“In 1980, adults in the top 1 percent earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50 percent of adults. Today they earn 81 times more.”
Presumably that means the 1% are just that much better than the average joe now. The only problem with exterminating the rest of us is that they won’t have any way to feel special anymore.
The bottom of the 1% is a pauper compared to the top. Their lives are completely foreign to one another.
In Cuba everybody is equally f_cked! Long live socialism.
bchad really sticking it to the man lately…
The bottom 50% generates very little capital gains or passive income because you need money to invest. You have an investing class which is doing incredibly well and everybody else. The bottom have not benefited from this bull market or housing market resurgence. They don’t own stocks and they are part of the renting class. The top 1% have done extraordinarily well under Obama which is why it shocks me a little that they complain so much about his policies.
Those running the show have previously shown willingness to give it away through force from the masses, in reality the future will be so mechanized that it seems UBI or an uprising of people against those with power seem to be the only logical outcomes.
One solution is taxing investment income at the top marginal tax rate. The rich get away with paying a lower rate than everybody else.
By top, I mean top rate applicable to that individual.
America treats capital like god & labor like shit, then wonders why the middle class is struggling and the rich get richer. FREE TRADE DEALS (but only for capital so we can access cheaper labor)
^Mercantilists run the US.
+1
Been saying this for years on this forum. Even if you equated CG tax to base rate income tax, you could significantly lower the income tax as a result. The top percentile’s income is all CG, so that while Single Mom Sue with two kids works three jobs and pays 35%, some LA kid with generational wealth will pay 15%. But change will never happen because politicians tell the masses "we’re all in this together and we don’t want the government in our pocketbook of money we’ve already earned!"and everyone’s stupid enough to believe it.
You all need to read Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckeret. There is a fascinating chapter on “War Capitalism” and the creation of marginalizing labor into wage labor.
Yeah. I’ve been thinking that politicians find it’s important to have the middle class paying more taxes, because that’s how you get them on board to support further tax cuts to the top. Every time, it seems to be “we’re going to lower middle class taxes by a percent or two, and make a ton of stuff except for ‘job creators’.” If you cut middle class tax rates, you wouldn’t have as much support for tax cuts in general, so it’s important not to cut them too much.
I agree that it’s just my cynical mind talking, but powerful people are often cynical, so it helps to think like them.
And it’s frustrating to hear politicians always complaining that we need a country that rewards work, but they produce a tax code that is much more about rewarding capital.
It’s simpler than that. Model out too sets of people, one with a 15% tax rate and one with a 35% tax rate over 30 years. Report back.
I get that. I was merely pointing out that if you cut taxes too much on the middle class, it’s harder to keep their support for continuing to keep taxes low for the ones who live off of deployed capital.
…and the middle class gets lectures about how the wealthy worked hard and thus deserve these lower tax rates…and then their mental slaves parrot these arguments.
^ you need to keep them believing that by working hard enough they too can live that life. Dont worry about the fact that the majority of the people in that bracket are there due to family money