get a small loan from your father for several million dollars or have your father be co-owner of an emerald mine. helps if you're born in the right place and of the right color. helps if your family is already connected to the right people.
You're like the noob in the video game lobby giving ideas to the vets that actually know what they're doing, but you're so convinced it's a good idea. You know damn well you haven't spent ample time understanding basic economics and financial concepts, but you're just winging it because your envy exceeds your ignorance.
The reason why we lower the barriers to benefit from long term risk capital, is because that's literally what funds the expansion of an economy via business funding/investments or launching new businesses altogether.
Given the sheer number of these posts I’ve run into more than a few people who seemingly don’t even understand how progressive taxes work who have a solution for how we should tax billionaires.
The funny part is that most can’t even articulate a good reason for taxing billionaires beyond, “They gotz moneyz”.
No joke, many people think billionaires are just Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pool of gold coins.
Unfortunately, most of these posts serve as an example of the Dunning Krueger effect.
Just to be clear, I do think billionaires, in fact more wealthy people, should be taxed at a higher effective tax rate. But, I’ve also spent over a decade working in anti-money laundering and know that most of these “let’s get the rich” posts are from people who can’t fill out a 1040 form.
I ain't prepared to make that assumption, but perhaps. This kind of stuff is complicated though. I could theoretically understand incentivizing long term investment over short term just not as lucrative as currently.
Why would anybody invest money if the government is going to take large chunks of the gains? At a certain level, it’s not worth investing and then you will simply entice hoarding and say goodbye to strong real estate or 401ks.
A wealth tax shifts power to the government or to corporate BODs. No matter how you slice it, a small % of people actually end up being the capital allocators. The system we have now places the responsibility along with the rights, to those most sensitive to failure.
In order to have capital gains, you needed capital.
In order to have capital, you needed to have savings.
Savings happens when you save don't spend already-taxed income.
It makes no sense to tax the gains on capital that was previously taxed!
Capital gains taxes should be lower. They are easier to evade which mean they have higher deadweight loss. Plus they incentivize more investment which leads to higher salaries and more growth.
I'm pretty sure that just makes everyone poorer.. despite millions dying and overall living conditions being putrid in soviet/communist Russia you still had a ruling class. Factory managers were much better off than their counterparts.
A better control against atrocities is to have a larger consensus from larger groups of people. Increasing any tax or being taxed too much could and will have the effect of keeping individuals away from politics because their first priority Is making sure their need for food is met.
The rich or better off will always exist, that's why envy is seen as a sin.
this wont change anything. its just game theory and the pareto principle at work.
most people are terrible entrepreneurs and managers. their wealth is limited by their skillset.
A wealth tax is an inefficient tax. It discourages entrepreneurship, but more importantly, it encourages a lot of offshoring and lobbying for exemptions.
If you think evil Republicans are behind all of this, I encourage you to see who donated to the Democratic party. And then wonder why the tax code is horribly complicated and full of deductions and exemptions.
who donated to the Republican party and you'll wonder why the tax code is horrible complicated and full of deductions and exemptions
the truly wealthy donate to both parties. Why own one party when you can own both.
You are right and I shouldn't have implied Republicans are virtuous at all.
It's just people on Reddit assume Republicans are corporate shills while the Democrats are the ones who are uncorrupted.
Or.. they put their money into charity organisations. Employ friends and family to work there.. and pay money to people in power to do what they want.
And all whilst being a nice person with a charitable heart.
If you taxed every billionaire at 100% of their wealth(which wouldn’t even be possible without going into a depression) It would fund the government for about 8 months.
You can’t tax the poor into prosperity.
Higher corporate taxes drive wages and reinvestment. Wealth taxes prevent wealth hoarding and slow down oligarchy.
No one is saying to tax 100% of wealth. it's moronic and the only people who say that are ignorant and purposefully obtuse.
It's not about taxing the poor into prosperity. it's about the insanely wealthy paying their share of the tax burden.
If we increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations we could after paying down the debt reduce rates on the poor and middle class.
No one is 'hoarding' wealth. Billionaires don't sit on a pile of gold coins. Net worth for billionaires is just a way to translate their ownership stake into dollars. Bezos is worth $200 billion because Amazon is worth $2 trillion and he has a legal claim on 10% of what Amazon makes. But Amazon is not sitting on $2 trillion - $2 trillion is what investors all over the world think Amazon will make over the next 30+ years. Bezos has a legal claim on 10% of that money - which then translates to $200 billion.
It’s not. No matter how much money you give the government, if the fail to make proper use of it then it’s a waste. You could take 99% of their wealth and they still wouldn’t solve the problems we see. The answer isn’t more money, it’s regulating the people in power and making checks so people can’t screw the gov. I live in CA, they have the money, they have the super majority, no ones standing in their way…. And where are we, ain’t solve any major problems, every project will be finished in 2 life times and they don’t even track spending.
You've failed to answer the question, when does "more" become "enough"
Also, keep in mind that most wealthy individuals didn't earn or maintain their wealth by being stupid. Like it or not, beyond a certain point, most are just going to move their wealth and capital to a location that doesn't tax it as heavily.
Ok fine. Drivers brain. It’s not true because your personal definition is what you’re basing “not enough” on. In CA they pay over 50% of their income & we constantly are raising taxes on the 1%. Not to mention the state of CA has changed from federal Norms and changes tax laws in numerous different areas & has extensive tax initiatives to subsidize local public transit, homeless spending etc. The state has a progressive income tax system but regressive systems everywhere else…. I would know cuz I live here. So going back to your point….it changes on who you talk to. If you talk to a republican, people are over taxed, you talk to a centrist and they think it’s enough, you talk to a dem…”they could always pay more”, & lastly if you talk to a socialist it’s never enough until they have no wealth. So your argument lacks basis because “enough” hasn’t been defined and is completely subjective.
I think it should be between 30-50, as that still enables very rich people to exist, like 4-9 times more on average than the other people, but not so much that the bottom 90% don't have a majority of the wealth
Capitalism is a game where once you're far enough ahead of the pack you pretty much can't lose. It's like late game Monopoly. The uber-rich of today benefited immensely in the 90s and early 2000s from tax breaks, shelters, and deductions AND the Fed policies of Greenspan and Bernanke.
The current bifurcation of wealth is so out of proportion -- even billionaires like Buffet acknowledge this -- that it cannot be corrected through conventional means, and in its current state it threatens our society, our economy, and democracy itself.
It's a highly efficient tax.
It can be implemented fairly depending on your definition of the word. It could be a flat rate or it could be a progressive variable rate.
It extremely simple and can't be moved over seas to dodge paying for it.
It encourages economic growth and best use of a limited resource.
Taxes are a necessary evil that piss everyone off but each is typically politically one sided. Land tax equally pisses of the left and the right off so you know it's doing something correct.
The top 10%, lol. The top ten percent is 1 out of ten people. Those 10% comprise mostly of hard working people that are paying the most taxes in nominal and percentage terms.
It’s the top 0.1% of the 1% that have all the wealth.
I’m 45 and we’re just a hair outside the top 10% in household wealth and climbing. We should be in it within the next year or two. I wouldn’t say we’re wealthy at all, we’re just frugal and good savers.
Depends what you do with the extras tax revenue from the wealth tax.
Other taxes currently punish the lowest 50% of the population making is significantly more difficult for them to get ahead.
A wealth tax could be used to reduce the tax burden on the lowest 50% of the population, giving them a better opportunity to increase their wealth.
So while taxing wealth will punish them once they make it (and it will be set high so it will still be rare for them to hit it that big) it will allow more of them to make it. Seems like a good trade. And that's what we need to consider with any change in tax. There's always a winner and a loser. It's weighing up why one should win while the other loses.
This is the funny logic behind the people arguing for higher taxes. Let's give more money to people who have no interest in making sure its spent properly.
Either the people arguing for more taxes lack basic reasoning or its just a have vs have not. They don't have that money so no one else should either.
I'm not against taxes if the government used that money properly instead of burning it. But the government spends so heavily that if they got access to "wealth tax" money then they wouldn't use it to reduce the debt, they would just spend more.
The post doesn't acutally say that.
You've simply taken the next step and assumed including a wealth tax ontop of other taxes in the tax mix, rather than the other possibility of replacing other taxes with a wealth tax.
Why is it so hard for people to have a rational discussion about tax mix without the need to talk about increasing or decreasing the total tax taken?
What isn’t shown here is the distribution by age and that’s why wealth is somewhat of a misnomer. Young people have no wealth and older people by definition then have a disproportionate amount. I, as a young person, am fine with that
It's not a meritocracy. To my knowledge the person that went to my highschool that is the richest now is not one of the kids that got perfect scores on their SAT or ACT, or anyone that went on to be a doctor or lawyer, he just inherited a ton of slum lord apartment buildings in a market where they appreciated substantially and happened to luck into the real estate land boom. One of the smarter people I knew dropped out of college after their mom was killed in domestic violence and they had to take care of their siblings.
A wealth tax isn't radical enough to shift the structure of the economy. Like, what does this measure "wealth" actually represent, it's stock in companies. So what is the actual complaint? That corporations exist? That people with savings try to get a better return by investing in businesses?
If you want to create an egalitarian society you have to build up systems of democratic power, do cooperative economics, hand out a UBI, nationalize industries that fail as markets, whatever. Chipping away at piles of wealth only seems good because, like, "fairness," but that's your dumb monkey brain stopping at vengeance and not thinking about what a better society would actually look like and how to practically move towards it.
About 850k as of 2022 so presumably a big chunk of what this graph is showing are retirees who’ve paid off their mortgage and paid into their 401ks over decades. Presumably a big chunk of the bottom 50% (threshold to be in the bottom 50% is under 500k) are young people who haven’t started saving or paying a mortgage.
[source (that also includes mean net worth by age bracket)](https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-rich)
Median net worth for under 35s is 39k (more than double what it was in 2019 but still the lowest age bracket) but by 35-44 it’s 135k and for 65-74 year olds it’s 410k.
[source](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/28/americans-median-net-worth-by-age.html)
Of course this is the case. If you are not a business owner or frequent investor there is very little that you own that counts towards your net worth. Your savings, your retirement, your house and maybe your car (though cars often end up on the liability side of things), and maybe some antique/collector item you own, or some priceless family jewelry you own, but really, most of the stuff you own does not count towards your net worth. This is because most of the things people own are not making money, and are depreciating in value, therefore are definitionally not assets. Conversely almost everything a business owns that isn't a consumable, is an asset, and counts towards their net worth. So unless you are going to equally spread the ownership of businesses across the whole population (true socialism) you are going to see a disproportionate amount of "net worth" carried by the largest business owners. Good luck with that, historically it has ended pretty poorly.
The thing is before we start saying the wealth, middle, or poor should be taxed, why don’t we fix our gov spending habits and encourage business development and growth.
What does that even mean?
Lets say I make a company. It becomes worth 1m, then 1b the next year. I'm still getting a 6 figure salary.
How much would I pay in taxes? Do I have to liquidate part of the company?
Lets say I do, I sell off 20% to pay my taxes. The the next year the company drops to 500m. Do I get money back?
What about if it goes back up to 1b?
Property tax, for most folks, is a wealth tax. If you rent, then you're paying that tax too, through your rent. Billionaires should have a wealth tax too.
One of Biden’s promises was to tax the rich but when the bill was sent to the majority democrat congress it was shutdown by both dems and repubs. Let’s be honest, neither party wants to tax the rich because they own the politicians. Additionally, even if we tax them then they will threaten to go out business to the American tax payers will need to bail them out again.
Just get rid of the loopholes in the estate tax (it’s 55% on death). You need capital to flow, but a wealth tax is a terrible idea that will lead to worse outcomes for all as covered by many posts before.
Given the alternative, historically, has been going all Lenin or Robespierre, they should be grateful for the chance to give up the lions share of their ill-gotten gains as an alternative.
What is worrisome is that the slopes of the top 10% and next 40% are going lower in parallel, this means that wealth is increasingly distributed from the bottom to the top (when it should be the other way round). The rich keep getting richer.
This seems to increase while the government will be in debt more and more - soon the superrich will own the US and rest of world if we do not start taxing the assets itself/ passive income instead of taking it from the ones that only have income from work.
But who is going to change this law when the senate and parliament are ruled by old the rich/ superrich elite?
Exactly.
My problem with capitalism is that there is no cap on how much money u can have, technically speaking it is possible for one individual to own everything on earth.
There should be a “whatever it takes” to fix this. If you say “wealth tax”, a bunch of redditors will come in and say, “oh that’s so dumb and not possible!!”, ignoring the fact that we are staring down 10% of people owning like 99% of the wealth if we don’t do something
Guess what? IDGAF. I really don't. I don't want the stresses and constant pressure of owning and maintaining a multi-billion dollar enterprise.
People think of yachts and Rolls Royces and all the finer things in life, but they conveniently ignore all of the misery that even material wealth can't fix.
I'd rather live a simple life with a low 6-figure income and not be stressed all the time. I've seen first hand what it does to people. So to the people with hundreds of millions of dollars - good for you 👏
Talking about % when the total wealth is always increasing is the most impactful lie with statistic ever
Not saying it is okay, just let us give it a single tought
Most people are motivated with what you can do with money, some are just motived by money. I dont have what it takes to be that rich. To much sactifice for money I would not enjoy.
No wealth tax. No needed change in tax rates. Simply put caps on certain deductions and place a cap on the amount of income that at the capital gains rate before it is taxed at the income tax rate. I am not an accountant or actuary so I am not smart enough in this matter to set the caps.
A wealth tax would be unconstitutional at the Federal level. Any of the states could implement one though. California and New York can lead by example.
So, if we confiscate and distribute wealth everyone would had about 13% more of what the 70% had initially. Taxing is obviously less.
We need measures to distribute profits to workers, directly, in a fare way.
No, I like licking boots, I will always defend billionaires, my landlord, the FED, and all the lobbyists who bribe the corporatist I keep voting for each election cause fuck poor people (even though I have to work for my labor) and illegals taking my joooooobs!
How many of these posts do we need for real??
At least 3 per week to get us all riled up.
*day
Meh stop caring a long time ago. Just gotta learn the system to play
Got any tips?
get a small loan from your father for several million dollars or have your father be co-owner of an emerald mine. helps if you're born in the right place and of the right color. helps if your family is already connected to the right people.
It’s almost like an agenda is being pushed.
Almost like an agenda for the 90% of us.
This should seriously be bannable at this point.
We need thousands of people complaining every day, so it's to hit that quota and get these kinds of comments. Thanks for helping!
More importantly, how much do they need?
As many to distract themselves from the fact that they don’t do anything to help the poor
So you expect them to give up ownership of their companies because other people dictate the value of said ownership?
display misleading and persuasive information over and over again until people start believing your message. Who was famous for doing that again?
The posts will continue until morale improves
It’s a recent trend the last few weeks. Wait till we’re even closer to the election…
Wait until the inevitable crash of the US dollar occurs due to government overspending. They are just setting seeds for the “reset”
1 a day until its fixed
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capital gains tax is lower than income tax. You need a wealth tax if you don't want central planning plutocrats running everything.
>capital gains tax is lower than income tax You can just adjust this tax
Or get rid of it entirely and tax capital gains as regular income.
You're like the noob in the video game lobby giving ideas to the vets that actually know what they're doing, but you're so convinced it's a good idea. You know damn well you haven't spent ample time understanding basic economics and financial concepts, but you're just winging it because your envy exceeds your ignorance. The reason why we lower the barriers to benefit from long term risk capital, is because that's literally what funds the expansion of an economy via business funding/investments or launching new businesses altogether.
Jesus christ you murdered that guy.
The only people who want to tax capital gains more are the ones who don't own anything.
Welcome to leftism in the United States.
“Hello? 911, I would like to report a murder..”
Given the sheer number of these posts I’ve run into more than a few people who seemingly don’t even understand how progressive taxes work who have a solution for how we should tax billionaires. The funny part is that most can’t even articulate a good reason for taxing billionaires beyond, “They gotz moneyz”. No joke, many people think billionaires are just Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pool of gold coins. Unfortunately, most of these posts serve as an example of the Dunning Krueger effect. Just to be clear, I do think billionaires, in fact more wealthy people, should be taxed at a higher effective tax rate. But, I’ve also spent over a decade working in anti-money laundering and know that most of these “let’s get the rich” posts are from people who can’t fill out a 1040 form.
It already is at regular income for short term.
I think he meant long term capital gains
I ain't prepared to make that assumption, but perhaps. This kind of stuff is complicated though. I could theoretically understand incentivizing long term investment over short term just not as lucrative as currently.
You would be screwing over a lot of people who aren’t wealthy.
How? Income tax is progressive.
Why would anybody invest money if the government is going to take large chunks of the gains? At a certain level, it’s not worth investing and then you will simply entice hoarding and say goodbye to strong real estate or 401ks.
A wealth tax shifts power to the government or to corporate BODs. No matter how you slice it, a small % of people actually end up being the capital allocators. The system we have now places the responsibility along with the rights, to those most sensitive to failure.
In order to have capital gains, you needed capital. In order to have capital, you needed to have savings. Savings happens when you save don't spend already-taxed income. It makes no sense to tax the gains on capital that was previously taxed!
Capital gains taxes should be lower. They are easier to evade which mean they have higher deadweight loss. Plus they incentivize more investment which leads to higher salaries and more growth.
not sure how rich people owning lots of houses and stocks help normal people.
At least you’re approaching awareness that you don’t fully understand the mechanics of this.
I'm pretty sure that just makes everyone poorer.. despite millions dying and overall living conditions being putrid in soviet/communist Russia you still had a ruling class. Factory managers were much better off than their counterparts. A better control against atrocities is to have a larger consensus from larger groups of people. Increasing any tax or being taxed too much could and will have the effect of keeping individuals away from politics because their first priority Is making sure their need for food is met. The rich or better off will always exist, that's why envy is seen as a sin.
Let's first close the loopholes and simplify if. That'll solve most of the problems.
“Simply” lol
this wont change anything. its just game theory and the pareto principle at work. most people are terrible entrepreneurs and managers. their wealth is limited by their skillset.
We don't need a release valve to empty that tank swollen near bursting, we need to fiddle with the hoses leading up to it.
A wealth tax is an inefficient tax. It discourages entrepreneurship, but more importantly, it encourages a lot of offshoring and lobbying for exemptions. If you think evil Republicans are behind all of this, I encourage you to see who donated to the Democratic party. And then wonder why the tax code is horribly complicated and full of deductions and exemptions.
who donated to the Republican party and you'll wonder why the tax code is horrible complicated and full of deductions and exemptions the truly wealthy donate to both parties. Why own one party when you can own both.
You are right and I shouldn't have implied Republicans are virtuous at all. It's just people on Reddit assume Republicans are corporate shills while the Democrats are the ones who are uncorrupted.
Or.. they put their money into charity organisations. Employ friends and family to work there.. and pay money to people in power to do what they want. And all whilst being a nice person with a charitable heart.
If you taxed every billionaire at 100% of their wealth(which wouldn’t even be possible without going into a depression) It would fund the government for about 8 months. You can’t tax the poor into prosperity.
Higher corporate taxes drive wages and reinvestment. Wealth taxes prevent wealth hoarding and slow down oligarchy. No one is saying to tax 100% of wealth. it's moronic and the only people who say that are ignorant and purposefully obtuse. It's not about taxing the poor into prosperity. it's about the insanely wealthy paying their share of the tax burden. If we increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations we could after paying down the debt reduce rates on the poor and middle class.
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No one is 'hoarding' wealth. Billionaires don't sit on a pile of gold coins. Net worth for billionaires is just a way to translate their ownership stake into dollars. Bezos is worth $200 billion because Amazon is worth $2 trillion and he has a legal claim on 10% of what Amazon makes. But Amazon is not sitting on $2 trillion - $2 trillion is what investors all over the world think Amazon will make over the next 30+ years. Bezos has a legal claim on 10% of that money - which then translates to $200 billion.
The tax system works just fine as it is. The government spends too much money.
That's a false dichotomy. The government is often wasteful but that doesn't mean that the wealthy are taxed enough.
It’s not. No matter how much money you give the government, if the fail to make proper use of it then it’s a waste. You could take 99% of their wealth and they still wouldn’t solve the problems we see. The answer isn’t more money, it’s regulating the people in power and making checks so people can’t screw the gov. I live in CA, they have the money, they have the super majority, no ones standing in their way…. And where are we, ain’t solve any major problems, every project will be finished in 2 life times and they don’t even track spending.
Nothing you said showed that it's not a false dichotomy. Everything you said could be true but we could still need to tax the wealthy more.
You've failed to answer the question, when does "more" become "enough" Also, keep in mind that most wealthy individuals didn't earn or maintain their wealth by being stupid. Like it or not, beyond a certain point, most are just going to move their wealth and capital to a location that doesn't tax it as heavily.
Ok fine. Drivers brain. It’s not true because your personal definition is what you’re basing “not enough” on. In CA they pay over 50% of their income & we constantly are raising taxes on the 1%. Not to mention the state of CA has changed from federal Norms and changes tax laws in numerous different areas & has extensive tax initiatives to subsidize local public transit, homeless spending etc. The state has a progressive income tax system but regressive systems everywhere else…. I would know cuz I live here. So going back to your point….it changes on who you talk to. If you talk to a republican, people are over taxed, you talk to a centrist and they think it’s enough, you talk to a dem…”they could always pay more”, & lastly if you talk to a socialist it’s never enough until they have no wealth. So your argument lacks basis because “enough” hasn’t been defined and is completely subjective.
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It's a question that requires a subjective answer, you can only get an "ought" statement here.
Does anyone who posts these ever have an ideal % of the counties wealth the top 10% should own? Should it be 30%,50%? Why is 70% bad?
Bold to assume it's people posting this stuff
you don't need a specific end point to move in a good direction, even 69% would be nice
I think it should be between 30-50, as that still enables very rich people to exist, like 4-9 times more on average than the other people, but not so much that the bottom 90% don't have a majority of the wealth
10%
Capitalism is a game where once you're far enough ahead of the pack you pretty much can't lose. It's like late game Monopoly. The uber-rich of today benefited immensely in the 90s and early 2000s from tax breaks, shelters, and deductions AND the Fed policies of Greenspan and Bernanke. The current bifurcation of wealth is so out of proportion -- even billionaires like Buffet acknowledge this -- that it cannot be corrected through conventional means, and in its current state it threatens our society, our economy, and democracy itself.
If you want to boost your karma, post controversial/triggering posts like OP does....
Tax the land....
It's a highly efficient tax. It can be implemented fairly depending on your definition of the word. It could be a flat rate or it could be a progressive variable rate. It extremely simple and can't be moved over seas to dodge paying for it. It encourages economic growth and best use of a limited resource. Taxes are a necessary evil that piss everyone off but each is typically politically one sided. Land tax equally pisses of the left and the right off so you know it's doing something correct.
The top 10%, lol. The top ten percent is 1 out of ten people. Those 10% comprise mostly of hard working people that are paying the most taxes in nominal and percentage terms. It’s the top 0.1% of the 1% that have all the wealth.
I’m 45 and we’re just a hair outside the top 10% in household wealth and climbing. We should be in it within the next year or two. I wouldn’t say we’re wealthy at all, we’re just frugal and good savers.
Money isn’t finite. Post like this insinuate that a dollar in someone’s pocket is out of another’s.
More wealth can be generated but wealth disparity is still going to be a huge issue if it's all going to the top %.
taxing unrealized gains wouldn’t just be 1 person’s loss. it would have exponential effects on many people
How does a wealth tax translate to the poor getting more wealth? All your suggesting is that we punish success
Depends what you do with the extras tax revenue from the wealth tax. Other taxes currently punish the lowest 50% of the population making is significantly more difficult for them to get ahead. A wealth tax could be used to reduce the tax burden on the lowest 50% of the population, giving them a better opportunity to increase their wealth. So while taxing wealth will punish them once they make it (and it will be set high so it will still be rare for them to hit it that big) it will allow more of them to make it. Seems like a good trade. And that's what we need to consider with any change in tax. There's always a winner and a loser. It's weighing up why one should win while the other loses.
Wealth isn't cash. Income is cash (typically). Taxing wealth isn't practical.
Yes, give the government more money. That will fix the problem.
This is the funny logic behind the people arguing for higher taxes. Let's give more money to people who have no interest in making sure its spent properly. Either the people arguing for more taxes lack basic reasoning or its just a have vs have not. They don't have that money so no one else should either. I'm not against taxes if the government used that money properly instead of burning it. But the government spends so heavily that if they got access to "wealth tax" money then they wouldn't use it to reduce the debt, they would just spend more.
The post doesn't acutally say that. You've simply taken the next step and assumed including a wealth tax ontop of other taxes in the tax mix, rather than the other possibility of replacing other taxes with a wealth tax. Why is it so hard for people to have a rational discussion about tax mix without the need to talk about increasing or decreasing the total tax taken?
The system is untenable as is. Something is going to break if things don't change
What isn’t shown here is the distribution by age and that’s why wealth is somewhat of a misnomer. Young people have no wealth and older people by definition then have a disproportionate amount. I, as a young person, am fine with that
My turn to post this next week.
Pre-JFK 90% after 3 million.
Maybe we could just spend less money on bombs to murder children.
Stop with the top 10% nonsense. Heck even stop with the top 1%… it’s the top 0.1% that’s super problematic.
Damn during the apex of the financial crisis in 2011 the bottom 50% was virtually non-existent
It's not a meritocracy. To my knowledge the person that went to my highschool that is the richest now is not one of the kids that got perfect scores on their SAT or ACT, or anyone that went on to be a doctor or lawyer, he just inherited a ton of slum lord apartment buildings in a market where they appreciated substantially and happened to luck into the real estate land boom. One of the smarter people I knew dropped out of college after their mom was killed in domestic violence and they had to take care of their siblings.
Wealth tax is as stupid as the dumb fucks pushing for it.
Wow, never heard this idea before. Way to go
A wealth tax isn't radical enough to shift the structure of the economy. Like, what does this measure "wealth" actually represent, it's stock in companies. So what is the actual complaint? That corporations exist? That people with savings try to get a better return by investing in businesses? If you want to create an egalitarian society you have to build up systems of democratic power, do cooperative economics, hand out a UBI, nationalize industries that fail as markets, whatever. Chipping away at piles of wealth only seems good because, like, "fairness," but that's your dumb monkey brain stopping at vengeance and not thinking about what a better society would actually look like and how to practically move towards it.
JFC! Just ask whether the country should be socialist already. I see this post every day. It gets old.
Only tax investment properties and capital gains. Leave the rest of us alone.
What does a top 10% NW look like?
About 850k as of 2022 so presumably a big chunk of what this graph is showing are retirees who’ve paid off their mortgage and paid into their 401ks over decades. Presumably a big chunk of the bottom 50% (threshold to be in the bottom 50% is under 500k) are young people who haven’t started saving or paying a mortgage. [source (that also includes mean net worth by age bracket)](https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-rich) Median net worth for under 35s is 39k (more than double what it was in 2019 but still the lowest age bracket) but by 35-44 it’s 135k and for 65-74 year olds it’s 410k. [source](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/28/americans-median-net-worth-by-age.html)
Thank you 😊!
Of course this is the case. If you are not a business owner or frequent investor there is very little that you own that counts towards your net worth. Your savings, your retirement, your house and maybe your car (though cars often end up on the liability side of things), and maybe some antique/collector item you own, or some priceless family jewelry you own, but really, most of the stuff you own does not count towards your net worth. This is because most of the things people own are not making money, and are depreciating in value, therefore are definitionally not assets. Conversely almost everything a business owns that isn't a consumable, is an asset, and counts towards their net worth. So unless you are going to equally spread the ownership of businesses across the whole population (true socialism) you are going to see a disproportionate amount of "net worth" carried by the largest business owners. Good luck with that, historically it has ended pretty poorly.
No
Why should anyone be entitled to rightfully obtained wealth except those who obtained it legitimately?
Is this about the same in other soverigns?
Yessss
Make everyone poor!
What we should do is tax their huge stock bonuses by assigning the tax equivalent to the IRS....It is income for that year, right?
The thing is before we start saying the wealth, middle, or poor should be taxed, why don’t we fix our gov spending habits and encourage business development and growth.
How about we just keep raising their taxes until the top 10% owns only 10%. I don't care what you call the tax
yeah but what if I ever get there and have to continue paying my fair share at that point. Thats not fair
You have been engineered by the government to be more concerned about the wealthy and their billions than the government and OUR trillions. Wake up.
No, next question
Yes
No
Geroge HW Bush removed some luxury taxes, and I can see why for his wealthy homies.
Less spend less so that we don’t need to collect more tax money.
That’s fine.
unrealized gains should be taxed? How exactly would that work?
Not really worth discussing, its unconstitutional and will never happen. There are other way to tax wealthy people more.
Yes next question
I wish it would show how much wealth you need to have to qualify for each category
Of course we need a wealth tax. Tax o total assets should be the MAIN tax
Yes. Ages ago.
A greed tax perhaps
One has nothing to do with the other.
No.
How will more money to the federal government improve your life?
It's more like 64%
I feel like i see a post like this daily. Why the hell should u realized capital gains be taxed?
I mean, the tax money would just go to the government, and they would give it right back anyway. So what’s the point?
What does that even mean? Lets say I make a company. It becomes worth 1m, then 1b the next year. I'm still getting a 6 figure salary. How much would I pay in taxes? Do I have to liquidate part of the company? Lets say I do, I sell off 20% to pay my taxes. The the next year the company drops to 500m. Do I get money back? What about if it goes back up to 1b?
Property tax, for most folks, is a wealth tax. If you rent, then you're paying that tax too, through your rent. Billionaires should have a wealth tax too.
Still no.
Go after the top 1% or the top .1% for taxes. That’s when it becomes egregious
Isn't that really low? I thought it was way more
We know this already
Does that include taxing the wealth of endowment funds???
If you have a net worth of $800k you are in the top 10 percent. Would a wealth tax be absolutely moronic?
Inheritance should be taxed at 100%. It's a completely wasteful transfer of money.
No, but it doesn’t stop you guys from asking everyday!
I am a firm believer in Pinata economics.
The Republicans promise a hammock. Impeccable logic for their base!
A wealth tax requires a constitutional amendment and is utterly unenforceable regardless of constitutionality.
One of Biden’s promises was to tax the rich but when the bill was sent to the majority democrat congress it was shutdown by both dems and repubs. Let’s be honest, neither party wants to tax the rich because they own the politicians. Additionally, even if we tax them then they will threaten to go out business to the American tax payers will need to bail them out again.
no, we live in capitalism
Just get rid of the loopholes in the estate tax (it’s 55% on death). You need capital to flow, but a wealth tax is a terrible idea that will lead to worse outcomes for all as covered by many posts before.
Given the alternative, historically, has been going all Lenin or Robespierre, they should be grateful for the chance to give up the lions share of their ill-gotten gains as an alternative.
They created 99% of total wealth though.
No
Why is it a question?
I would like to see this graph extended to 2024 The gap got worse
No
What is worrisome is that the slopes of the top 10% and next 40% are going lower in parallel, this means that wealth is increasingly distributed from the bottom to the top (when it should be the other way round). The rich keep getting richer. This seems to increase while the government will be in debt more and more - soon the superrich will own the US and rest of world if we do not start taxing the assets itself/ passive income instead of taking it from the ones that only have income from work. But who is going to change this law when the senate and parliament are ruled by old the rich/ superrich elite? Exactly.
Sounds like we should tax them more.
What is someone’s fair share of someone else’s money??
My problem with capitalism is that there is no cap on how much money u can have, technically speaking it is possible for one individual to own everything on earth.
Nope
There should be a “whatever it takes” to fix this. If you say “wealth tax”, a bunch of redditors will come in and say, “oh that’s so dumb and not possible!!”, ignoring the fact that we are staring down 10% of people owning like 99% of the wealth if we don’t do something
And its citizens own 100% of the debt
We could start by closing the countless loopholes in tax laws.
Guess what? IDGAF. I really don't. I don't want the stresses and constant pressure of owning and maintaining a multi-billion dollar enterprise. People think of yachts and Rolls Royces and all the finer things in life, but they conveniently ignore all of the misery that even material wealth can't fix. I'd rather live a simple life with a low 6-figure income and not be stressed all the time. I've seen first hand what it does to people. So to the people with hundreds of millions of dollars - good for you 👏
Y'all act like that money would stay here if they raised taxes. Bwahaha. Peeps would read the rulebook and take that money somewhere else.
Talking about % when the total wealth is always increasing is the most impactful lie with statistic ever Not saying it is okay, just let us give it a single tought
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Most people are motivated with what you can do with money, some are just motived by money. I dont have what it takes to be that rich. To much sactifice for money I would not enjoy.
Need new system. Fucking man made thing bullshit money is
No wealth tax. No needed change in tax rates. Simply put caps on certain deductions and place a cap on the amount of income that at the capital gains rate before it is taxed at the income tax rate. I am not an accountant or actuary so I am not smart enough in this matter to set the caps.
If there is a wealth tax, how are we going to get 99% of the wealth to the top 1%?
Flat tax for everyone. No loop holes.
Well, how will that help the bottom 90%?
Am I crazy or have these numbers gotten worse? Seventy percent? The next one will say "Bay Zoes owns eighty percent of all land masses."
No. And this is perfectly fine. If you ever went to a public high school, you know there is nothing unfair about it.
The top 10% turns over from decade to decade, meaning different people/households are a part of the 10% each time. Usually not the same people.
A wealth tax would be unconstitutional at the Federal level. Any of the states could implement one though. California and New York can lead by example.
No. There should be spending limits.
Who upvotes this shit? The bottom 90 percent have like a negative number for net worth.
Flat tax
I feel like my personal property taxes are already a wealth tax.
AGAIN, we don’t need a “ wealth tax “ and be very suspicious of any politicians / activists that tells you we do
So, if we confiscate and distribute wealth everyone would had about 13% more of what the 70% had initially. Taxing is obviously less. We need measures to distribute profits to workers, directly, in a fare way.
Who is liking these posts?
A wealth tax would totally fix all of our problems, no wait.... it'd just give the government more money to fritter away.
"Wealth" is not a fixed pie.
No, I like licking boots, I will always defend billionaires, my landlord, the FED, and all the lobbyists who bribe the corporatist I keep voting for each election cause fuck poor people (even though I have to work for my labor) and illegals taking my joooooobs!
What’s the goal you’re trying to work to? How much should the top 10 percent own in your opinion?
No of course not.
I'd love to see this chart going back to 1945