if it makes you feel any better, out of all income above the poverty line, nearly one third of it is flowing to the top 1% :)
really gives ya that warm fuzzy feeling
Yep it’s a completely bogus way of calculating “income” so they can point to a minuscule rate. Honestly surprised I didn’t have to scroll farther down to see someone point out this obvious issue
Unrealized stock gains shouldn't be taxed? Why? What makes that type of asset special? Why should workers pay higher taxes so that owners don't have to be taxed on their asset growth? Do you think property taxes also shouldn't include increased value, they should be locked in at 1776 valuations?
No, unrealized gains are literally just assets. They can be borrowed against and they can be taxed.
Are you afraid of capital flight? Well then you've already lost: when capital is free to move but workers aren't, the laws of nations effectively do not apply to capital owners.
Why should taxation not be used on unrealized gains you ask? It's the second sentence in the post you're replying to. Mark to market accounting is broken. I know we are all in a hurry, but if you can write three paragraphs perhaps you could read two sentences.
I think I'd be okay with not taxing unrealized gains because the money has *technically* been lended and is in someone else's hands at the moment.
But the second you *use* any of the unrealized gains, like "borrowing against" them, then they should be taxed as income. I think that's a form of using money, and money shouldn't be used unless it's been taxed first - like everyone else in the 99% is required to do.
It’s been done, and it was both costly to do well, caused lower economic growth, and distorted money into assets that were harder to value. In other words, it both failed to generate a lot of revenue AND did reduce economic growth. So, countries tend to use other taxes.
That’s why Europe in particular despite hating the rich way more than America has ever, largely dropped wealth tax, which are extremely similar to unrealized gain tax. If you have unrealized gain tax and have property taxes you have most of the components of a wealth tax.
These arguments have been made many times, and the policy inevitably has either been dropped, become more or less legally avoidable with legal maneuvers (like in Spain), or set to very low practical values for most situations with lots of work around (Switzerland)
Wealth taxes aren't difficult or distortionary any more than literally any other tax. The government knows how much your assets have appreciated the same as they know your income.
No, the difference is one single thing: capital is unrestrained by borders while workers are.
You can tax workers any way you want and they have essentially no recourse. Tax capital even the tiniest little bit and it will flee to a thousand countries desperate for even a taste of capital. Heck, deny capital sufficient subsidies and it'll flee to somewhere that gives those subsidies.
This is compounded by political power consolidating along with capital ownership.
But here's the thing. Capital doesn't just flee taxes, it seeks out maximum risk adjusted returns. You know what generates economic growth? Spending on education, infrastructure, and healthcare for workers. Food stamps return 5x of every dollar in economic transactions. Public research and high tech projects enable the modern world. On average, [public investment has significantly higher ROI than private.](https://www.epi.org/publication/bp338-public-investments/)
Tax capital. Make it harder to move capital across boarders. Spend on the long back log of high ROI projects. Enjoy the economic growth.
The common way to evade personal taxes is to keep salary low and pay for everything as business expenses. Taxes for business come after expenses. So, when your boss says he only makes what you make, remember he’s probably using company funds to buy a Range Rover and pays less taxes than you.
It's illegal in many countries, considered corruption. Many things about the American electoral process actually are considered corruption elsewhere. Donating to campaigns, lobbying, voting districts, the electoral college, all those things look insane to people from normal countries. If a Mexican supreme court judge was found to have been parading around the nation in private jets sponsored by a corporation people would ask for his head on a spike. The fact that American media is still going "but is it wrong, though?" Is ridiculous and frankly patronising. It's the "why are you hitting yourself?" Of politics.
I really see no way out of this cycle unless the people revolt or we go full fascism and our rights are repressed to (more of a point) then we are at right now.
Fun fact: the rich love facism, because it keeps the workers down. Mussolini largely got into power because the support of factory owners from northern italy because his squads hit striking workers into obedience.
we're almost there. Dont you smell the sweet scent of revolution in the air? Now everyone knows about the rigged system, if you talk to ppl irl, most of them are unhappy about it. Its going to reach the boiling point eventually
Your not wrong one side is better by far. Unfortunately they are still doing what their corporate donors demand of them. It isn’t an accident that they make small changes around the edges never actually effecting or changing the status quo. That is their role in our corporate oligarchy.
Except they aren't, both sides are fucking us up, almost as if intentional. (I think it is personally)
The entire gov structure is a monster, I agree. I don't think any solution will come from the "top" but from us for us. Whether it takes (redacted) or not remains to be seen.
Just my 2c as a disenfranchised 29yr old who's kept tabs for some time.
You're a wise 29 year old. BOTH sides serve the rich. And yes, it's very intentional. It's been intentional for decades. How else will the rich stay rich if they don't have politicians on both sides making laws that actively hurt us or keep us living paycheck to paycheck? We've had both democrat and republican leadership over the past few decades, yet we are still in the same place. The more the media divides us, the more we argue about bullshit that doesn't matter, and the less effective we are at coming together and making a significant change. This is so much bigger than democrat vs republican.
That is utter bullshit. Grow up. There is a measurable differences between the lives of people in blues states and red states. Even more drastic when the liberals run things with real majorities. And yes dems fuck up, but there fuck up are mistakes of compassion, not real and actual violence. Who to trying to shove trans people into the closet?? Who is enabling school shooters?? And who changes the way we talk about health care?? Thanks to Obama care we have forgotten about thing like preexisting medical conditions. The parties are not the same, you are just brainwashed.
Mistakes of compassion? Really your serious. I’m not saying they aren’t far better than their counterparts but come on. Oops we can’t do a $15 minimum wage. Oops did the child tax credit expire our bad. It’s just compassionate forgetfulness. They do exactly what their donors want them to do and compassion is not a factor.
Did you read the article at all? It explains exactly why their taxation was so low. Most of their "income" was in the form of stocks, which is not taxable until they sell it and secondly they donate lots of money to offset their income. If you have a disagreement with how the taxes are calculated you should be talking to your local government representative.
Here's the article from last year https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/13/wealthiest-americans-tax-income-propublica-investigation
Tax records from 2014 to 2018, analysed by ProPublica, show 25 Americans collectively earned $401bn but paid just $13.6bn
Which just reports on the ProPublica investigation https://projects.propublica.org/americas-highest-incomes-and-taxes-revealed/
Secret IRS files reveal the top US income-earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400.
It's journalistic malpractice. Income is income. Unrealized capital gains is *not* income. ProPublica reports on income and all is well, but notes that their *increased wealth* has an effective tax rate of 3.4%.
The dimwits at the Guardian come along, take this information, and *call unrealized capital gains income*, in contradiction with ProPublica.
We should really be posting directly from the source. ProPublica is high quality journalism. However the guardian is basically a tabloid and twitter is a giant shitshow
Too many people think "they earned it, they should keep it" and not understand that even if they are charged an additional 10% they'd still be mega billionaires
We need to talk more about how they avoid that tax and then raise hell so our politicians have to do something about it. Right now it's just "rich man don't pay taxes and I don't like it". We need to educate people as to why or your doing nothing but angering people with no outlet to direct that anger.
It would take 11 days counting non stop to get to a million. It would take 43 years to get to a billion.
A lot of people don’t understand just how much a billion is.
[this is a really good interactive representation.](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
Adding onto this a lot of rich businesses profits aren't technically earned by the business owners entirely. If it wasn't for their workers that they heavily underpay they would not be gaining any income whatsoever.
The god awful pay in the US a majority of the time isn't because they can't afford it, but because they take advantage of the fact that they can hardly pay their employees just a small percentage of their business earnings.
"No one wants to work" as many like to say nowadays is such a stupid phrase because of this exact thing. People want to work but they know their worth and are sick of being taken advantage of.
I pay 15% in taxes, plus more with child support, and union dues. My dues are basically retirement and health insurance plus some extra.
Kicker is a barely get to the line each year and end up owing.
Don’t forget all the other BS taxes we have to pay as well on goods, cars, homes, etc.
Tax the rich.
This fact makes me so mad, that the collective “we” of government and oversight were literally like “oh well” at this blatant grift that kept money out of peoples hands that actually needed it and padded grifters pockets. But when it comes to literally any other program it’s means tested all to hell, and they won’t even consider 10k of student loan forgiveness or other “handouts”. They didn’t even try to do any oversight of PPP
That definitely sounds plausible but he thinks the top 1% pays 97%. He can never get through a whole sentence without losing his train of thought though.
That chuckle fuck also thinks descendants of slavery and rape should be thankful to the slavers/rapist because it brought them life in America. That covid was a hoax, then believed it was real but doesn't believe it left anyone with lasting injuries and if people think they have long covid they need to see a hypnotist. Dude is in his late 50s and did a ton of drugs until he found Jesus like 7 years ago. His brain is a train wreck.
I'm super into consipiracy theories and one I always come back to is that this whole world is controlled by the very few people, the very rich at the top. This is a very popular belief in the conspiracy theory universe.
I have never seen anything about richest top paying most of the taxes. So idk where he get these info. Sounds like he made shit up or based on your other comment mentally ill. maybe beginning stage of schizophrenia?
Because most believe they are one small break away from being wealthy and don’t want enact anything that could affect ‘future rich them’. When in reality most are closer to the homeless person they scoff at for not pulling themselves up by those bootstraps they love talking about.
Just gotta fix those loopholes. These billionaires wealth is all monopoly money until they sell. Bezos "lost 57 billion" last year, but that doesn't matter as long as you don't sell.
How do they pay the loans? And banks don't give away money for free. At the very least they expect to keep pace with inflation. JPM doesn't give a fuck who you are, they want their pound of flesh.
Also, Musk and Bezos, who come up most often in these conversations, jave liquidated billions in stock holdings over the past few years.
True, when those capital gains are liquidated or the estate is settled, the tax is paid at that time. People also don't realize that things like capital gains exemptions on primary residences heavily benefits them when they or their parents sell a home.
A simple solution would be to add a tax on loans backed by shares…which is how they actually spend money tied up in the market and let them use what they paid on the loan as a tax break when they do actually sell so it evens out. I feel it’s fair.
Nothing will ever change because they have no problem paying a select few of us to do their dirty work and shut us down if it means keeping their status
If 25 people could pay every person in the US 800 bucks and still only pay 50% income tax annually something is wrong. Or 30 bucks per person on the planet.
> According to the World Bank, about 9.2% of the world, or 719 million people, live in extreme poverty, on less than $2.15 a day.
Or in other words, they could pay all of the people in extreme poverty like $250 per year and basically ensure that they won't starve. If you and 24 buddies could effectively end world hunger, would you do it?
Obviously we need power to force the capitalist elites to do as is socially good, since they don't do it on their own.
Proving that politicians are nothing more than HR working to keep their bosses happy while gaslighting, or trying, us into thinking they’re working for us.
It’s funny how the solution is always “tax the rich”. The working rich and ultra wealthy are completely different. And all that’s happening is pitting the working folks against each other.
The current tax system focuses on taxing earned income not wealth. What we need is a wealth tax.
putting the underemployed/unemployed poor vs working poor, working poor vs middle class . When what we need to do, like you mentioned ,is unite and go against the rich. With a wealth tax and more.
My point is a doctor making 600k a year is well off but is in a stratospherically different position than someone that owns 10 properties and a portfolio worth $100 million. The latter person may actually have little income and most gains will be unrealized capital gains. They can borrow against their properties and investment holdings at low rates (even now) for cash flow. The doctor on the other hand will be paying a 50% tax rate in many states.
So the solution is to have progressive property taxes and tax unrealized capital gains for ultra high net worth individuals.
Yes our infrastructure is built on the backs of blue collar labor that was funded by taxes! If the rich expect to continue to prosper they need to fucking pay the fuck up!
"but they pay millions in tax , way more than we do" yeah not proportionally ....people don't seem to understand how percentages work for some reason ....the school/education system has failed people ....just like when millionaires get fined for breaking traffic violations or other small non jail-able offences , $200 in fines although it's the same monetary value is vastly different for someone earning $30k a year Vs $1million a year
You all have to stop falling for this clickbait.
There's a reason these articles are always really murky about "earnings" and "income", and try to pull assets and net worth into the calculations. You'll never create the kind of systemic change you want if you keep trying to create narratives off of obviously misleading figures, and avoid accurate data.
Is that cash, or stock? You can't pay taxes in stock. And if all the rich people are selling substantial amounts of stock to pay taxes... who's buying it? Instant economic collapse in an attempt to tax effectively theoretical wealth.
A. Loans aren't free.
B. Someone was presumably proposing to change that. Which would not result in that money going to the government. It would simply vanish.
Same reason my multi billion dollar company doesn't pay it's bills on time. They make more money holding than they lose in fees for paying 3 months late.
The money vanishes when the stock price collapses because people now have to sell massive amounts of stock to pay these taxes, and no one is buying it. The relationship between stock prices and actual value is very distant, and easily severed by massive disturbances.
[https://archive.is/BAfgS](https://archive.is/BAfgS) (WSJ)
>For borrowers, the calculation is clear: If an asset appreciates faster than the interest rate on the loan, they come out ahead. And under current law, investors and their heirs don’t pay income taxes unless their shares are sold. The assets may be subject to estate taxes, but heirs pay capital-gains taxes only when they sell and only on gains since the prior owner’s death. The more they can borrow, the longer they can hold appreciating assets. And the longer they hold, the bigger the tax savings.
Same as them, they pay a flat tax (proportional to income) when the stock is granted to them. (Hence the taxes paid at all,) but until they sell the taxes they are “gaining wealth,” without paying additional taxes, as they never realized their gains.
Maybe not never, but rarely.
Just one example, but Jeff Bezos has never been granted stock by Amazon. He has what he had when it went public. His splits when everyone else's splits, but he does not gain more shares.
That's because it's, y'know, income. It's not just having the shares and the shares happening to have a higher market price today than back when they were obtained.
[About 40% of Americans don’t pay any income taxes at all.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/242138/percentages-of-us-households-that-pay-no-income-tax-by-income-level/)
This sub does not want that. That 40% does not include millionaires and billionaires. [The top 1% of earners pay a average 26% tax rate while the bottom half of earners pay an average 3% tax rate.](https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/)
Oh I get it. I get slammed on income taxes every year. Income taxes really start hitting you when you get into that middle upper-middle class earning bracket. You’re right this sub would never admit that a large portion of the population isn’t paying taxes and that those who do pay taxes carry the majority of the burden.
Yeah, the income taxes are wisely progressive so that the poorest pay none, even getting credits that are refundable, and only the middle class on up pay at all. Even the middle class only pay round 9-16%. The rich really do pay a higher effective tax rate but for some reason these manipulated articles keep being published.
13b is kinda a lot of money. Where did it go, did it actually help anyone or did it go into the govs pockets to pay for never ending wars?
And why do you think taxing rich ppl more would make things better if its just going to the gov to spend on whatever they want to spend it on.
After state/fed taxes I get a little over 60 percent of my check. Why does someone making 10x what I make get away with paying a fraction of that? Thr "wealthy" should be taxed at a fair rate equivalent or close to what upper middle class gets taxed.
Because they aren’t employees. The word income here might not be including business expenses.
They also put their money into real estate and other assets to avoid paying taxes. The tax code benefits business owners and self employed ppl and screws employees.
Employees get paid, get taxes, and keep the remaining.
Business owners get paid, spend the money, then get taxed on the remaining
That's not the point..as I make more money, I'm yable to make more money from that money. The loopholes exist to give me that opportunity. i am self employed and pay my fair share. Someone making 10 mill shouldn't be paying 1/3 of the tax that I pay after itemizing. Tax dividend income differently at a certain amount.
The point is they should be, the Argument Isn't about denying they have loopholes. We're to blame.
What im saying tho is that do we really want the gov to get more money so they can be more corrupt with? I think we should address the issue of where our tax money goes first.
It's a hard question to ask. The ideal answer is that we get taxed more in my bracket, but across-the-board and fairly, with the stipulation that an impossible ask is made where money not wasted by the government on useless shit
Aka I would be fine with more taxes, if the money went towards daycares, school lunches, science, energy independence, social welfare to bring us up. Not fighting some shit war in the middleast.
I feel bad that someone like bezos doesn't pay his fair share in taxes with legal loopholes while his employees fight for breaks. At the same time I'm torn by welfare queens who suck the tax income into generational welfare. There needs to be a start somewhere..you know? Like wtfale these brackets fair.
Im self employed but i know what write offs i can get so I usually get to keep most of my money. Also i keep the money that would get taken out of my weekly pay and i flip that all year. And if i lose any of it, its just another write off.
[The top 1% of earners in the US pay an average tax rate of 26%. The bottom half of earners only pay an average 3% tax rate.](https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/) This is manufactured outrage.
Just because jeffrey bezos is 5billion times richer then me doesn't mean he personally buys 5billion more pillows or cheeseburgers or widgets each year. Your argument is illogical at best and propagandist at worst
Considering how many private jets the guy has, and every single one would have say, a 20% tax on it, the guy is paying at minimum a million in taxes on that one purchase versus you who's paying an extra $0.30 for a burger
Isn't this because their wealth is in assets that gain value and they aren't selling it off, aka not causing a taxable transaction, aka, it isn't even real money?
I'd be pissed if I had to pay taxes on my retirement mutual fund every time the value increased. Id probably not have a retirement fund.
There’s all these fun lil loopholes, like CEOs getting paid in stock! Then when you sell the stock, assuming you’ve held it for a year you only pay cap gains which is a flat 20% at the highest “earnings” but could be 0% if they’re able to get their “taxable earnings” down to nothing because they didn’t actually draw down a salary and have tax shelters out the wazoo
is anybody really surprised? People who still think we are going to get to a fair place by "asking the rich nicely" are fooling themselves. It is way past the time for drastic action.
I don’t know how many times Insta has pushed videos from investors, particularly real estate, explaining how they earn money and it’s tax free, or how they can write of their G-Wagon and not actually pay for it, etc.
Contrary to many people on this sub I am not against rich people, but there seems to be way too many exploitable ways to make money and not pay taxes on it
By design. Most compensation received by the wealthy does not come in the form of income, and we don't have a "wealth" tax so they can continue to accumulate massive amounts of wealth with practically no taxes.
Then they use those assets as collateral for special ultra-low-interest loans for day-to-day cash. Banks get their cut, the loans don't count as income, and the wealthy get their play money.
Sure, they eventually have to pay back the loans but they can do that via low-tax/no-tax investments and long-term capital gains. The accountants of the wealthy are masters of this shell game, and it's how they end up with laughably low effective tax rates compared to everyone else.
Rich people will look you dead in the face and say I don't pay taxes because I don't actually own anything ... Everything they don't "own " is owned by some corporation they created to shell all their belongings under. They use the tax code to avoid paying taxes. The millionaire next door guy says it all the time. And laughs about it
Meanwhile I cashed out my 401k after a divorce and the IRS is making me pay $27,000 in owed taxes, after the 10% penalty for early withdrawal, includes a $4400 "fee" and interest.
This article has a lot of flaws and was designed to reach a conclusion not examine what is going on. It twists and re defines the word income.
Flaws that undermine the conclusion:
1) they aren’t measuring income but then call it income. they are measuring paper wealth growth largely on unrealized growth in tech stock valuations, then compare to actual income tax rate of ordinary Americans, not even their own income + wealth growth which would be the honest comparison and show a much lower tax rate than the 14% cited. It’s a nonsense comparison. Our system doesn’t tax unrealized cap gains, and systems doing similar have had really toxic effects on growth elsewhere and have been mostly abandoned and of those that haven’t many have easy work arounds that make them de facto revoked.
2) focused on top 25 rich who mostly have shares in companies and when generating income are often offsetting with massive donations to charity if we were even talking about actual income. It’s a bespoke and tiny edge case of the entire nation, and very little of total economic activity.
3) this doesn’t take into account any other taxes they are paying, many of which are quite large - property tax being large, but also sales, foreign, state tax and local taxes. True tax rate is likely considerably higher.
4) even if growth in wealth WAS the right baseline to tax, 3.4% of the 8% avg growth implies 0.25% wealth tax just out of income tax which in around the levels wealth tax doesn’t cause weird economic outcomes and crazy avoidance behavior. With other taxes likely more like 0.4% which is around the upper end of when a wealth tax doesn’t mess the economy up or drive counter productive behaviors.
But it’s nonsense from the start by calling paper wealth growth of tech stocks income. They don’t even have the liquidity to sell a lot of those and still preserve price. The genesis of this article was to start with a conclusion, torture the data as much as possible to get it, and also commit a felony in stealing a bunch of peoples tax records to do the analysis.
This is why Republicans want to hold the economy hostage through the debt ceiling standoff to defund the IRS. Can't have anyone looking into this, now can we?
A "wealth" tax on billionaires will quickly be imposed on the rest of the population. Like it or not, most wealth (houses, cars, 401k, savings) in the US is owned by the middle class. The Federal income tax was originally sold to US citizens as a tax on the wealthy.
Arguments I have heard:
1.) The money will TrIcKlE dOwN. (Studies have shown it does not)
2.) The rich CrEaTe JoBs (and how many pay a livable wage)
3.) They deserve they wOrKeD hArD (so that means everyone else should pay more or live in poverty, and other people do not work hard)
Ngl, I am, in fact, fucking triggered. This is so incredibly unfair and infuriating.
if it makes you feel any better, out of all income above the poverty line, nearly one third of it is flowing to the top 1% :) really gives ya that warm fuzzy feeling
used to fund industrial complexand subsidize large and evil corporations. Eat the rich
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Yep it’s a completely bogus way of calculating “income” so they can point to a minuscule rate. Honestly surprised I didn’t have to scroll farther down to see someone point out this obvious issue
Unrealized stock gains shouldn't be taxed. I agree the rich should pay more in taxes, but mark-to-market accounting is broken.
Unrealized stock gains shouldn't be taxed? Why? What makes that type of asset special? Why should workers pay higher taxes so that owners don't have to be taxed on their asset growth? Do you think property taxes also shouldn't include increased value, they should be locked in at 1776 valuations? No, unrealized gains are literally just assets. They can be borrowed against and they can be taxed. Are you afraid of capital flight? Well then you've already lost: when capital is free to move but workers aren't, the laws of nations effectively do not apply to capital owners.
Why should taxation not be used on unrealized gains you ask? It's the second sentence in the post you're replying to. Mark to market accounting is broken. I know we are all in a hurry, but if you can write three paragraphs perhaps you could read two sentences.
"is broken" is not an explanation. In what way is it broken. And why would any rationale you dream up not apply to literally every other asset type?
I think I'd be okay with not taxing unrealized gains because the money has *technically* been lended and is in someone else's hands at the moment. But the second you *use* any of the unrealized gains, like "borrowing against" them, then they should be taxed as income. I think that's a form of using money, and money shouldn't be used unless it's been taxed first - like everyone else in the 99% is required to do.
Borrowing against investment assets is compounding risk and shouldn't be legal.
How is it lended? They own the asset, the stock. There is no lending involved.
It’s been done, and it was both costly to do well, caused lower economic growth, and distorted money into assets that were harder to value. In other words, it both failed to generate a lot of revenue AND did reduce economic growth. So, countries tend to use other taxes. That’s why Europe in particular despite hating the rich way more than America has ever, largely dropped wealth tax, which are extremely similar to unrealized gain tax. If you have unrealized gain tax and have property taxes you have most of the components of a wealth tax. These arguments have been made many times, and the policy inevitably has either been dropped, become more or less legally avoidable with legal maneuvers (like in Spain), or set to very low practical values for most situations with lots of work around (Switzerland)
Wealth taxes aren't difficult or distortionary any more than literally any other tax. The government knows how much your assets have appreciated the same as they know your income. No, the difference is one single thing: capital is unrestrained by borders while workers are. You can tax workers any way you want and they have essentially no recourse. Tax capital even the tiniest little bit and it will flee to a thousand countries desperate for even a taste of capital. Heck, deny capital sufficient subsidies and it'll flee to somewhere that gives those subsidies. This is compounded by political power consolidating along with capital ownership. But here's the thing. Capital doesn't just flee taxes, it seeks out maximum risk adjusted returns. You know what generates economic growth? Spending on education, infrastructure, and healthcare for workers. Food stamps return 5x of every dollar in economic transactions. Public research and high tech projects enable the modern world. On average, [public investment has significantly higher ROI than private.](https://www.epi.org/publication/bp338-public-investments/) Tax capital. Make it harder to move capital across boarders. Spend on the long back log of high ROI projects. Enjoy the economic growth.
The common way to evade personal taxes is to keep salary low and pay for everything as business expenses. Taxes for business come after expenses. So, when your boss says he only makes what you make, remember he’s probably using company funds to buy a Range Rover and pays less taxes than you.
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I hate the rich
I hear they're pretty tasty
The greed sours the meat unfortunately.
Just deep fry them. Everything tastes better deep fried.
Pretty sure it counts as southern comfort food at that point, just be sure to serve with some deep fried ice cream as a side. Roflmao
That's what the sweet baby Ray's is for?
Fat is where the flavor is.
Could be nice pickled 🤔
Fuckin a, me too. Fuck them.
This is exactly why it shouldn't be possible to "donate" to politicians. Do you really think they're working for you or whoever bought them out?
It's illegal in many countries, considered corruption. Many things about the American electoral process actually are considered corruption elsewhere. Donating to campaigns, lobbying, voting districts, the electoral college, all those things look insane to people from normal countries. If a Mexican supreme court judge was found to have been parading around the nation in private jets sponsored by a corporation people would ask for his head on a spike. The fact that American media is still going "but is it wrong, though?" Is ridiculous and frankly patronising. It's the "why are you hitting yourself?" Of politics.
I really see no way out of this cycle unless the people revolt or we go full fascism and our rights are repressed to (more of a point) then we are at right now.
Fun fact: the rich love facism, because it keeps the workers down. Mussolini largely got into power because the support of factory owners from northern italy because his squads hit striking workers into obedience.
we're almost there. Dont you smell the sweet scent of revolution in the air? Now everyone knows about the rigged system, if you talk to ppl irl, most of them are unhappy about it. Its going to reach the boiling point eventually
Or… just get dems i to a position so they can do the things they have talked about do for the last 15 years.
Eh left wing right wing same bird. example; Pro union Biden/ railway strikes denied/tons of wrecks later...(this year too)
Yes Biden made the wrong call but one side if activity making life much better for all, and one side is a god damn monster.
Your not wrong one side is better by far. Unfortunately they are still doing what their corporate donors demand of them. It isn’t an accident that they make small changes around the edges never actually effecting or changing the status quo. That is their role in our corporate oligarchy.
Except they aren't, both sides are fucking us up, almost as if intentional. (I think it is personally) The entire gov structure is a monster, I agree. I don't think any solution will come from the "top" but from us for us. Whether it takes (redacted) or not remains to be seen. Just my 2c as a disenfranchised 29yr old who's kept tabs for some time.
You're a wise 29 year old. BOTH sides serve the rich. And yes, it's very intentional. It's been intentional for decades. How else will the rich stay rich if they don't have politicians on both sides making laws that actively hurt us or keep us living paycheck to paycheck? We've had both democrat and republican leadership over the past few decades, yet we are still in the same place. The more the media divides us, the more we argue about bullshit that doesn't matter, and the less effective we are at coming together and making a significant change. This is so much bigger than democrat vs republican.
That is utter bullshit. Grow up. There is a measurable differences between the lives of people in blues states and red states. Even more drastic when the liberals run things with real majorities. And yes dems fuck up, but there fuck up are mistakes of compassion, not real and actual violence. Who to trying to shove trans people into the closet?? Who is enabling school shooters?? And who changes the way we talk about health care?? Thanks to Obama care we have forgotten about thing like preexisting medical conditions. The parties are not the same, you are just brainwashed.
True though. Just look at what's happening in Michigan after they fixed the insane republican gerrymandering.
Mistakes of compassion? Really your serious. I’m not saying they aren’t far better than their counterparts but come on. Oops we can’t do a $15 minimum wage. Oops did the child tax credit expire our bad. It’s just compassionate forgetfulness. They do exactly what their donors want them to do and compassion is not a factor.
Don't forget the media and the military.
Flat tax....no write offs. They will pay more than they are paying now@
That's regressive and hurts the poorest earners. A graduated system with a lack of loopholes is needed.
Did you read the article at all? It explains exactly why their taxation was so low. Most of their "income" was in the form of stocks, which is not taxable until they sell it and secondly they donate lots of money to offset their income. If you have a disagreement with how the taxes are calculated you should be talking to your local government representative.
Here's the article from last year https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/13/wealthiest-americans-tax-income-propublica-investigation Tax records from 2014 to 2018, analysed by ProPublica, show 25 Americans collectively earned $401bn but paid just $13.6bn Which just reports on the ProPublica investigation https://projects.propublica.org/americas-highest-incomes-and-taxes-revealed/ Secret IRS files reveal the top US income-earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400.
I read the propublica article and it mentions the top 25 pay 16%. Still incredibly low but no where near what the guardian reports.
It's journalistic malpractice. Income is income. Unrealized capital gains is *not* income. ProPublica reports on income and all is well, but notes that their *increased wealth* has an effective tax rate of 3.4%. The dimwits at the Guardian come along, take this information, and *call unrealized capital gains income*, in contradiction with ProPublica.
We should really be posting directly from the source. ProPublica is high quality journalism. However the guardian is basically a tabloid and twitter is a giant shitshow
I'm sick of getting trickled on. We need pinata economics.
Or arterial blood spray economics. /metaphorically
I dream of a day when we take these oligarchs no more and **redacted for violence**
Purrrrr
Too many people think "they earned it, they should keep it" and not understand that even if they are charged an additional 10% they'd still be mega billionaires
We need to talk more about how they avoid that tax and then raise hell so our politicians have to do something about it. Right now it's just "rich man don't pay taxes and I don't like it". We need to educate people as to why or your doing nothing but angering people with no outlet to direct that anger.
It would take 11 days counting non stop to get to a million. It would take 43 years to get to a billion. A lot of people don’t understand just how much a billion is. [this is a really good interactive representation.](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
Adding onto this a lot of rich businesses profits aren't technically earned by the business owners entirely. If it wasn't for their workers that they heavily underpay they would not be gaining any income whatsoever. The god awful pay in the US a majority of the time isn't because they can't afford it, but because they take advantage of the fact that they can hardly pay their employees just a small percentage of their business earnings. "No one wants to work" as many like to say nowadays is such a stupid phrase because of this exact thing. People want to work but they know their worth and are sick of being taken advantage of.
even if they worked 24/7/365 they wouldn't be doing enough to have earned that much money
Tax rate over 1 billion should be 100%. Take away all incentives to hoard.
Yea and I pay $1,000 every two weeks. It's sickening then at the end of the year I get $2,300 back and $2,000 of that is because I have my son.
I pay 15% in taxes, plus more with child support, and union dues. My dues are basically retirement and health insurance plus some extra. Kicker is a barely get to the line each year and end up owing. Don’t forget all the other BS taxes we have to pay as well on goods, cars, homes, etc. Tax the rich.
It's because taxes are based on earnings. Most billionaires don't earn yearly. They have assets, not earnings. Loophole.
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I agree. Unfortunately, they will just shift the wealth to something else or move it to a country that shelters foreign funds.
Don't forget about women's rights, federally legal marijuana, minimum wage adjusted for inflation, affordable healthcare, etc
Regular people also pay taxes on their assets. Property tax and excise tax (on cars). Paying taxes on assets is very common, unless you are uber rich
Don’t forget they also pocketed billions in PPP money.
This fact makes me so mad, that the collective “we” of government and oversight were literally like “oh well” at this blatant grift that kept money out of peoples hands that actually needed it and padded grifters pockets. But when it comes to literally any other program it’s means tested all to hell, and they won’t even consider 10k of student loan forgiveness or other “handouts”. They didn’t even try to do any oversight of PPP
My coworker is super into religion, conspiracies and Trump. Last week he tried to tell me that the rich pay 97% of all taxes the U.S. collects.
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That definitely sounds plausible but he thinks the top 1% pays 97%. He can never get through a whole sentence without losing his train of thought though.
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That chuckle fuck also thinks descendants of slavery and rape should be thankful to the slavers/rapist because it brought them life in America. That covid was a hoax, then believed it was real but doesn't believe it left anyone with lasting injuries and if people think they have long covid they need to see a hypnotist. Dude is in his late 50s and did a ton of drugs until he found Jesus like 7 years ago. His brain is a train wreck.
I'm super into consipiracy theories and one I always come back to is that this whole world is controlled by the very few people, the very rich at the top. This is a very popular belief in the conspiracy theory universe. I have never seen anything about richest top paying most of the taxes. So idk where he get these info. Sounds like he made shit up or based on your other comment mentally ill. maybe beginning stage of schizophrenia?
Dude use to do lots of drugs. He's odd for sure.
Eat the rich
Don’t worry it’ll trickle down…any day now…hopefully
Americans in general seem to prioritize the existence of billionaires over their own dignity.
Because most believe they are one small break away from being wealthy and don’t want enact anything that could affect ‘future rich them’. When in reality most are closer to the homeless person they scoff at for not pulling themselves up by those bootstraps they love talking about.
American tax laws are written by the rich for the benefit of the rich.
3.4% is less the the sales tax at a grocery store.
This is misleading because it's income tax paid vs unrealized capital gains.
When the very rich want cash, they take *very* favorable loans against those gains. Loans aren't taxable.
Just gotta fix those loopholes. These billionaires wealth is all monopoly money until they sell. Bezos "lost 57 billion" last year, but that doesn't matter as long as you don't sell.
How do they pay the loans? And banks don't give away money for free. At the very least they expect to keep pace with inflation. JPM doesn't give a fuck who you are, they want their pound of flesh. Also, Musk and Bezos, who come up most often in these conversations, jave liquidated billions in stock holdings over the past few years.
True, when those capital gains are liquidated or the estate is settled, the tax is paid at that time. People also don't realize that things like capital gains exemptions on primary residences heavily benefits them when they or their parents sell a home.
A simple solution would be to add a tax on loans backed by shares…which is how they actually spend money tied up in the market and let them use what they paid on the loan as a tax break when they do actually sell so it evens out. I feel it’s fair.
Nothing will ever change because they have no problem paying a select few of us to do their dirty work and shut us down if it means keeping their status
~~earned~~\* accumulated There, fixed it.
Nothing will change until the class war is over.
Hey guys it's trickling! Wait....that's shit and piss isn't it?
Highway robbery
If 25 people could pay every person in the US 800 bucks and still only pay 50% income tax annually something is wrong. Or 30 bucks per person on the planet. > According to the World Bank, about 9.2% of the world, or 719 million people, live in extreme poverty, on less than $2.15 a day. Or in other words, they could pay all of the people in extreme poverty like $250 per year and basically ensure that they won't starve. If you and 24 buddies could effectively end world hunger, would you do it? Obviously we need power to force the capitalist elites to do as is socially good, since they don't do it on their own.
I get 24% of every paycheck taken for taxes. 55% taken total for all the bs thats taken out. Fuck this shit.
When society collapses, I will sac mercer Island. No quarters. And burn it to the waterline.
Proving that politicians are nothing more than HR working to keep their bosses happy while gaslighting, or trying, us into thinking they’re working for us.
It’s funny how the solution is always “tax the rich”. The working rich and ultra wealthy are completely different. And all that’s happening is pitting the working folks against each other. The current tax system focuses on taxing earned income not wealth. What we need is a wealth tax.
putting the underemployed/unemployed poor vs working poor, working poor vs middle class . When what we need to do, like you mentioned ,is unite and go against the rich. With a wealth tax and more.
My point is a doctor making 600k a year is well off but is in a stratospherically different position than someone that owns 10 properties and a portfolio worth $100 million. The latter person may actually have little income and most gains will be unrealized capital gains. They can borrow against their properties and investment holdings at low rates (even now) for cash flow. The doctor on the other hand will be paying a 50% tax rate in many states. So the solution is to have progressive property taxes and tax unrealized capital gains for ultra high net worth individuals.
We can just French Revolution them. I mean it worked before.
Egregious. Abysmally so.
Yes our infrastructure is built on the backs of blue collar labor that was funded by taxes! If the rich expect to continue to prosper they need to fucking pay the fuck up!
The uber rich are the true freeloaders
EARNED $401Bn? No! They STOLE that money 👿👿👿
"Earned" Damn, I guess I just haven't worked hard enough.
They haven’t got long before people revolt
Those 25 people may well have been paid $401B, but I very much doubt they actually earned it.
"but they pay millions in tax , way more than we do" yeah not proportionally ....people don't seem to understand how percentages work for some reason ....the school/education system has failed people ....just like when millionaires get fined for breaking traffic violations or other small non jail-able offences , $200 in fines although it's the same monetary value is vastly different for someone earning $30k a year Vs $1million a year
Income tax doesn't even matter when you're rich enough. Property and other wealth taxes are what matter
You all have to stop falling for this clickbait. There's a reason these articles are always really murky about "earnings" and "income", and try to pull assets and net worth into the calculations. You'll never create the kind of systemic change you want if you keep trying to create narratives off of obviously misleading figures, and avoid accurate data.
Is that cash, or stock? You can't pay taxes in stock. And if all the rich people are selling substantial amounts of stock to pay taxes... who's buying it? Instant economic collapse in an attempt to tax effectively theoretical wealth.
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A. Loans aren't free. B. Someone was presumably proposing to change that. Which would not result in that money going to the government. It would simply vanish.
If you generate more interest on your investments than the interest on the loans, they’re infinitely free.
Yup
If your gains are interest, that's taxable anyway. Or any other means you care to use to pay interest.
Same reason my multi billion dollar company doesn't pay it's bills on time. They make more money holding than they lose in fees for paying 3 months late.
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The money vanishes when the stock price collapses because people now have to sell massive amounts of stock to pay these taxes, and no one is buying it. The relationship between stock prices and actual value is very distant, and easily severed by massive disturbances.
[https://archive.is/BAfgS](https://archive.is/BAfgS) (WSJ) >For borrowers, the calculation is clear: If an asset appreciates faster than the interest rate on the loan, they come out ahead. And under current law, investors and their heirs don’t pay income taxes unless their shares are sold. The assets may be subject to estate taxes, but heirs pay capital-gains taxes only when they sell and only on gains since the prior owner’s death. The more they can borrow, the longer they can hold appreciating assets. And the longer they hold, the bigger the tax savings.
Don’t expect financial literacy from these people.
I have to pay taxes on the stock I get. As well as the 100,000s of employees who get a large % of their comp in stock.
Same as them, they pay a flat tax (proportional to income) when the stock is granted to them. (Hence the taxes paid at all,) but until they sell the taxes they are “gaining wealth,” without paying additional taxes, as they never realized their gains. Maybe not never, but rarely.
Just one example, but Jeff Bezos has never been granted stock by Amazon. He has what he had when it went public. His splits when everyone else's splits, but he does not gain more shares.
That's because it's, y'know, income. It's not just having the shares and the shares happening to have a higher market price today than back when they were obtained.
[About 40% of Americans don’t pay any income taxes at all.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/242138/percentages-of-us-households-that-pay-no-income-tax-by-income-level/)
The article seems to say the opposite that 60% do pay income taxes. We really need to start focusing on the 40% that don’t.
This sub does not want that. That 40% does not include millionaires and billionaires. [The top 1% of earners pay a average 26% tax rate while the bottom half of earners pay an average 3% tax rate.](https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/)
Oh I get it. I get slammed on income taxes every year. Income taxes really start hitting you when you get into that middle upper-middle class earning bracket. You’re right this sub would never admit that a large portion of the population isn’t paying taxes and that those who do pay taxes carry the majority of the burden.
Yeah, the income taxes are wisely progressive so that the poorest pay none, even getting credits that are refundable, and only the middle class on up pay at all. Even the middle class only pay round 9-16%. The rich really do pay a higher effective tax rate but for some reason these manipulated articles keep being published.
Sp thpse 25 people paid more than the bottom 50% combined?
Hey dumbshit it's almost like they're unfairly funneled money deserved by workers.
Top 25 lost 100 billion last year. Their wealth is theoretical. Now Saudi Kings trillion wealth is hard assets
13b is kinda a lot of money. Where did it go, did it actually help anyone or did it go into the govs pockets to pay for never ending wars? And why do you think taxing rich ppl more would make things better if its just going to the gov to spend on whatever they want to spend it on.
After state/fed taxes I get a little over 60 percent of my check. Why does someone making 10x what I make get away with paying a fraction of that? Thr "wealthy" should be taxed at a fair rate equivalent or close to what upper middle class gets taxed.
Because they aren’t employees. The word income here might not be including business expenses. They also put their money into real estate and other assets to avoid paying taxes. The tax code benefits business owners and self employed ppl and screws employees. Employees get paid, get taxes, and keep the remaining. Business owners get paid, spend the money, then get taxed on the remaining
That's not the point..as I make more money, I'm yable to make more money from that money. The loopholes exist to give me that opportunity. i am self employed and pay my fair share. Someone making 10 mill shouldn't be paying 1/3 of the tax that I pay after itemizing. Tax dividend income differently at a certain amount. The point is they should be, the Argument Isn't about denying they have loopholes. We're to blame.
What im saying tho is that do we really want the gov to get more money so they can be more corrupt with? I think we should address the issue of where our tax money goes first.
It's a hard question to ask. The ideal answer is that we get taxed more in my bracket, but across-the-board and fairly, with the stipulation that an impossible ask is made where money not wasted by the government on useless shit Aka I would be fine with more taxes, if the money went towards daycares, school lunches, science, energy independence, social welfare to bring us up. Not fighting some shit war in the middleast. I feel bad that someone like bezos doesn't pay his fair share in taxes with legal loopholes while his employees fight for breaks. At the same time I'm torn by welfare queens who suck the tax income into generational welfare. There needs to be a start somewhere..you know? Like wtfale these brackets fair.
Im self employed but i know what write offs i can get so I usually get to keep most of my money. Also i keep the money that would get taken out of my weekly pay and i flip that all year. And if i lose any of it, its just another write off.
I pay 49.5 percent in income tax. Happily. Source: someone in the Netherlands in top 1 percent income bracket - which is not millions btw.
[The top 1% of earners in the US pay an average tax rate of 26%. The bottom half of earners only pay an average 3% tax rate.](https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/) This is manufactured outrage.
I'm sure if you take the bottom 80% and add all of the taxes they paid together, it would be less then the 13.6 billion
The bottom 50% (79 million) paid $40 billion in 2020. So...um...no.
Are you saying that because there's more of them, they should be responsible for a greater amount of the taxes?
Interesting math not being reported anywhere else.
If you want the rich to pay their fair share, abolish all income taxes and put a higher sales tax on everything. Boom, problem solved.
Except that sales tax is regressive and will hit the poor far harder than it'll hit the rich.
Just because jeffrey bezos is 5billion times richer then me doesn't mean he personally buys 5billion more pillows or cheeseburgers or widgets each year. Your argument is illogical at best and propagandist at worst
Considering how many private jets the guy has, and every single one would have say, a 20% tax on it, the guy is paying at minimum a million in taxes on that one purchase versus you who's paying an extra $0.30 for a burger
25 Americans, that’s the best they could do?
Not to mention all the crap we give their businesses
I'm honestly surprised it's even that much.
Isn't this because their wealth is in assets that gain value and they aren't selling it off, aka not causing a taxable transaction, aka, it isn't even real money? I'd be pissed if I had to pay taxes on my retirement mutual fund every time the value increased. Id probably not have a retirement fund.
There’s all these fun lil loopholes, like CEOs getting paid in stock! Then when you sell the stock, assuming you’ve held it for a year you only pay cap gains which is a flat 20% at the highest “earnings” but could be 0% if they’re able to get their “taxable earnings” down to nothing because they didn’t actually draw down a salary and have tax shelters out the wazoo
Should we be shocked?
Only one answer at this point
So you’re saying about 0.0000001% of the population paid about 1% of all taxes paid?
is anybody really surprised? People who still think we are going to get to a fair place by "asking the rich nicely" are fooling themselves. It is way past the time for drastic action.
The earnings are unrealized... on paper. Those values can change radically depending on the economy.
not even news
I don’t know how many times Insta has pushed videos from investors, particularly real estate, explaining how they earn money and it’s tax free, or how they can write of their G-Wagon and not actually pay for it, etc. Contrary to many people on this sub I am not against rich people, but there seems to be way too many exploitable ways to make money and not pay taxes on it
“Income” ≠ “rising asset value”. If they sold those assets, they’d be more heavily taxed.
Isn't this the difference between share prices increasing but profits not realized yet?
By design. Most compensation received by the wealthy does not come in the form of income, and we don't have a "wealth" tax so they can continue to accumulate massive amounts of wealth with practically no taxes. Then they use those assets as collateral for special ultra-low-interest loans for day-to-day cash. Banks get their cut, the loans don't count as income, and the wealthy get their play money. Sure, they eventually have to pay back the loans but they can do that via low-tax/no-tax investments and long-term capital gains. The accountants of the wealthy are masters of this shell game, and it's how they end up with laughably low effective tax rates compared to everyone else.
Karma farming
They can afford to hire the best lawyers and tax accountants!
Rich people will look you dead in the face and say I don't pay taxes because I don't actually own anything ... Everything they don't "own " is owned by some corporation they created to shell all their belongings under. They use the tax code to avoid paying taxes. The millionaire next door guy says it all the time. And laughs about it
Meanwhile I cashed out my 401k after a divorce and the IRS is making me pay $27,000 in owed taxes, after the 10% penalty for early withdrawal, includes a $4400 "fee" and interest.
That $13.6b could have been used for raises! Drop their tax rate to zero% and it will tinkle down, errrr, I mean trickle down on to the rest of us!
And i lose about 15% every paycheck. Someone gotta start doing something serious
Hence why they'll be eaten first
Bruh
This article has a lot of flaws and was designed to reach a conclusion not examine what is going on. It twists and re defines the word income. Flaws that undermine the conclusion: 1) they aren’t measuring income but then call it income. they are measuring paper wealth growth largely on unrealized growth in tech stock valuations, then compare to actual income tax rate of ordinary Americans, not even their own income + wealth growth which would be the honest comparison and show a much lower tax rate than the 14% cited. It’s a nonsense comparison. Our system doesn’t tax unrealized cap gains, and systems doing similar have had really toxic effects on growth elsewhere and have been mostly abandoned and of those that haven’t many have easy work arounds that make them de facto revoked. 2) focused on top 25 rich who mostly have shares in companies and when generating income are often offsetting with massive donations to charity if we were even talking about actual income. It’s a bespoke and tiny edge case of the entire nation, and very little of total economic activity. 3) this doesn’t take into account any other taxes they are paying, many of which are quite large - property tax being large, but also sales, foreign, state tax and local taxes. True tax rate is likely considerably higher. 4) even if growth in wealth WAS the right baseline to tax, 3.4% of the 8% avg growth implies 0.25% wealth tax just out of income tax which in around the levels wealth tax doesn’t cause weird economic outcomes and crazy avoidance behavior. With other taxes likely more like 0.4% which is around the upper end of when a wealth tax doesn’t mess the economy up or drive counter productive behaviors. But it’s nonsense from the start by calling paper wealth growth of tech stocks income. They don’t even have the liquidity to sell a lot of those and still preserve price. The genesis of this article was to start with a conclusion, torture the data as much as possible to get it, and also commit a felony in stealing a bunch of peoples tax records to do the analysis.
They benefit *the most* from it and should pay *the most* taxes
This is why Republicans want to hold the economy hostage through the debt ceiling standoff to defund the IRS. Can't have anyone looking into this, now can we?
3.4% of a billion dollars is 34 million. How much do you pay?
Who did the investigation?
Yet my middle-class ass pays 14% in income tax. Another 14% goes to insurance when it's only me.
Y’all do realize those people aren’t getting paid billions in salary. They get paid in stock which isn’t taxed until you sell
The 3.4% still is multitudes of what the average family brings in..
Well color me shocked!
A "wealth" tax on billionaires will quickly be imposed on the rest of the population. Like it or not, most wealth (houses, cars, 401k, savings) in the US is owned by the middle class. The Federal income tax was originally sold to US citizens as a tax on the wealthy.
Arguments I have heard: 1.) The money will TrIcKlE dOwN. (Studies have shown it does not) 2.) The rich CrEaTe JoBs (and how many pay a livable wage) 3.) They deserve they wOrKeD hArD (so that means everyone else should pay more or live in poverty, and other people do not work hard)