For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

Post by mistermann » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #143

cpr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Rumsfeld announced that 2.3T USD were missing from the military? https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-157... Yeah, nor do most people. The date he announced that? September 10, 2001. The section of the Pentagon hit? The accounting wing with all the records.

It’s a lot easier on your sanity to just accept that (insanely) crazy coincidences happen. If it helps, that number jumped to 6.5T a few years later and now stands at 21T and the military and Pentagon have simply stalled all attempts at enforcing audits. They have the gall to simply refuse to account for the discrepancies and believe they cannot be taken to task for misappropriated funds; they don’t need to blow up r…

Post by jefftk » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

5trokerac3 wrote: post #258

chagen wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

regarding 2: I think they meant millionaires with more than $100,000,000.

> 100 millionaires and billionaires. There are over 500 billionaires. My point being that OP's point comes off as an emotional argument as opposed to a data-based one. Edit: I now understand the OP meant "100-millionairs". Even so, the math is still off. As of 2015 there were ~5000 100-millionaires and billionaires in the US[1]. That's 0.0015% of the population. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2015/06/1…

Post by troupe » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #252

Correction: the rich pay a lower tax rate than you. They do pay, however, vastly more than you do. The various governments have somehow managed to brainwash the masses into comparing rates instead of actual amount paid. Very neat trick of you ask me.

Post by holy_city » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #268

holy_city wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you could say CG taxes are "double taxation" since only the income from the asset is taxed, not the principle. >it's much less than that because of inflation Why would you hold an investment for 55 years that isn't beating inflation?

> Why would you hold an investment for 55 years that isn't beating inflation? The point is that the inflation is getting taxed also. Say inflation is at 2 percent per year over the period, and it's appreciating at 2 percent more than that annually. Then when you pay taxes, the "capital gain" amount includes both the real appreciation and the inflation. So in this example, half of the putative "gain" is actually infla…

Post by zarro » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #269

zarro wrote: post #259

I think this “vilify the rich minority” mentality that’s so popular these days is destructive in the fact that the people that popularize this, see it as a path of least resistance to getting subsidized at the expense of the rich, instead of working toward improving themselves and the value of the products/services they provide so that they may, in return, purchase valuable services for themselves. In the end when th…

> see it as a path of least resistance to getting subsidized at the expense of the rich. If making the tax code more progressive is equivalent to "subsidizing the poor at the expense of the rich", does that mean you're saying the current regressive tax laws subsidize the rich at the expense of the poor? If so, flipping that sounds entirely reasonable to me.