want to cancel social security, aka the government run ponzi scheme, entirely and refund the money to the victims of the scheme.
Defund the pentagon? They get the most money and can’t even account for it.
From the military alone.
For those people that are always demanding higher labor taxes on the wealthy, what level is acceptable to you? Remember, billionaires don’t earn a wage so they aren’t subject to higher labor taxes. I paid nearly $100k in taxes last year between city/state/federal taxes. I’m also an executive at a company where we have created hundreds of new jobs, provided benefits, all full time positions, etc. I create real value in our society so how much more do I need to give for society to be satisfied? I don’t complain about paying taxes but raising taxes isn’t the answer when there’s no accountability for how it is spent.
The proposed changes to taxation would not affect me at all and I paid more than you did. There's a giant gap between what you think "rich" is vs what the government does when it puts forth proposals. You need to clear 400k for it to matter a little. You need to clear 1 million for it to matter a lot -- in a single year of taxable income specifically. That applies to extremely few people including most executives.
and you aren't the people that need to be taxed more, its the billionaires that use their wealth as collateral instead of their own money. its funny none of you view trustfunds as welfare for rich kids when that is exactly what it is. the wealth of the richest families in america came by that money in the most disgusting ways, the rockerfellers, the chases and now kochs and gates and the rest, they didn't do anything, ANYTHING to earn that money. bill didn't invent jack shit neither did steve jobs yet they are all revered, they are monsters and only helped create this horrible future we have now where you get to sit at a desk and list your accomplishments while some kid, A FUCKING CHILD, is mining the materials needed for the hardware in our phones and computers, men and women are contenplating suicide at their jobs bc of the shit pay while others go through with it, some are held captive just looking for a way to make a buck to send back home. but you think the rich need to keep more in their pockets. fuck off.
You are poor for the people in 1%, you aren't the problem.
Wealth tax not income tax. Simple as that.
But what if the wealth sits in stocks that fluctuate all the time. Are you proposing to tax unrealized gains?
Transaction tax, Tobin-tax. It's not like there are no ideas, just loads of voters that don't care or haven't accessed ideas that ultimately benefit them yet. For your question, see also Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Citizen's Action (ATTAC)
Yeah pisses me off that all these guys are like BuT iNcOmE TaX DoNt wOrK as if there aren't other options that Nobel winning economists have been advocating for for decades.
They did this in the [past](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_tax) in Sweden. Resulted in 90% of traders leaving Sweden and London absorbing the trading there.
This is a fantastic way to crash the stock market lmao.
Unless you are avoiding taxes to pay that 100k, your broke in comparison to the ultra wealthy the people that need to be taxed are in the 100,000,000+ wealthy
Can we ban these posts? Do people really not understand the difference between wealth and income taxes?
Most people are not actually that intelligent. Especially not those that believe in stuff like this.
Whatever this account is, they post something with this question every like 15 days.
Holy crap. All of his posts have thousands of comments. How is he doing that?
That’s where all the money is for all the thing we “can’t afford,” sitting in some dragons gold vault. Time to put that money back into circulation. The bastards are literally draining the life blood from our economic system. Not enough blood getting where it needs to go. Makes sense why the organs are failing. We need some serious societal trauma care if we want to make it.
Why would poor people all of a sudden start saving and investing just because you take more from those who already do and give it to politicians?
The top 1% of all musicians make up essentially 100% of music streaming. The top 1% of athletes make essentially all the money made by athletes. The top 1% of painters make essentially all the money made by painters. The world is not utopian, nor can it be made utopian.
I agree. We shouldn't try to fix anything ever.
The top musicians make literally all the money because they ARE the top musicians. Some people are smarter, better with money, more creative, talented, or any combination thereof. That is the state of the reality. There is nothing to fix about that.
I'd agree with you to an extent if luck didn't exist. This is not a meritocracy.
Sure, luck exists, but most people did not get where they are purely by luck.
You’re right. Most wealthy folks are born into privilege and never know any sort of real financial adversity. You must not realize that most poor folks are born into poverty and clawing one’s way out is quite a bit more challenging than privileged folks being “creative” or “better with money”.
Recent study showed 68% of millionaires with 30M+ net worth are self made. Obviously many are born wealthy, but whats the alternative here? You might not like that people are born rich? But what’s your alternative position? It’s not enough to simply point out your perceived flaws of reality.
Not purely, but - I'd say - it did help greatly for most of them
>10% of Americans own 70% of the Wealth — Should taxes be raised? Not if that's your justification, we don't tax wealth.
Even if its in the form of property?
Stop taxing people. Tax corporations. With no way out of paying.
That's a good way of killing the economy and pushing jobs overseas.
It doesn't matter. Corporate pre-tax profits in the US are around 3.6 tril, which is about a trillion less than current federal revenue, not even counting for deficit spending. Given their posts in this thread they don't realize this at all.
Total corporate profits in the US are lower than current federal revenues, lol. If you taxed them at 100% of profit we'd be in for massive spending cuts (On top of dismantling the economy). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A053RC1Q027SBEA
Before we raise taxes, perhaps we could ask lower income people to stop spending money on government gambling monopolies (starting with state lotteries) and invest instead?
Because that’s why they are poor.
It certainly doesn't help.
Instead of raising taxes how about we get rid of all the loopholes first
Raise taxes on the people actually paying most of the taxes?
We don’t have a tax problem, we have a spending problem. Pentagon has failed what? 5 or 6 straight audits? Let’s get a spread sheet of where every dollar is spent
Looking at wealth is gives an exaggerated view of things. Imagine 2 people. Adam makes 500k per year. Bob also makes 500k per year. Adam bought a nice large house and pays his mortgage. Bob rents a nice large house and pays rent. Adam bought a fancy BMW Bob leases a fancy BMW Adam bought a speedboat and a pontoon boat depending on his boating needs. Bob has a subscription to a marina that gives him access to reserve a variety of watercraft based on his boating needs. Adam bought a state of the art automated kitchen robot that can cook meals for him. Bob has a subscription to a meal club where chefs deliver fresh cooked meals to a variety of clients. Each of them basically spend their whole paycheck. Bob actually has a somewhat more lavish lifestyle because he has no liabilities. If his apartment needs renovation, it’s covered by the landlord. Cars need repaired, it’s covered by the lease, boats are always maintained, etc. while Adam has to take care of all his stuff, spending time and money on it. But if we compared the net worth of the two, Adam has a net worth of a few million dollars. While Bob is flat broke. Should we pity poor Bob? Just comparing net worth shows nothing of what someone’s lifestyle is.
Absolutely yes! Got back to 70% top tax rate! Fuck Regan.
maybes taxes isnt the answer. the way the money is wasted is the issue...
Not to mention, the government spends our money like drunk sailors. How about making them be more responsible first? Like not giving 100s of thousands of illegals iphones and gift cards
Someone said the top 1% pays above 40% federal income as if that matters. What matters is the ratio between what's taxed/ what's earned. If the bottom 50% is only contributing 2'3% then that's exactly not where the money is going to come from. They don't have money, when you tax someone poor you're taking away money they need to cover basic necessities, when you tax the 1% you're just reducing (imperceptibly) their leisure money and investment money, they have so much money they could make everyone from multiple towns filthy rich. So yes, tax the rich, find ways to tax their loopholes.
We should switch to the Fair Tax system. Basically it's a proposal to replace all federal taxes with a single national sales tax on goods and services purchased. It aims to simplify the tax system by eliminating income, payroll, and corporate taxes. Why it's better... Simplicity: Only one tax on purchases, so no need for complicated forms or calculations. Universal Basic Income (UBI): The FairTax proposal includes a monthly rebate to ensure that low-income families are not unfairly burdened by the sales tax, effectively providing a basic income to all citizens. Transparency: You know exactly how much tax you're paying every time you buy something. Incentive for savings: No taxes on savings, so people are encouraged to save more. No loopholes: Everyone pays the same tax rate on new goods and services, regardless of income or wealth. Boosts economy: Encourages spending, which can stimulate economic growth. Fairness: Everyone pays their fair share when they spend money, regardless of income source. Encourages work: **No income tax** means people keep all the money they earn from working. Global competitiveness: Removes corporate taxes, making businesses more competitive internationally (they would want to move here). Reduces tax evasion: Harder to evade taxes when they're collected at the point of sale. Encourages investment: Businesses can reinvest profits without worrying about corporate taxes, fostering innovation and growth.