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America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#181

Post by SigmundA »

randomdata wrote: post #126
readams wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a myth that there was a 90% marginal tax rate. It's technically true, but when the top tax rate was removed they also removed all the loopholes and deductions that were being used to reduce the effect tax rate on top earners to below 45%. All the while the proportion of tax receipts as a percentage of GDP has remained constant. Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increa…

> actual rich people make most of their money not as income, but as unrealized capital gains. Technically, they make most of their wealth as as unrealized capital gains. It doesn't become money until they realize the gains, at which point it is taxable income.

Then typically only taxed long term cap gains rates of 20% or less...

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#182

Post by User23 »

Usury, which is to say lending at interest, will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything. This is obvious to anyone who has basic high school math and understands that interest compounds geometrically and wages grow linearly at best.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#183

Post by tick_tock_tick »

tengbretson wrote: post #47
almost_usual wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you suggesting? That poor people don’t need anything right now? Literally half the country can’t afford rent or housing?

What does that have to do with taxing the wealthy though? Do you think the $3.5 trillion spent on covid relief has any relationship whatsoever with tax revenue?

Total billionaire net-worth in the USA is $4 trillion so 1 covid relief would fully tap them out. People are horrible at reasoning about large numbers they think these people have real money compared to the government.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#184

Post by chris11 »

randomdata wrote: post #126
readams wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a myth that there was a 90% marginal tax rate. It's technically true, but when the top tax rate was removed they also removed all the loopholes and deductions that were being used to reduce the effect tax rate on top earners to below 45%. All the while the proportion of tax receipts as a percentage of GDP has remained constant. Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increa…

> actual rich people make most of their money not as income, but as unrealized capital gains. Technically, they make most of their wealth as as unrealized capital gains. It doesn't become money until they realize the gains, at which point it is taxable income.

What's the average effective tax rate for high-net-worth+ individuals if unrealized capital gains are included as income? It seems like people get an increasing level of control over their taxes as their networth increases. Choosing when to exercise options means you have some control over AMT. If you invest in indices, it looks like direct indexing has a lot of tax benefits over an index fund. You can get variable and fixed rate loans against your investment accounts.

It's not a good idea for tax minimization to be the main goal of your investment strategy, but it seems like people can get access to a large portion of their investments without actually realizing capital gains.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#185

Post by User23 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #23

This is almost a natural law of wealth. When you have significant capital, you can do things like loan it out with interest, leverage it into getting loans to build more capital, etc. If one assumes that the wealthy are using their money to buy commodities and selling those commodities with the expectation of getting their initial money back plus some delta, then it becomes fairly trivial to demonstrate that the more…

> This is almost a natural law of wealth. When you have significant capital, you can do things like loan it out with interest

It is a natural law of usury, which is what you describe. This is why we used to ban usury as unjust.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#186

Post by zepto »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #8
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

If Bezos continues paying people at minimum wage, hires union busting lawyers, and hires more lawyers to actively lobby to keep minimum wage low for 20+ years while he makes more money. Is he stealing from poor people or is that just people on the Internet trying to convince themselves he is stealing from poor people?

Bezos wealth isn’t cash he paid himself that he could have been distributing to the workers.

It’s a number based on the value of his ownership stake of the business itself.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#187

Post by throwaway123x2 »

User23 wrote: post #182

Usury, which is to say lending at interest, will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything. This is obvious to anyone who has basic high school math and understands that interest compounds geometrically and wages grow linearly at best.

How do you run the economy without interest?

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#188

Post by syops »

exabrial wrote: post #143

Correction: The Government has seized 38% of my wealth by force. The top 1% I gave my money to willingly. One is extortion under the threat of cops wielding violence and jail time. The other is a free choice.

Every government has taxes. Running the government isn’t free. The cost of living in a given society are the taxes and abiding by the system of laws it has. In the U.S. you have the option of leaving if you find the cost too high. You willingly stay here and as such you ought to willingly pay the cost for doing so. Besides, are you certain the amount you pay in tax really ought to be considered yours? It’s strange perspective from my point of view. You appear to want all the benefits of living in the U.S. while not acknowledging that perhaps not all of your income ought to really be considered your money. This is the system we have developed for people to pay for the privilege of earning in this society.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#189

Post by findthewords »

tryptophan wrote: post #7
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

[flagged]

The fact that "proles" even exists in the modern vocabulary should indicate something. Bin the population into wealth centiles and observe the curves. The Gini coefficient is not a magic arbiter of inequality. See the Great Gatsby curve for a better example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Housing

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#190

Post by tick_tock_tick »

pydry wrote: post #139
username90 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter". Are you sure they are billionaires and not just millionaires? There are millions of people in USA with millions of wealth, they are what matters, and they can each buy up a large chunk of real esta…

It's a ripple effect. Billionaires end up pricing out hundred-millionaires, who price out millionaires and so on. All of the above also buy up rental property. And wealthy foreign criminals andtax evaders get in on the act by buying up property sight unseen as a foreign bolthole. This is how we end up with cleaners and baristas having to share a room and commute 1 hour each wayway and property prices that are, like,…

The USA has 630 billionaires and the world has 2,825. I think you are vastly overestimating the impact they have on any housing market. The poster above is 100% correct it is the millionaires that inflates prices of normal goods. There simply isn't enough people at the top end to matter.
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