Why we love the rich and hate the poor

[zolace]

1) in NYC 5000 people out of 8.4 million pay 50% of all city taxes

2) in California 150,000 pay 50% of state taxes

3) in America the top 1% pay 40% of all federal taxes.

No other country rips off the rich like we do in America but ,sadly, the joke is on us because when you take incentive and capital from your most productive citizens and give to your least productive, ie., liberal bureaucrats and free loaders, everyone suffers in a poor economy whose heart has been cut out.

[lemfuture]

hang in there

[Kluge]

I'd argue that isn't the whole picture. The government compensates them handsomely for it. In some countries, corporations are actually expected to stick to the law. The money's just a bribe for non-tangible gain, maybe just to ensure execs stay out of prison, so accepted in the US that high school government classes often cover the Iron Triangle in the same way as if they were going over the reasoning for having a bicameral legislature, now.

[wassupman]

The top 1% of Americans also get 43% of the nations income yearly, and only 19% of their income is derived from actual work (wages and salaries)

    The bottom 80% only pull a pathetic 17% of the nations income, and 97.24% of that is from actual work (wages and salaries).

    The idea that we "rip off the rich" is completely and totally retarded. Nowhere else in the world do the rich have it as well as they do in America.

    If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. —Samuel Adams

[zetaray]

That is why governments pass laws to benefit the rich, so they make more money and bribes the government with taxes. It is the same with any other country.

[Gargulan]

A simple divide and conquer method to pitch the population against each other from the governing class (politician).

We now have many racial groups now against each other, class group against each other and ideologies and religions fighting each other.

[alwinlinzee]

Its a general notion that every government the world over enriches itself from taxes generated from the rich thus make appropriations that go in favor of the rich that isn't debatable.But the fact still remains that the poor masses bear the burden from most of this laws since they find it hard to meetup with any such laws created due to their status. 

[umair127]

1) in NYC 5000 people out of 8.4 million pay 50% of all city taxes

2) in California 150,000 pay 50% of state taxes

3) in America the top 1% pay 40% of all federal taxes.

No other country rips off the rich like we do in America but ,sadly, the joke is on us because when you take incentive and capital from your most productive citizens and give to your least productive, ie., liberal bureaucrats and free loaders, everyone suffers in a poor economy whose heart has been cut out.

We all suffer when anti American liberals steal capital from our most heroic and productive citizens. The more liberals steal venture capital the fewer ventures we have. That means fewer jobs and slower economic growth. A child could understand, just not a brainwashed liberal.

[zolace]

1) in NYC 5000 people out of 8.4 million pay 50% of all city taxes

2) in California 150,000 pay 50% of state taxes

3) in America the top 1% pay 40% of all federal taxes.

No other country rips off the rich like we do in America but ,sadly, the joke is on us because when you take incentive and capital from your most productive citizens and give to your least productive, ie., liberal bureaucrats and free loaders, everyone suffers in a poor economy whose heart has been cut out.

We all suffer when anti American liberals steal capital from our most heroic and productive citizens. The more liberals steal venture capital the fewer ventures we have. That means fewer jobs and slower economic growth. A child could understand, just not a brainwashed liberal.

You keep talking about "stealing" venture capitol. We dont tax venture capital, we tax income, and venture capital is typically achieved through some type of securitized mezzanine financing facility. The only way your argument makes sense is if you wanted to argue that by taxing the income of the wealthy you are decreasing the available capital of some hypothetical angel investor, which is what many/most Americans think of when they hear "venture capitalist". As we are discussing in another thread, most americans are ignorant. When it comes to venture capital, angel investors are almost unheard of, and are certainly unheard of on any measurable level. That is just not the way such things are financed anymore.

[zolace]

Even traditional angel investors do not fit the mold here anymore. Today angel investors pool their capital and share research. Your typical angel investment pool is never actually used as venture capital. Instead they organize a security offering and use their capital to insure the resulting securities against default. It is a cheap way to leverage their money.

The other financing you typically see from angel investors (and probably the most common anymore) is providing the capital to make an IPO, often with the marketing to go with it it. Say you have an idea, have proven the idea is sound, but lack the capital to bring it to market. If the idea has any merit, there is a better than average chance that you can pick up an angel investor (which is usually going to actually be a pool unless you are stuck in FFF hell). They help fund an IPO and pay to market your IPO. You essentially pay your angel investor in stock, which they sell at the beginning of the IPO. Typical return on a transaction like this is 20-30x. If you have picked a good angel investor they are now out of it and you have ample capital to take your product to market....or pay yourself lavishly until the money runs out and then hand the whole mess to the bankruptcy court and let them work it out...whatever.

The financial world is FAR, FAR more complex than your dad is telling you. In the real world over 96% of expansion capital in this country is newly generated by our fractional reserve banking system. Another 1.5% is self funded. You are essentially arguing that we should base our tax policy on 2.5% of expansion capital.

That is dumb.

And frankly history makes you look silly in your claims. George Washington paid more in taxes than wealthy Americans have in the last 10 years. Literally. Wealthy Americans have NEVER paid less in taxes as a total percentage of assets than they have in the last decade. Where the hell are all the jobs? Where are all the new ventures that should be pupping up due to their obscenely low (historically) tax rate???

At the same time, the fastest absolute growth in this country ever took place immediately following WWII. At that point the wealthy were txed 90% on yearly income over $1 million. WE HAD A 90% TAX BRACKET, and that was when our nation grew the most. We literally grew so fast, and became so wealthy, that our entire nation has been living off that wealth since the late 70s.

[sana8410]

The top 1% of Americans also get 43% of the nations income yearly, and only 19% of their income is derived from actual work (wages and salaries)

    The bottom 80% only pull a pathetic 17% of the nations income, and 97.24% of that is from actual work (wages and salaries).

    The idea that we "rip off the rich" is completely and totally retarded. Nowhere else in the world do the rich have it as well as they do in America.

    If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. —Samuel Adams

What a load of lies.

By what standard do you judge that wages and salaries are the only measure of real work?

It sounds like someone who has never made an intellectual effort in their life.

Further physical labor or even mental labor is not the measure of what a person deserves, what people agree to give them in trade is that measure. Whether you think they deserve it or not is not your decision it is the individual decisions of everyone who trades with these people.

The idea that you rip the rich off is totally founded by the simple fact that you are taking their money by force.

If you did that too the poor you would be ripping them off too.

[zolace]

The truth is that it has virtually nothing to do with tax rates. Fractional banking and relative loose securitization laws ensure that there will be ample money out there for start-up and expansion purposes, and the wealthy will invest in things that will make them money, and not invest in things that will lose them money, regardless of the tax rate. Nobody says "Gee....I would make a million dollars on this investment, but if I am going to have to pay 32% taxes on that million dollars SCREW IT, I will put that money in CDs at 1.2% instead". That is just not reality.

We are trying to run a capitalist system with a wealth distribution that absolutely precludes the possibility of a capitalist system. In order for a capitalist system to work, the majority of wealth MUST rest in the middle and lower classes. This is not optional. You simply cannot have a capitalist system unless this is true. Exactly how much of that wealth must rest in the middle and lower class is a matter of some debate, with different economist arguing in favor of anywhere from 63% to 70% of wealth being held by the bottom 80% of your people.

That is simply what you MUST HAVE in order for capitalism to work. It is quite literally the cornerstone of capitalism and why capitalism is considered by most people to be the fairest, most just economic system out there.

So, what we have here in the US IS NOT CAPITALISM. By definition it is NOT capitalism. But we keep trying to manage it as if it is. IF this was actually a capitalist system your argument might have had some merit 30 years ago, before complex securitization and derivatives were widely used.

[realbtcdealers4real]

Even if it was legit capitalism there would be a elite of big money holders then 99% of poor people like in BTC.

[zolace]

The top 1% of Americans also get 43% of the nations income yearly, and only 19% of their income is derived from actual work (wages and salaries)

    The bottom 80% only pull a pathetic 17% of the nations income, and 97.24% of that is from actual work (wages and salaries).

    The idea that we "rip off the rich" is completely and totally retarded. Nowhere else in the world do the rich have it as well as they do in America.

    If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. —Samuel Adams

What a load of lies.

By what standard do you judge that wages and salaries are the only measure of real work?

It sounds like someone who has never made an intellectual effort in their life.

Further physical labor or even mental labor is not the measure of what a person deserves, what people agree to give them in trade is that measure. Whether you think they deserve it or not is not your decision it is the individual decisions of everyone who trades with these people.

The idea that you rip the rich off is totally founded by the simple fact that you are taking their money by force.

If you did that too the poor you would be ripping them off too.

Yea...it requires a lot of intellectual effort to hold treasury notes.

Sorry but no, the guy who gets up in the morning and heads into the office and works for 8 hours is working...even if what he does is primarily, or even completely, intellectual. The guy who calls his fund manager once a month is not working. He is living off investment income.

And nobody was talking about what anybody "deserves". We were talking about taxation, which is required to pay to maintain the infrastructure that allows us to make money.

[zolace]

Today your argument is just plain silly. Remember the financial crash we just had, caused by terrible loan quality....hundreds of thousands of dollars being loaned to people who could not demonstrate that they had ever paid a bill on time or held a job? That entire situation was caused by the fact that the top 1% has essentially run out of things to invest in. They loaned money to crack whores because they just really did not have anywhere to put that money.

That is where our massive, economy wide bubbles are coming from. Our stock market valuations are absolutely insane. Bonds that should be paying 27% interest are paying 6%. It is classic investment inflation, and it is only cause by, and has only ever BEEN caused by overabundance of idle investment capital.

[sana8410]

Let's put this into numbers using IRS data: SOI Tax Stats - Individual Statistical Tables by Size of Adjusted Gross Income
http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats---Individual-Statistical-Tables-by-Size-of-Adjusted-Gross-Income
Middle Class:
People with taxable income around $60k a year will pay an average tax rate of 15% with around 1% of their income being taxed as capital gains.

Percent of income from Salaries and wages: 80%
Percent of income from Partnership or S Corp: 1%

Rich Class:
People with taxable income over $10 million a year will pay an average tax rate of 25% with around 50% of their income being taxed as capital gains rates (most of it at 15%).

Percent of income from Salaries and wages: 19%
Percent of income from Partnership or S Corp: 22%
(I put both but I doubt you can combine them since it is unlikely you have a partnership AND another job to where you net over $10 million a year. It is more likely you have either a partnership where you split the earnings or you get a salary).


In other words, the majority of TAXABLE income from the super rich is taxed at 15% which is the same rate a married filing jointly family is taxed at who makes $60k. The taxes paid are flatter than people think.

Honestly though, the people getting hosed the most, in my humble opinion, are those in the upper middle class who can't afford a good tax accountant but earn enough (mostly from wages) to be in a higher tax bracket. Those in the 100k-500k range. I'm not saying they are suffering but they get the breaks like the 10mill club gets.

Time to cut the BS and face the fact that the rich aren't paying enough, mostly on their "investments". In fact, I'd be willing to compromise and say the first 10% of your total income will be taxed at capital gains rates and every investment type income after that will be taxed at 50%. To be fair, we can tax none-investment type business income that employ more than 3 people (yeah, no getting around the rule) at 25%.

SEE! I'm for "small business" and the middle class.

[zolace]

Going all the way back to Smith in 1776 a "vibrant" middle class is required for any capitalist system to work. That is a large part of what makes capitalism unique, and why it is generally considered to be the most just economic system. For it to work the majority of your money has to be out there in the economy among the middle and lower classes circulating. If you end up in the situation where we are, with the vast majority of the money concentrated in the hands of a few, the system breaks down.

Look at the recent economic crisis. The entire crisis was essentially a recognition that pricing discovery had broken down completely. At the end of the day any free market system at its basest level is nothing BUT a price discovery mechanism. If price discovery has broken down your entire economy is essentially a farce...it is not doing its primary job.

In this case the break down was essentially caused by investment level hyperinflation. Econ 101...too much money chasing too few goods leads to inflation. The same thing happens with investments as happens with a loaf of bread at the corner supermarket. If you end up with too much capital in your top 20%, where that money tends to be put into investments instead of spent against goods and services, you end up in a situation where the real economy stagnates due to lack of wealth while investments get expensive because there is so much capital chasing so few investment opportunities.

In the past this has been self correcting to some degree because of the limited investment opportunities. Today we have the technology to create and track a multi trillion dollar derivatives market which allows us to artificially leverage the relatively few investment opportunities out there that are actually backed by hard assets.

It will eventually end up "correcting" anyway, the odds of our economy surviving it are just FAR worse than they have been in the past.

[sana8410]

Anyway, taxing the rich more is simply a way to get us out of this fiscal mess we are in. It is basically impossible to cut over 50% of our budget out to balance and even if we did the job losses from that would drive tax revenue way down, sink us into a depression for sure, and require us to cut again to balance the budget. Why cant' we all just suck it up and pay what the average American had to pay during our most prosperous times in the 50s-60s?

[sana8410]

Going all the way back to Smith in 1776 a "vibrant" middle class is required for any capitalist system to work. That is a large part of what makes capitalism unique, and why it is generally considered to be the most just economic system. For it to work the majority of your money has to be out there in the economy among the middle and lower classes circulating. If you end up in the situation where we are, with the vast majority of the money concentrated in the hands of a few, the system breaks down.

Look at the recent economic crisis. The entire crisis was essentially a recognition that pricing discovery had broken down completely. At the end of the day any free market system at its basest level is nothing BUT a price discovery mechanism. If price discovery has broken down your entire economy is essentially a farce...it is not doing its primary job.

In this case the break down was essentially caused by investment level hyperinflation. Econ 101...too much money chasing too few goods leads to inflation. The same thing happens with investments as happens with a loaf of bread at the corner supermarket. If you end up with too much capital in your top 20%, where that money tends to be put into investments instead of spent against goods and services, you end up in a situation where the real economy stagnates due to lack of wealth while investments get expensive because there is so much capital chasing so few investment opportunities.

In the past this has been self correcting to some degree because of the limited investment opportunities. Today we have the technology to create and track a multi trillion dollar derivatives market which allows us to artificially leverage the relatively few investment opportunities out there that are actually backed by hard assets.

It will eventually end up "correcting" anyway, the odds of our economy surviving it are just FAR worse than they have been in the past.

I want to note that I'm not even sure why you arguing for a "Robin Hood" type tax system. The argument against taxing the rich always boils down to "we shouldn't tax the rich to give to the poor". Well I don't want to speak for you but I bet he generally agrees. Most people agree some sort of welfare is always needed to hope those who would never be able to help themselves (such as the mentally handicapped) or those who are down on their luck; as an example.

[zolace]

Going all the way back to Smith in 1776 a "vibrant" middle class is required for any capitalist system to work. That is a large part of what makes capitalism unique, and why it is generally considered to be the most just economic system. For it to work the majority of your money has to be out there in the economy among the middle and lower classes circulating. If you end up in the situation where we are, with the vast majority of the money concentrated in the hands of a few, the system breaks down.

Look at the recent economic crisis. The entire crisis was essentially a recognition that pricing discovery had broken down completely. At the end of the day any free market system at its basest level is nothing BUT a price discovery mechanism. If price discovery has broken down your entire economy is essentially a farce...it is not doing its primary job.

In this case the break down was essentially caused by investment level hyperinflation. Econ 101...too much money chasing too few goods leads to inflation. The same thing happens with investments as happens with a loaf of bread at the corner supermarket. If you end up with too much capital in your top 20%, where that money tends to be put into investments instead of spent against goods and services, you end up in a situation where the real economy stagnates due to lack of wealth while investments get expensive because there is so much capital chasing so few investment opportunities.

In the past this has been self correcting to some degree because of the limited investment opportunities. Today we have the technology to create and track a multi trillion dollar derivatives market which allows us to artificially leverage the relatively few investment opportunities out there that are actually backed by hard assets.

It will eventually end up "correcting" anyway, the odds of our economy surviving it are just FAR worse than they have been in the past.

I want to note that I'm not even sure why you arguing for a "Robin Hood" type tax system. The argument against taxing the rich always boils down to "we shouldn't tax the rich to give to the poor". Well I don't want to speak for you but I bet he generally agrees. Most people agree some sort of welfare is always needed to hope those who would never be able to help themselves (such as the mentally handicapped) or those who are down on their luck; as an example.

Hell not I am not arguing for a robin hood type system. I have no desire to tax the rich and give it to the poor. I want to tax the rich and PAY OUR BILLS WITH IT.

We can make a logical argument for it (the wealthy are the only ones who can AFFORD to pay) or we can make a moralistic argument (they hold 90% of the wealth, derived 90% of the benefit, they should pay 90% of the bill) or we can just shrug and say "sometimes you just get screwed". I don't really care. I don't want my children to have to grow up in a third world country, and that is where America is headed if we don't do something about our fiscal problems.

This is why economic stupidity annoys me so much right now. We have serious, serious problems and by all accounts we have a very limited window in which to fix them. This is SERIOUS with nothing less than the very survival of our nation at stake. This is bar none the biggest clear and present danger that the US has ever faced.