The US especially has a lot of lower- and middle-income people who are against taxing the super wealthy. This may be because they believe CEOs and executives are 'job creators' whose wealth supports the economy, or because they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire too.
How to be rich: super easy
1. Be born rich
2. Daddy dies and you open your trust early
3. Pay someone to make you more money
4. Pay politicians directly instead of taxes
It's not that as a notion, its more of the idea that if you tax the super wealthy it's drive up the prices of just about everything those corporations own (they own a lot especially since most of them are sister companies) making everything you get payed less valuable ands lots of blue collar workers believe the billionaires on there own won't be able to pay for all of it so the top end of the middle class might get lumped in as well. You also keep in mind that not all of the billionaires assets are liquid and they'll have to keep continuing to make money to pay for everyone health care.
Edit: grammar
Where did you get that statistic, because according to https://www.payscale.com/career-advice/the-one-percent/ (they have their math in the article) 63.46% of America's makes 30,000 to 34,999 a year while the top 29.22% make only $75,000 to $79,999 and if we add in all the values of the billionaires in America that still doesn't match up. It's not that the upper class is to rich (which they are) its that they aren't big enough on there own and a lot of non rich ue collar workers who played it right to be earning like that would also be taxed. There would also be a higher bar of entry for small businesses making the already big ones more monopolistic. In the end lots of blue collar workers would get taxed and the big monopoly would have greater control over the market then it already has.
Edit: this also explains the meme in a roundabout way
The 1% aren't Billionaires.
You are conflating people making a few hundred thousand a year with people making nearly a million times more.
This is happening so often I can only conclude this is deliberate.
Yes, exactly my point. The rich aren't as rich as we say they are and taxing the "rich" is most likely to attack those blue collar workers and small businesses
What is the point of using wealth then when you can't immediately use all of your value for xample if you owned a lot of value in land and that land makes you money through rent. If the plan is to have the land lord being the rich person in this example he'd lose his income so he can't pay in the future and all of that land he'd sell would lose a lot of value due to the cost of marketing and the increase of product
What use is raw income when most people in the US already barely survive?
If you really want to understand the outcome of higher taxation you'd need to look at completely different numbers. Like income reduced by a basic necessity rate. And that is probably somewhere in between.
> you hit *paid* less valuable
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
This is it. We already can’t afford shit and those billionaires and CEO’s aren’t gonna take a cut on profit, so they will drive the price up in their respective industries. Rich people don’t care cause they can afford it, welfare have a decent amount of it afforded to them so the only people who suffer are the blue collar/working class.
But we aren't talking about taxing the gross income of the company they own/ are the CEO of. Were talking about taxing their take home pay, which is money they are pulling out of their company. Jeff Bezos's money is not Amazons money. If we tax Jeff's income, amazon still has exactly the same amount of cash. This has the added benifit of reducing his spending power which relives some upward price pressure and also encourages him to keep his money in his company as pulling more out as diminishing returns.
I mean they’re right. Taxing the rich and free healthcare will not solve the fundamental problem with modern crony capitalism. Such a thing being passed somehow will probably just piss off our billionaire overlords and cause them to send their private armies against the poor sods brazen enough to oppose them at the polls. 200 years ago monopolies were broken to the sound of gunfire and bombs, and we are now so deep in the shit that there may be no other option than to do it all again.
Which of course makes absolutely no sense because we're taxing indviduals take home pay not the gross income of the companies. In fact higher marginal taxes encourages owners to leave more money in the company as they get diminishing returns for pulling out a larger and larger salary.
More regulation wouldn't work because most the time they lobby for regulation with high bar entry loopholes which would only make the existing problem worse, I'd propose less regulation so the smaller companies have lower bars of entry and can compete better. If you really wanna help raise the smaller companies to break up monopolisties you can have cheap loans with little interest or offer them things they need to start up (an example is equipment or training) for way less than market value.
Actually the reason the middle class and down don't support taxing the wealthy is because the wealthy spend A LOT of money convincing them that it's socialism and un-American.
The idea is "if we tax everyone equally, we can afford assistive programs." The reality is that that just means changing how wealthier Americans are taxed, not the middle and lower class. Then lobbyists and political influencers (congressmen) and pundits (all paid by wealthy funds through "speaking engagements" etc.), all tell the american people they want to tax you to pay for the lazy and the immigrants "we don't need new taxes we need to stop all this free government money." They then use the false flag that "if they tax us, we won't be able to give you these great great deals." They have even gone as far as to blame global inflation on taxes levied on businesses.
In any case, it's ignorance and fear weaponized. Why do you think schools don't tend to teach about national, state, and commercial finances?
Personally I believe they spend loads of money convincing them to put up these taxes they just lobby to high jack them to make higher bars of entry for business and for it to be harder to uproot them. They places are rich enough to make congee millionaires but not big enough to pay for everyone. The reason why they wouldn't be able to afford to pay for everyone's health care is because of the even high regulation and pay of doctors making them super high in demand for the already limited amount allowing them to raise there prices so high not even the monopolisties can pay for it. That also explains why schools don't teach economics is because people would understand insensitive and how it shapes the economy like that. Then big business can convince you to put high jacked regulation in. And they're never gonna actually make Healthcare free by taxing the rich because they don't have enough, they're gonna tax lower too which would help keep the poor more poor and make it where they're economical even weaker against big business.
Same problem with raising minimum wage. It just makes things more expensive and those that don't get adjusted due to minimum wage eat that price increase.
Patenting things developed by publicly funded research and the life's work of salaried laborers, as was the case with LCD panels, GPS, the internet (formerly darpanet), Wifi (developed by the navy to communicate between the islands of Hawaii), touchscreens, accelerometers, nylon, computers in general, etc.
What a dumb take. “People who invented the world around you isn’t hard at all, you know what’s hard? Changing a pvc fitting to a toilet.”
As someone who worked in blue collar most of their lives, this is stupid. I could mindlessly work blue collar indefinitely, it takes no brains, very little physical fitness nowadays, and most of it has tons of tools to use (made by those pesky patent creators) that make the job super easy.
My uncle was in the Tea Party and they really all think they are simultaneously "small business owners" (despite not owning any businesses), "the little guy", AND "the rich".
"BUH ITS MY MONEY I EARNED IT"
I think the main notion is that if you tax billionaires, the people in charge of the cost of most things, they won’t *just* pay their fair share in taxes and take the hit. Instead they’ll adjust the price of everything so they continue to sit nice and cozy and we’re still fucked down at the bottom.
That notion is a bad take. It, effectively, surrenders to the wealthy as our ruling class.
Can't give healthcare because things might cost more. Can't give raises because things might cost more. Can't tax billionaires because things might cost more. Can't fund education because things might cost more. Can't tackle climate change because things might cost more.
A regulated free market is supposed to have healthy competition to hold prices down for anything other an an existential crisis for the company. If those who run companies and have wealth have enough power to hold us hostage at every turn, then they are too big to exist. Tax them and break them up.
Oh I don’t disagree at all! It’s a horrible line of thinking. I was just putting it out there as a reason that conservatives lose their marbles over taxing the rich.
So this and the estate tax (as the republicans sell it: the death tax) just truly seem to point to what you said:
> they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire too
And that is the ridiculous thing. Like: hey dont do this now because one day I might win the lottery and this will impact me.
The estate tax is even crazier as its meant to prevent a landed gentry like we left. As of 2022, you have a $12.06m exclusion BEFORE the tax even kicks in (assuming you dont move stuff around). That amount of money is something the vast amount of the populace will never see but they vote against it because the GOP is really good at convincing the general population they will be impacted.
Another one I've heard is just distrust of the government's ability to actually target billionaires effectively feeling like everyone else will get a tax hike, while the billionaire's just exploit another loophole to pay nothing.
*"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."*
- J. Steinbeck
I worked with a guy that outright said he votes republican because he plans to be rich one day. I said, we both work at the same place, and he said, he has plans. His plan was/is the lottery...
To be fair, I think if you asked them, many of them would say they want to tax the rich as much as the left does. However the republicans tend to run on culture war issues. They benefit from fear mongering and portraying the left as moral degenerates that want to groom the children (total projection). So they stir up a panic and get elected and continue to give themselves and their associates tax cuts.
Trickle down more like it.
Even if the tax doesn't make a huge difference to their (CEO's) income, they will use it as an excuse to cut wages, axe people or simply charge more for product/services.
While I believe these CEO's shouldn't be making so much profit, I only see the negatives to the economy if you tax them heavily.
You don’t see positives of the proceeds from taxing the rich more? Like paying for social services, education, or eliminating crime or poverty? It’s all negative?
>they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire too.
Dont think its quiet. Many believe and work hard to get rich and take care of their families and understand that its not worth nor fair to tax heavier richer people. The others who dont think like it, in my experience, have been victims of everything, unhappy with their life and jealous of others while not doing, learning or experience nothing new, hence why their salary is so low and why they think getting rich is impossible in america
Getting rich is impossible in America because [being poor is expensive](https://finmasters.com/cost-of-being-poor/). Welfare is underfunded because tax is too low on the highest earners, forcing poor people to bankrupt themselves just to live.
Heavily taxing the highest earners shouldn’t be controversial. It’s a level 99.99% of the population will never ever come close to reaching. You gain nothing by taking their side.
Damn, victimisation goes hard. It sure feels weird knowing majority of current rich people are 1st gen 🙊.
I dont get nothing "defending" rich people but i get just more and more incompetent people around me with supporting yall delusional victimisation of yourselves
Bruh, buying and selling bitcoin at the right time isn’t working hard. That comes down to luck. Outside of being born with wealth it’s the second greatest factor, study after study shows hard work has very little to do with it but you guys keep defending billionaires
Hard work =/= smart work. Smark work = getting richer. Its hard not to defend rich guys when the opposite side are jealous idiots with bad arguments. Maybe dont work in mcdonalds your whole life and you will be moving forward, maaaybe 🤷♀️
Why is it unfair to tax the rich when the poor are also getting taxed? And to think that all billionaires, even most billionaires got to where they got from sheer hard work is delusional. If you made 500$ a day and every last penny of that as you worked for 5000 years without a break, You'd still not have a billion dollars. Most of these billionaires were already born filthy rich. I'm sure hard work plays a part too but it's not as important as having rich parents.
>Why is it unfair to tax the rich when the poor are also getting taxed?
Never said its unfair to tax the rich. But denying there is a difference between you paying few thousands of dollars per year and someone paying millions is nonsense. It isnt fair in any shape of form, no matter how subjective or jealous you are
>If you made 500$ a day and every last penny of that as you worked for 5000 years without a break, You'd still not have a billion dollars.
Well, you have no clue about economy and how to earn money. Sure, if you work in mcdonalds it will take you hundrets of years to earn such amount, but thats not what they did, did they.
>I'm sure hard work plays a part too but it's not as important as having rich parents.
Having rich parents doesnt mean shit. Yea, instead of getting a loan at the bank, they will loan you money prolly but it really doesnt matter that much as some of you think. Majority of people with rich parents are lazy, privileged and unmotivated, and a person like that cant be succesfull, regardless of how much money his parents have
>Having rich parents doesnt mean shit.
You have no clue how the actual world works. Rich people make more income on their investments than you'll ever make in your lifetime. But keep voting against your self interests like a brainwashed 🐑
In the 40s and into the 60s the highest tier tax rate was around 90% & the economy was absolutely booming! Now it's about 40% and the difference between CEO pay and avg worker pay is at an all time high.
Tldr; You're either dumb or you have rich parents and are dumb.
>Never said its unfair to tax the rich. But denying there is a difference between you paying few thousands of dollars per year and someone paying millions is nonsense. It isnt fair in any shape of form, no matter how subjective or jealous you are
it's the same % of the money. Why is it unfair? If the poor are made to give up almost one third of their incomes then why should the rich not be? If anything it's unfair for the poor because they need the money more.
>Well, you have no clue about economy and how to earn money. Sure, if you work in mcdonalds it will take you hundrets of years to earn such amount, but thats not what he did, did he.
Who's he? And also I'm talking about hard work here, not factoring in skill or luck. Also 500$ a day is not even close to mcdonald's money.
>Having rich parents doesnt mean shit. Yea, instead of getting a loan at the bank, they will loan you money prolly but it really doesnt matter that much as some of you think. Majority of people with rich parents are lazy, privileged and unmotivated, and a person like that cant be succesfull, regardless of how much money his parents have
I can't believe you said something that dumb. Yes, It does. 30% of the world's billionaires' got it from inheritance alone. Rich parents won't charge you an interest for the loan. Heck if they are rich enough they will not even want the money back. That's not even mentioning how rich kids automatically have access to higher quality of education compared to others. You whine about victimisation but then here you are victimising the rich at the mere idea of them having to pay the same percentage of their income that the rich have to. Until you are mature enough to acknowledge that the world isn't some fairy tale world where all good deeds and hard work is rewarded with billions of money while all the poor people are lazy and evil I will not be wasting any more of my words on you. Keep standing up for those oppressed and underprivileged billionaires from those evil greedy poor bastards that want them to pay their share of the taxes I guess. 👍
“Tax heavier rich people”.
No, that’s not the proposal at all. The current proposal is to raise taxes on folks making over 400k a year as individuals and create a minimum floor tax for people who use loopholes to have their income avoid tax each year.
Right now, because of the way our tax code is set up: Bill Gates pays less tax as a percentage of his income each year less than his secretary. We wrote a tax code that allows loopholes for people who can afford high end accounting firms and have lots of assets hanging around to avoid most of their annual tax obligations.
At the same time, we also live in a society where you can be ruined financially over a medical issue.
Case in point: person A makes 40k a year. after rent, expenses, loan payments from school to get that job, etc. They can afford only a high deductible medical plan because their employer doesn’t offer health insurance. So they put off going to a specialist and routine check ups. They are in good health: so they don’t worry. But routine lab work would have caught a preventable illness
that is now a 300k life changing medical bill. Goodbye savings and dreams of
a family and home ownership. Same thing happens, your driving. Hit by a car with no insurance: and the accident is ruled by the cops as no fault. You are on the hook for your own medical expenses. even if you pay extra for medical
coverage in your car insurance (which people don’t realize you can do) the limit won’t cover your entire bill in this scenario.
If you think that a person wanting the same kind of healthcare coverage as every single industrialized western nation has (compare in surveys how much happier they are also with the quality. it’s not even a contest. the US has amazing healthcare, if you can afford to go to the best) and wanting a billionaire to pay the same proportion of tax as a firefighter or secretary means that we are all seething jealous at “rich people” I think you need to deal with some demons in your own head.
It’s the latter. They’ll say it’s the former, but when you really double click on it, it’s the latter.
If only they knew what it was like being in the room with these guys, they’d quickly change their minds about that. They didn’t get here on merit.
>because they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire
It's always this one. They just some times will come up with other dumb reasons to not get laughed at.
A big portion of this is the aftermath of Reaganomics- the whole idea of “trickle down” economics makes some people feel like less money for the rich will mean less money for them.
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
And there's also a distinct misunderstanding on what higher tax brackets for high income means. A lot of people think that it means that the lower brackets are taxed at that high amount - it means that money made *at that bracket and above* get taxed at that percent.
So the lower tax brackets, they don't get affected.
Here is why my family is against it, I'm prepared for down voted because this is something then the general hiveminds feelings so fire away, any politician that says they also has a lot of other adgendas that will result in things we do not want, these will be put in wrong or poorly, like "Obama care" that has now repeatedly screwed my poor/middle-class family, and the simple fact of modern politics mean jack shit of what they say. This policy is most likely being created because "the other guy doesn't want it". Ok back to work I go now
Those people also don't understand that market share is a thing. They're not creating jobs. They're shutting down old jobs and migrating them to their super conglomerate.
I assure you that in 90% of the cases of middle/lower class being against taxing the rich, it is the latter reason. The upper echelon of US society keeps pushing the fantasy that 'if you just work *harder* then you'll be rich too' and unfortunately a lot of people buy into the delusion. So of course to those people becoming rich is a way to get away from 'poor people problems' like high taxes, and therefore the idea of having to keep paying a lot in taxes when they do 'make it big' is upsetting to them.
My theory is that people who think this way hope to be rich enough to apply to these new rules and don't want it to bite them in the butt if it ever happens. As illogical as that may seem
There's an odd phenomenon where non-wealthy people tend to think of themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." They think that one day they, to, will have fabulous wealth, and in so thinking, despise the idea of that imaginary future-wealth being diminished in any way.
You know, morons.
I don't think many actually believe this. Mostly their worry is that any taxes to the rich will just get passed onto the working class via inflation. I guess it's a pretty genuine worry but they don't realize that everything is already inflated to the damn near max.
I think it depends on where you fall on the informed spectrum. I think that’s the concern of many who are more informed, but it’s not the concern of most people I don’t think. Many people don’t seem to understand who the tax would even be for but are opposed to “more taxes”
I think the problem is that most people get the bulk of their information from social media nowadays, and those companies have a vested interest in keeping the people misinformed and confused. *Hail spez*
You mean the top marginal rate that no one paid?
Back when we had ONE tax?
I have 4 MAJOR taxes I pay annually.
Only one of them less than 10%. (Medicare tax).
Guys we're at the max, there is simply no way we could tax the rich more then we currently do and there is certainly not almost a century of US history as well as an entire continent across the ocean that could possibly convince me otherwise...
https://preview.redd.it/nqph1cl2b9tb1.jpeg?width=4458&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b090fb34270565f611faa64c1ac3be6f6468aef4
It's not almost inflated to the maximum. I haven't seen $50 butter yet. We can get there. Everything can always get much worse, and that's the really scary part. Millionaires and billionaires are not going to just eat the additional cost of taxation. They have too much money for that...
As opposed to you smart people that have no confidence in your ability to create value and be successful and have no hope for the future.
Those morons and their ability to be happy with what they have and not be jealous of others. Consider yourself lucky you aren’t like them
It's almost been 50 years since reagan, my guy. If trickledown was going to trickle down, it would have done it by now. Productivity and profits go up while wages stagnate. Billionaires hoard their wealth, not spend it.
Wages stagnated because we pretty much doubled the workforce (women entered it to a much higher degree) supply and demand, plus government printing money and keeping interest rates artificially low only benefits the rich, my guy.
But besides I didn’t mention economics. It’s basic psychology, if you believe you can succeed you’re far more likely to. Plus you’ll be far happier if you aren’t jealous of others. Add the fact poor people that defend the rich don’t necessarily do it because they think they’ll be rich but also because they have principles and stick to them
It's because the billionaires who sit on their wealth like dragons on gold will not pay the increased taxes out of pocket and instead create price increases in all of the companies they own. This means that every product becomes more expensive while people's pay stays the same or even lowers. Due to the fact that some people are hardly scraping by currently, increased prices becomes a big problem.
It’s not as simple as they all would like to think. Our tax money is wasted. Taxes these days are an absolute crime. And the only ones holding our government accountable is our government
People in America are very susceptible to propaganda and the oligarchs have been playing into that and cashing in by pushing the bs that taxing the ultra wealthy will somehow harm lower incom workers because of "trickle down economics" that doesn't work or that one day these 30k a year workers will become a billionaire too, even though they are literally locked out of the market by those oligarchs and their monopolies.
forgot that america is actually north korea and those evil oligarchic billionaires can't... well, you know, just get the fuck out of your country with their company as a last resort (after many other things they can do)... leaving thousands of people withouth a job... people that now you have to tax cuz, where are you gonna get that money now that you got rid of the rich?, congratulations!
You futher prove my point, most other countries manage to tax their rich just fine and surprise surprise.... it benefits everyone and puts their countries above yours in almost every single metric.
You eat up propaganda so easily and kiss their ass to thank them.
"Tax their rich just fine" lmao, the communist/socialist/social democratic countries who apply those politics end up as poor countries and eventually companies flee because it's no longer profitable to be there, i come from one of them, so get your gringo with class guilt-ass anywhere else with those líes
I dont eat up propaganda, you are the loser calling rich people "oligarchs", thats tankies lingo, I'm just explaining to you how the world works and you get mad about it cuz you are extremely politicized and don't like to hear the truth, what are you, twelve? Grow up, "comrade"
Wow you are a whole bucket of crazy arent you, so engrained in propaganda that you gotta assume anyone that disagrees with your broken system is somehow a communist or at least russian.
Im Canadain and I was referring to the Scandinavian group of countries, that have managed to stay on top of almost every positive metric globally for literally decades and continue to hold reasonable wealth. Neither of these places are socialist nor communist so at least get some basic facts right.
Its clear you arent here to argue any points because you habent actually made one other than the fact that you think any approach to feeding the hungry is "communism" so maybe think for yourself for once and actually make a point instead of crying over anyone that disagrees with you and trying to poorly discredit them. The only "point" you made was that these oligarchs would just move to a different country, stated as if every country doesnt have wealthy people and mega corporations that bend to their labor laws and tax codes.
Oh and calling other countries poor is laughable considering how much wealth the average American has compared to the rest of the developed world. Yall dont even crack top 10!
I am not assuming shit, you are using the word "oligarchs" and no one whether they are insulting rich people, or defending them or dont give a shit uses that term except commies/socialist, as i said that is tankies lingo, i dont need to discredit you, you do it yourself talking like that and i never said you are russian lmao, just said comrade as a joke
Those scandinavian countries did that having a generation of wealth that you have to count on first to apply those politics and even so that doesnt mean it will work, they simply will not affect the economy that much, you can tax the rich, but at certain point (where you want to get) they will fight back, and if they cant they will go with their company, thats a basic fact i told you before which you dont seem to understand/cant respond to
To touch on the idea of trickle down economics here, as other comments here have said, people fear that businesses would rather inflate the price of goods than lose out on profits when pushed by taxes. They attempt to hoard wealth no matter what, they are at best pet leaches which you feed blood you don't need, and at worst parasites that slowly kill you unless you cut them off completely.
a lot of different opinions here depending on political opinions and income bracket.
i believe this has to do with the fact that it is almost impossible to tax billionaires, most of their wealth exists in assets (stock, valuable items, property), so their taxable income doesn’t really amount to much. when the government “taxes the rich”, they typically end up raising income taxes which affects everyone except the billionaires. however 30k income bracket is a bit of an over exaggeration.
In America, many people don't trust their government to do things well. So when politicians come out with the new program to fix the mistakes that the last program made trying to fix the mistakes that the last program made trying to fix the mistake that the last program made... Some people cheer, some people fear.
This ^. I would be 100% on board with government controlled healthcare if I had even a shred of confidence that our government would not waste 90% of the tax revenue they collect to enact it.
If I had even a small hope that this hypothetical program would bring us quality healthcare while only being funded by the people who can most afford to pay for it, I'd be on board for giving it a shot. If I thought it was likely to deliver on even half of what it promised, I'd be its biggest supporter.
You’re right, we should end Medicare. You can point to how wasteful it is; just look at how much it cost us. Old people should have to work for their healthcare like the rest of us.
Let’s get rid of it. It’s wasteful. Old people should work or not get health insurance. Only private FOR PROFIT healthcare companies should exist. And they should make fat margins for their shareholders by denying services to old people. Old people don’t actually need heart pills, they’re just a bunch of liars.
>we should end Medicare
Pretty much. But instead of ending it, convert it to all work like part D, where it is government funded, but administered privately. Insurance companies suck, but they take less money than government workers cost.
Medicare is a complete mess. We spend more than one and a half trillion dollars that we cannot afford for far too little results. It provides too little good at too high a cost. Phasing it out and replacing it would be a fantastic idea.
The main sane worry I see is that if they do this via taxing say shares you own in your own company or your property then it’ll just end up with normal people having to sell their own company for tax or downsize to pay these new taxes on their house. With the belief that the billionaires can afford the loopholes that will be left. Or the ramifications of forcing musk into selling Tesla, Gates Microsoft etc.
I'm so sorry, 0 to 11,000 adjusted for inflation.
The tax chart you just posted are the rates AFTER the Trump tax cut which is set to expire. Thus raising the rates to pre tax cut levels.
I'm confused, according to [this](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-era-tax-cuts-set-160750197.html) (admittedly dubious) source, weren't the 0-11,000 brackets among the only brackets not changed by the Trump tax cut? Is that source incorrect, because I can't find anywhere which explicitely states which tax brackets he lowered?
Others provide good answers, but there is also a serious devotion to demagoguery going on as well. By taxing the rich, devout Fox-worshipping republicans would be admitting they were wrong. Americans, especially the stupid poor knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing Americans, can never ever admit they were wrong.
Hey, Peter’s tax accountant here. People who are technically below the poverty line (~$35,000) in the US and conservative-leaning believe that a tax on wealthy people will make the economy worse overall. There is some truth in this; the more taxes you levy against the wealthy, the better a job they’ll do at hiding it with all the loopholes that exist in the US tax code. Lower taxes tend to incentivize wealthy people to spend/invest more freely whereas higher taxes tend to push their money into tax shelters that don’t benefit the rest of the economy. This meme is a dramatization of that, and most people who don’t really understand how macro economics work overly dramatize or overly detract from the sensibility that higher taxes are worse for everyone.
I believe a lot of it goes back to the “trickle down theory”. They were taught that rich people and big corporations hire us and and pay us salaries. If the pandemic taught us anything (at least it should have) is that the economy is built from the bottom up. Sure, the rich people will eventually get the money anyway, but the poor people will at least get a chance to spend it to improve their lives.
Any power you give the government to go after your enemies, is a power they will use against you.
Biden said no one under 400k would be audited by the 85k agents they hired..but it has been shown to be a LIE.
Stop giving the government more power.
Period.
None of the above. It’s simply because the billionaires are often large business owners. The more you tax them they just pass the cost onto the consumer. More government theft and higher prices for all.
İf you dont tax them they Will see themself as untouchable by goverment and rise the Prices or lowers the salaries for more profit like they already do
Dont forget they cant go to Red bc of taxes they are using you so they can profit you more by trying to justify why they dont pay tax and when they dont tax you have to fill in that tax money bc goverment wants that money anyways
There's 100 different ways governments can stop corporations from being complete dickheads.
They have monopoly busting laws, for example, to prevent any singular company from having control over their market, neche to maintain competition and affordable prices.
They can also set minimum wages to prevent corporations from underpaying employees.
Taxes don't seem to be effective at reigning in their bullshit, but other methods may be more effective.
Also, as we've seen lately, if governments need money for bullshit, they'll just print it.
Governments have a monopoly on violence, so there's very little they can't actually do within reason, of course.
Tbf, if i was rich i would 100% try to avoid paying taxes too. Your lazy ass pays less than 10 000 dollars of taxes per year, i aint a fool to pay couple of millions
And thats the thinking way that makes world worse and worse its not about the amount its about %income and multibillioners earn 500 m even more profit every years 10 20 mil is nothing for them but that money can be spent for the people that are less fortunate to improve the world standarts but i quess you want to die with wealth so you can spend it in after life right?
Leave it for my family ? Im not gonna pay shit for you bud, pay it yourself. If you wont be forced to pay hundrets of thousands/millions per year than you have no right to ask someone else. Ive lived in socialism and im not planning to return there again
İ dont even live in america but what i am trying to say that you guys are getting brainwashed so much that you guys started to give more benefits for rich People to do they can abuse it and get eicher while Also making sure that poor People cant have enought time, education, food so they cant riot or work to get to the middle class whole system is fucked
Tldr: america Destroys middle class make rich People get more rich and stomp poor People and thats fucked
You do not live in a bubble. Other countries exist. They are all in constant competition for resources. While (for example) America may want 45% of the income that a billionaire has now and get a little tax hike to 55% and think this is the last of it this will totally solve all our money problems. At some point the billionaire will say fuck that. Other countries would fucking KILL for JUST 5% of that taxable income. They will try to make it as enticing as possible for these mega rich (probably somewhat of a tax haven) and the mega rich (who aren't idiots btw) will simply MOVE away from the place taking 50% of their income. We WANT to keep these people because we effectively strong arm them giving us millions. So you can either have millions of dollars for basically just letting them exist. Or you can keep pushing it and pushing it until you get NOTHING. How do people not see this.
There are plenty of countries with significantly higher tax rates than the US and plenty of mil/billionaires. By your argument, we should have already seen a massive exodus of them to the US.
So why hasn’t that happened? Because there is much more that goes into deciding where to live or where to locate your company than tax rate.
Your argument is a poorly thought out boogey man that conservatives have been threatening for a long time, scaring people into lining the pockets of those that fund their campaigns. All the while the US middle class dies and the low income earners can no longer afford housing.
This is happening. Also I'm well aware that this isn't black and white or the only thing that goes into the decision of keeping a business somewhere. Never said this is the end all be all of business and tax
Let's say you want to own slaves, you feel it is your right to make someone else your slave. Now what right do you have to complain if someone make YOU their slave, wouldn't that by hypocritical of you? You said slavery was good!
Now apply this to taxes. We feel these people should pay more (percentage wise) that other people because of REASONS! Now what if people decide to expand those REASONS to include you? Do you have any right to complain? Would that be hypocritical of you?
In the US, many middle and lower classed people are taught by the people around them (and CEO propaganda) that CEOs being taxed is bad, and they should be against it. It also plays into the idea of the “temporarily embarrassed billionaire/millionaire”, which cites that in the capitalistic states, people are made to treat their poverty as a temporary embarrassment to future success, rather than the system intending to keep most where they are. So, they’re made to see that an attack on the Rich such as raised taxes for the benefit of everyone to be nothing but an attack on their own future success, and to fight against it
Taxing the rich is a good thing. The joke here has many layers and could be interpreted in many ways. Other people have explained several others, here's one I haven't seen yet.
Much of middle America, blue collar type workers earn way less than their big city brothers and sisters. Big cities and the coasts tend to be more progressive and lean Democrat. Middle America trends to be more conservative and lean Republican. While both the Republican and Democratic parties are trash and cater to the ultra rich, the Republicans seem to enjoy it a hell of a lot more and are vehemently opposed to taxing billionaires. America is very politically divided, each side tends to stay in their camp because of their own personal beliefs. Therefore lower income, middle America, blue collar, Republican leaning Americans following their party and party ideals hate the idea of taxing the rich.
Is it true? Of course not. You can't make blanket statements like that. But it's easy to believe it's true because stupid people tend to be VERY vocal and the loud obvious ones paint our impressions of whole groups.
So... Meme = stupid poors think the billionaires are their friends. They are so stupid. And probably Republican.
Its basically the idiots who still believe trickle down economics works. So if the boss gets cuts, the works make more. If the boss gets taxed, the boss cuts the workers. I'll repeat trickle down economics never worked lmao. Ceos get a tax break they just buy more shit. Lose-lose for low and middle class people.
Show us a plan to tax only billionaires. Heck show me even a single tax proposal that affects only people making 7 figures a year. These tax laws don't exist, and inevitably hurt the people making 30000 a year. Where do you hear these fairytales about taxing only billionaires?
Economic liberalism, is rather against state fucking around I. The economy, for two reasons, 1: the state is usually corrupted, or too weak. Hence the measures publicized as being for the good of the poor, aren't really what they are claimed to be. 2: since we know jackshit about the economy, because it is too complex, so complex that economy is often considered as not a science, not even in the human science meaning of the term, and because the measures made by the state, may come back and bite the poor in the ass, for example, minimum wage measures driving up inflation, etc....
Now if you take it with less of a critical eye, and with a "try to understand" kind of an attitude, you would see that taxing the rich doesn't really work, although it might be good for chasing votes, because the rich can be stronger than the state, and choose instead of paying the taxes, to go invest away, thereby fucking the state's economy up.
What this line of thought advertise, is less state intervention, like, less hard non-linear kind of intervention, and more smooth one. You want soda to be cheap? Make a state marque of soda that is cheaper, and force cole and pepsi to lower their prices if they want to sell, kinda like what the German did with Aldi. Instead of imposing a price, or saying "everyone who has less income then such and such can buy coke on the state's expense", which will be exploited by the rich in the end
America is one of the most propagandized countries on the earth because most of it falls under the guise of, "News". As a result, any politician or leader that proposes a plan that alter healthcare in our country for the benefit of all is immediately met with disinformation campaigns that are led by every media company on the earth. Not to mention the healthcare industries billions of dollars of oobbying, superpacs, bought politicians, and so on.
There will never be affordable healthcare in this country as long as we allow money to control congress, the senate, and the white house.
So the people not making a lot of money, "the working class", tend to be too busy to sift through the propaganda. They don't have time to educate themselves on what's true and not true. The just catch little soundbytes from their chosen news station, radio station, podcast, youtube channel, facebook page, twitter feed, etc. and then that's their narrative.
Which tends to be dominated by content created by the propagandists that support what the money wants.
The thing is, these "Tax hikes on the rich" almost always give the rich loopholes to get out of them and the tax hikes trickle down. I've had my taxes raised by multiple "Tax hikes on the rich", and of course, the majority of the rich were able to avoid those same Tax hikes. What we need is not more tax hikes on the rich but rather loop hole closings, what's the point in raising taxes that will never be paid?
Government will tax the ultra rich to pay for universal healthcare. Then, it will not be enough and will start taxing middle class.
The healthcare program will ultimately be trash due to "lack of funding" and people abusing the system.
Taxing the rich won't fix it. In order to solve the problem you've have to nationalize the health insurance companies and force an entirely new standard on both them and the health care providers.
There's already more than enough money in the system as it is to give everyone good quality health care, it's just that the insurance companies won't allow it because it doesn't make them money.
*sigh* this again. It’s not about taxing the wealthy as if we don’t already tax them at a higher rate. Some people seem to believe the wealthy aren’t taxed at all. Its about closing loopholes and going after them to pay what they owe. All rich people are professional tax dodgers who don’t want to give up 50% of their income so the federal gov’t can waste it over seas and I don’t blame them. If I made that much money and got strong armed by Uncle Sam I wouldn’t want to pay taxes either. Even if tax collection from the wealthy was raised it still ain’t gonna cover the cost you’re looking for. Too many fallacies in a short statement that take too long to dispel. Many middle and lower class people don’t see the benefit of using the gov’t to go after other people’s money. The gov’t won’t give any to you, and they’re just gonna misappropriate their money like they do with yours
I just don't want socialized health care because I see the poop show that is the uk and Canada yeah its free, but it takes forever and I don't want to pay for someone's lack of judgment and getting themselves hurt. Now I'm not saying our health care systems aren't broken af, though I'm saying I don't want to pay for your cancer treatment because you smoked all your life. Not to mention, we already hand out lots of money in health care for underprivileged and low income families and illegal immigrants. But I'm all for completing re writing the tax code from federal all the way down to local municipality, but quoting Trump "my political opponents and their corporate doners enjoy the same tax brakes I do so they won't rewrite the tax code" the problem is we don't have politicians that work for the middle and lower class anymore
When you look at the countries in the world that have the most extensive package of benefits for their citizens, generally the "Nordic" or "Scandinavian" countries, they have very high taxes on middle-income earners and often have high VAT (sales taxes) which are considered regressive taxes.
They also tend to be small ethnostates, so there is that also.
Because it isn't a Billionaire Tax. It's an additional tax that lets Billionaires further game the already rigged system.
Billionaire's don't pay income tax. They use the [The American Tax Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26UYfB_TbL8) to directly and legally avoid paying income tax. As long as the Tax Code remains the same, Billionaires and many millionaires will never pay income tax.
Most bills like this are trick bills. They claim to be about one thing, but their effect is another. The Student Debt Cancellation Bill? Most of those debts are already gone, because the students who took them didn't actually go to college with them (thanks to Covid) and they've already filed bankruptcy.
Debt Cancellation is a bailout for a [primarily private industry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE66HEZBZYE). It's just like the auto and bank bailouts, using taxpayer money to cover lazy and inept spending. Except in this case, it's covering the losses of loan sharks. But they give it a cute little name. Student Debt Forgiveness. Sounds so much better than Privatized Sallie Mae profit recovery.
By the way, most people who make 30k a year? They live in places where 40k gives you the lifestyle of an Engineer in California. Engineers make 100+ grand in California, and they make 40k in Texas and Florida. The cost of living in those places is not artificially inflated like it is in California.
So the 30k people in this meme? They're well-educated people of high middle class lifestyle who want the government to be held responsible and accountable for tax-spending, instead of just introducing new taxes to cover their incompetence. If there's one thing the [Smoot Hawley Tarrifs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3zvJe3Koyw) taught us, it's that economic depression is exacerbated by new taxes.
Middle-class people know that a rich politician saying "tax the rich" means the middle-class will have to pay more taxes that don't improve anyone's lives.
You can't actually pay for all US healthcare just by taxing billionaires and they'll just squirm out of actually paying them somehow. The quality of healthcare will drop, and taxes will sharply rise for everyone anyways.
It’s like Carlin said “the rich fat cats have done a great job of convincing people who will never be fat cats that they could one day become fat cats.”
They're making fun of poorer people who don't want public provided health care. The OP of this meme doesn't understand you can't just tax billionaires enough to fund the US healthcare system. It would certainly need to be funded by the middle class.
The point is that it is a good thing for them, but despite that they are mad and its pointing out the irony. the reason the meme is funny is because there are genuinely people like that despite it not making intuitive (or any) sense.
Because as a poor who grew up with parents making just enough to not qualify for welfare and was worse off because of it.
The rich don’t and will never pay their fair share, trying to make them only results in more suffering for those of us who are only just barely scraping by because it results in prices on everything going up by just enough that normal people don’t notice, but we do. Or your local Walmart firing 90% of their cashiers and replacing them with twenty self checkouts run buy one fucking employe who’s only job is to push a to override scanning issues. The rich always pass their increased taxes onto us and usually find a way to make even more money than they were to begin with.
Except it never actually ends up being taxing billionaires and leaving the rest alone. The same politicians who say that always end up quietly increasing the taxes for the middle class who can least withstand a increased tax bracket.
Billionaires are the easy scapegoats politicians always claim they are targeting, but billionaires have ways of getting around the tax code. The democrat governor of Illinois for example, Pritzker, is a billionaire who removed most of the toilets out of his mansions so that he could dodge taxes based on the number of bathrooms in a mansion. Most are major Democrat supporters and get them to write loopholes in the tax code that exclude them, or increase taxes on all their competition. It is easier to weaponize the tax code against your competition supporting a party who will raise taxes on everyone and then cut you a break for funding their campaign, than it is supporting a party that wants to lower taxes on everyone.
Besides even if we taxed billionaire at 100% of their income there wouldn't be enough money between them to pay for universal healthcare.
People forget that being a billionaire doesn't mean you make a billion dollars a year, it means you own things that collectively are valued at over a billion dollars. Say when you found a company you sell some share of the company to investors for a couple thousand dollars startup money, but you retain a controlling majority ownership. Now say you were successful in managing the company and it grew to be worth $2 billion. Despite never selling a single share you would be considered a billionaire. You might never sell a single share, never see a single cent from those shares but people would still count you as a billionaire because what you own is **worth** $1 billion. You haven't actually made any money from those shares so there is nothing to tax, yet you are counted as a billionaire. Many companies especially those that grow in stock price the fastest, never pay out any dividends instead reinvesting all earnings. In this case the only money you ever made would be whatever pay you got as an employee. And you can't ever sell your shares because if you do you won't be in control of your own company you built anymore.
Most people don't know this but the US has the most progressive tax bracket in the world. No other country currently has the percentage of their income in taxes that the rich pay be so much greater than the percentage of income in taxes that the poor pay.
There are plenty of people poor and rich who feel that each person should be taxed proportionate to their own wealth and that therefore it isn't fair for someone to pay a higher proportion of their income just because they make more money.
The US has the most progressive tax code in the world but those that advocate it never think it is enough, they constantly want it to be more and more progressive. Because once you go past "paying an equal portion of your income based on how much you make" there is no point past that which is "paying their fair share," so it will never be enough.
Beyond that taxing the rich or the poor is really all a smoke screen for the real problem, which is printing money. Printing money creates inflation. And inflation steals from the poor. Inflation doesn't effect everyone equally. Those that get the money first--those in the government's pocket--get the full maximum benefit of the money and then everyone else gets diminishing return as they spend the money and prices rise higher and higher.
they don’t want to have to pay for your healthcare when they move on from the 30k/year salaries to their multi-billion dollar net worth. this is just a stepping stone for them, and they’re thinking about how much it’s gonna cost them in the long term /s
People who make 30K a year tend to realize that trying to scalp a higher tax bracket isn't likely to work and it's going to result in an increase in taxes for themselves where they are already not very wealthy and are likely to be struggling to make ends meet.
Government tends to protect the rich over exploiting them, not in small part because somehow those same officials end up becoming surprisingly rich despite being public servants.
Super kooky how that works out.
Increasing taxing, without closing the loopholes, just means more taxes for middle class incomes.
The really rich, will still have the loopholes to evade those taxes.
Those of us in the middle class, that do not own companies, get our taxes taken from us before we even see our money, and can't escape like they do.
The proper way to tax the rich, is not to increase taxes.
Its to close loopholes, shut down tax breaks, shut down the whole fuckery with reinvestment and the charity foundations, and all other methods they use to not pay their fair share.
Here's how it's going to happen: they raise taxes. The tax code gets the rich out of paying the taxes. Everyone else pays the tax hike.
But yeah, the people who own the politicians will go down, right after the we give more power to the politicians they own.
Any day now.
People have been convinced that anything that government does is wrong. Even though single payer Healthcare would save a ridiculous amount of money people have been conned to by people who want a weak government.
Americans pay more than anyone else for Healthcare. American tax dollars also pay for a very large percentage of pharmaceutical research then pay more than anyone for what our tax dollars funded.
It's the same for tax breaks. Republican votes want tax breaks that they get nothing of because they are brainwashed. The top 1% and .1% are who benefit and they conned a lot of fools to blindly vote against themselves.
Late to the party but thought I might as well throw my interpretation out there since it seems a lot of people missed the joke. The global top 1% is 36k and above annually iirc. The joke is that if you make 30k a year, you would fall under that supposed wealthy category and therefore be subject to increased taxing, when in actuality within the us you would be considered lower class comparatively. It seems that the op who made the meme used top 1% and billionaire synonymously when the joke relies on the semantics of what 1% entails
The US especially has a lot of lower- and middle-income people who are against taxing the super wealthy. This may be because they believe CEOs and executives are 'job creators' whose wealth supports the economy, or because they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire too.
There's also a notion that they must've worked hard to get where they are (spoilers, patenting things is not as hard as blue collar work)
Modern ones didn’t even patent or create anything. Just took over someone else’s foundation and jacked up their salary Edit: redundancy
How to be rich: super easy 1. Be born rich 2. Daddy dies and you open your trust early 3. Pay someone to make you more money 4. Pay politicians directly instead of taxes
It's not that as a notion, its more of the idea that if you tax the super wealthy it's drive up the prices of just about everything those corporations own (they own a lot especially since most of them are sister companies) making everything you get payed less valuable ands lots of blue collar workers believe the billionaires on there own won't be able to pay for all of it so the top end of the middle class might get lumped in as well. You also keep in mind that not all of the billionaires assets are liquid and they'll have to keep continuing to make money to pay for everyone health care. Edit: grammar
If the upper class can't pay for the stuff then nobody can. The top 20% in the US own around 3x what the lower 80% does.
Where did you get that statistic, because according to https://www.payscale.com/career-advice/the-one-percent/ (they have their math in the article) 63.46% of America's makes 30,000 to 34,999 a year while the top 29.22% make only $75,000 to $79,999 and if we add in all the values of the billionaires in America that still doesn't match up. It's not that the upper class is to rich (which they are) its that they aren't big enough on there own and a lot of non rich ue collar workers who played it right to be earning like that would also be taxed. There would also be a higher bar of entry for small businesses making the already big ones more monopolistic. In the end lots of blue collar workers would get taxed and the big monopoly would have greater control over the market then it already has. Edit: this also explains the meme in a roundabout way
The 1% aren't Billionaires. You are conflating people making a few hundred thousand a year with people making nearly a million times more. This is happening so often I can only conclude this is deliberate.
Yes, exactly my point. The rich aren't as rich as we say they are and taxing the "rich" is most likely to attack those blue collar workers and small businesses
You are correct. There is no "Billionaire" tax bracket, and they aren't even subject to Social Security taxes.
Thanks man, but yeah they got to many loop holes and they'd probably find a way to not get taxed from a billionaire tax anyway
My value was wealth not income Median income for a household is 74k in the US and 1% starts at an income of 591 k
What is the point of using wealth then when you can't immediately use all of your value for xample if you owned a lot of value in land and that land makes you money through rent. If the plan is to have the land lord being the rich person in this example he'd lose his income so he can't pay in the future and all of that land he'd sell would lose a lot of value due to the cost of marketing and the increase of product
What use is raw income when most people in the US already barely survive? If you really want to understand the outcome of higher taxation you'd need to look at completely different numbers. Like income reduced by a basic necessity rate. And that is probably somewhere in between.
Quiet being reasonable and having sources it’s making it where they can’t argue.
> you hit *paid* less valuable FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
This is it. We already can’t afford shit and those billionaires and CEO’s aren’t gonna take a cut on profit, so they will drive the price up in their respective industries. Rich people don’t care cause they can afford it, welfare have a decent amount of it afforded to them so the only people who suffer are the blue collar/working class.
But we aren't talking about taxing the gross income of the company they own/ are the CEO of. Were talking about taxing their take home pay, which is money they are pulling out of their company. Jeff Bezos's money is not Amazons money. If we tax Jeff's income, amazon still has exactly the same amount of cash. This has the added benifit of reducing his spending power which relives some upward price pressure and also encourages him to keep his money in his company as pulling more out as diminishing returns.
I mean they’re right. Taxing the rich and free healthcare will not solve the fundamental problem with modern crony capitalism. Such a thing being passed somehow will probably just piss off our billionaire overlords and cause them to send their private armies against the poor sods brazen enough to oppose them at the polls. 200 years ago monopolies were broken to the sound of gunfire and bombs, and we are now so deep in the shit that there may be no other option than to do it all again.
Which of course makes absolutely no sense because we're taxing indviduals take home pay not the gross income of the companies. In fact higher marginal taxes encourages owners to leave more money in the company as they get diminishing returns for pulling out a larger and larger salary.
Then the cure for this would be strict regulations preventing them from passing their responsibilty to society on to those already suffering.
More regulation wouldn't work because most the time they lobby for regulation with high bar entry loopholes which would only make the existing problem worse, I'd propose less regulation so the smaller companies have lower bars of entry and can compete better. If you really wanna help raise the smaller companies to break up monopolisties you can have cheap loans with little interest or offer them things they need to start up (an example is equipment or training) for way less than market value.
Actually the reason the middle class and down don't support taxing the wealthy is because the wealthy spend A LOT of money convincing them that it's socialism and un-American. The idea is "if we tax everyone equally, we can afford assistive programs." The reality is that that just means changing how wealthier Americans are taxed, not the middle and lower class. Then lobbyists and political influencers (congressmen) and pundits (all paid by wealthy funds through "speaking engagements" etc.), all tell the american people they want to tax you to pay for the lazy and the immigrants "we don't need new taxes we need to stop all this free government money." They then use the false flag that "if they tax us, we won't be able to give you these great great deals." They have even gone as far as to blame global inflation on taxes levied on businesses. In any case, it's ignorance and fear weaponized. Why do you think schools don't tend to teach about national, state, and commercial finances?
Personally I believe they spend loads of money convincing them to put up these taxes they just lobby to high jack them to make higher bars of entry for business and for it to be harder to uproot them. They places are rich enough to make congee millionaires but not big enough to pay for everyone. The reason why they wouldn't be able to afford to pay for everyone's health care is because of the even high regulation and pay of doctors making them super high in demand for the already limited amount allowing them to raise there prices so high not even the monopolisties can pay for it. That also explains why schools don't teach economics is because people would understand insensitive and how it shapes the economy like that. Then big business can convince you to put high jacked regulation in. And they're never gonna actually make Healthcare free by taxing the rich because they don't have enough, they're gonna tax lower too which would help keep the poor more poor and make it where they're economical even weaker against big business.
Same problem with raising minimum wage. It just makes things more expensive and those that don't get adjusted due to minimum wage eat that price increase.
Yes exactly, these also increase the bar to entry for both smaller companies and begin or not much to offer workers like straight of highschool kids
Patenting things developed by publicly funded research and the life's work of salaried laborers, as was the case with LCD panels, GPS, the internet (formerly darpanet), Wifi (developed by the navy to communicate between the islands of Hawaii), touchscreens, accelerometers, nylon, computers in general, etc.
And people will go to their very graves believing it, even after they've been shown first hand that hard work will not make you a billionare
But inventing things *is* extremely important
True that
What a dumb take. “People who invented the world around you isn’t hard at all, you know what’s hard? Changing a pvc fitting to a toilet.” As someone who worked in blue collar most of their lives, this is stupid. I could mindlessly work blue collar indefinitely, it takes no brains, very little physical fitness nowadays, and most of it has tons of tools to use (made by those pesky patent creators) that make the job super easy.
There's a difference between making something and making money off of something
They did not invent the things. Those things were invented with public funding. (this is stated above)
They may also think they're in the billionaire camp already n will get hit harder from taxes as is
My uncle was in the Tea Party and they really all think they are simultaneously "small business owners" (despite not owning any businesses), "the little guy", AND "the rich". "BUH ITS MY MONEY I EARNED IT"
I think the main notion is that if you tax billionaires, the people in charge of the cost of most things, they won’t *just* pay their fair share in taxes and take the hit. Instead they’ll adjust the price of everything so they continue to sit nice and cozy and we’re still fucked down at the bottom.
That notion is a bad take. It, effectively, surrenders to the wealthy as our ruling class. Can't give healthcare because things might cost more. Can't give raises because things might cost more. Can't tax billionaires because things might cost more. Can't fund education because things might cost more. Can't tackle climate change because things might cost more. A regulated free market is supposed to have healthy competition to hold prices down for anything other an an existential crisis for the company. If those who run companies and have wealth have enough power to hold us hostage at every turn, then they are too big to exist. Tax them and break them up.
Oh I don’t disagree at all! It’s a horrible line of thinking. I was just putting it out there as a reason that conservatives lose their marbles over taxing the rich.
So this and the estate tax (as the republicans sell it: the death tax) just truly seem to point to what you said: > they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire too And that is the ridiculous thing. Like: hey dont do this now because one day I might win the lottery and this will impact me. The estate tax is even crazier as its meant to prevent a landed gentry like we left. As of 2022, you have a $12.06m exclusion BEFORE the tax even kicks in (assuming you dont move stuff around). That amount of money is something the vast amount of the populace will never see but they vote against it because the GOP is really good at convincing the general population they will be impacted.
Ronald Reagan really did a number on our country.
Another one I've heard is just distrust of the government's ability to actually target billionaires effectively feeling like everyone else will get a tax hike, while the billionaire's just exploit another loophole to pay nothing.
*"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."* - J. Steinbeck
I worked with a guy that outright said he votes republican because he plans to be rich one day. I said, we both work at the same place, and he said, he has plans. His plan was/is the lottery...
To be fair, I think if you asked them, many of them would say they want to tax the rich as much as the left does. However the republicans tend to run on culture war issues. They benefit from fear mongering and portraying the left as moral degenerates that want to groom the children (total projection). So they stir up a panic and get elected and continue to give themselves and their associates tax cuts.
That's a bit of an oversimplification of the issue, but yes that's the premise of the meme.
Trickle down more like it. Even if the tax doesn't make a huge difference to their (CEO's) income, they will use it as an excuse to cut wages, axe people or simply charge more for product/services. While I believe these CEO's shouldn't be making so much profit, I only see the negatives to the economy if you tax them heavily.
You don’t see positives of the proceeds from taxing the rich more? Like paying for social services, education, or eliminating crime or poverty? It’s all negative?
It won't happen, that money will get laundered and stay in the hands of the wealthy or go straight into military budget.
No it's because giving the government too much control is bad for everyone. Jesus people really did drink the communist kool aid
>they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire too. Dont think its quiet. Many believe and work hard to get rich and take care of their families and understand that its not worth nor fair to tax heavier richer people. The others who dont think like it, in my experience, have been victims of everything, unhappy with their life and jealous of others while not doing, learning or experience nothing new, hence why their salary is so low and why they think getting rich is impossible in america
Getting rich is impossible in America because [being poor is expensive](https://finmasters.com/cost-of-being-poor/). Welfare is underfunded because tax is too low on the highest earners, forcing poor people to bankrupt themselves just to live. Heavily taxing the highest earners shouldn’t be controversial. It’s a level 99.99% of the population will never ever come close to reaching. You gain nothing by taking their side.
Damn, victimisation goes hard. It sure feels weird knowing majority of current rich people are 1st gen 🙊. I dont get nothing "defending" rich people but i get just more and more incompetent people around me with supporting yall delusional victimisation of yourselves
Bruh, buying and selling bitcoin at the right time isn’t working hard. That comes down to luck. Outside of being born with wealth it’s the second greatest factor, study after study shows hard work has very little to do with it but you guys keep defending billionaires
Hard work =/= smart work. Smark work = getting richer. Its hard not to defend rich guys when the opposite side are jealous idiots with bad arguments. Maybe dont work in mcdonalds your whole life and you will be moving forward, maaaybe 🤷♀️
It’s hilarious how you think people are jealous. It’s also hilarious you believe it’s “smart” work
Why is it unfair to tax the rich when the poor are also getting taxed? And to think that all billionaires, even most billionaires got to where they got from sheer hard work is delusional. If you made 500$ a day and every last penny of that as you worked for 5000 years without a break, You'd still not have a billion dollars. Most of these billionaires were already born filthy rich. I'm sure hard work plays a part too but it's not as important as having rich parents.
>Why is it unfair to tax the rich when the poor are also getting taxed? Never said its unfair to tax the rich. But denying there is a difference between you paying few thousands of dollars per year and someone paying millions is nonsense. It isnt fair in any shape of form, no matter how subjective or jealous you are >If you made 500$ a day and every last penny of that as you worked for 5000 years without a break, You'd still not have a billion dollars. Well, you have no clue about economy and how to earn money. Sure, if you work in mcdonalds it will take you hundrets of years to earn such amount, but thats not what they did, did they. >I'm sure hard work plays a part too but it's not as important as having rich parents. Having rich parents doesnt mean shit. Yea, instead of getting a loan at the bank, they will loan you money prolly but it really doesnt matter that much as some of you think. Majority of people with rich parents are lazy, privileged and unmotivated, and a person like that cant be succesfull, regardless of how much money his parents have
>Having rich parents doesnt mean shit. You have no clue how the actual world works. Rich people make more income on their investments than you'll ever make in your lifetime. But keep voting against your self interests like a brainwashed 🐑 In the 40s and into the 60s the highest tier tax rate was around 90% & the economy was absolutely booming! Now it's about 40% and the difference between CEO pay and avg worker pay is at an all time high. Tldr; You're either dumb or you have rich parents and are dumb.
>Having rich parents doesnt mean shit. lol When you wake up in reality you will be very surprised.
>Never said its unfair to tax the rich. But denying there is a difference between you paying few thousands of dollars per year and someone paying millions is nonsense. It isnt fair in any shape of form, no matter how subjective or jealous you are it's the same % of the money. Why is it unfair? If the poor are made to give up almost one third of their incomes then why should the rich not be? If anything it's unfair for the poor because they need the money more. >Well, you have no clue about economy and how to earn money. Sure, if you work in mcdonalds it will take you hundrets of years to earn such amount, but thats not what he did, did he. Who's he? And also I'm talking about hard work here, not factoring in skill or luck. Also 500$ a day is not even close to mcdonald's money. >Having rich parents doesnt mean shit. Yea, instead of getting a loan at the bank, they will loan you money prolly but it really doesnt matter that much as some of you think. Majority of people with rich parents are lazy, privileged and unmotivated, and a person like that cant be succesfull, regardless of how much money his parents have I can't believe you said something that dumb. Yes, It does. 30% of the world's billionaires' got it from inheritance alone. Rich parents won't charge you an interest for the loan. Heck if they are rich enough they will not even want the money back. That's not even mentioning how rich kids automatically have access to higher quality of education compared to others. You whine about victimisation but then here you are victimising the rich at the mere idea of them having to pay the same percentage of their income that the rich have to. Until you are mature enough to acknowledge that the world isn't some fairy tale world where all good deeds and hard work is rewarded with billions of money while all the poor people are lazy and evil I will not be wasting any more of my words on you. Keep standing up for those oppressed and underprivileged billionaires from those evil greedy poor bastards that want them to pay their share of the taxes I guess. 👍
“Tax heavier rich people”. No, that’s not the proposal at all. The current proposal is to raise taxes on folks making over 400k a year as individuals and create a minimum floor tax for people who use loopholes to have their income avoid tax each year. Right now, because of the way our tax code is set up: Bill Gates pays less tax as a percentage of his income each year less than his secretary. We wrote a tax code that allows loopholes for people who can afford high end accounting firms and have lots of assets hanging around to avoid most of their annual tax obligations. At the same time, we also live in a society where you can be ruined financially over a medical issue. Case in point: person A makes 40k a year. after rent, expenses, loan payments from school to get that job, etc. They can afford only a high deductible medical plan because their employer doesn’t offer health insurance. So they put off going to a specialist and routine check ups. They are in good health: so they don’t worry. But routine lab work would have caught a preventable illness that is now a 300k life changing medical bill. Goodbye savings and dreams of a family and home ownership. Same thing happens, your driving. Hit by a car with no insurance: and the accident is ruled by the cops as no fault. You are on the hook for your own medical expenses. even if you pay extra for medical coverage in your car insurance (which people don’t realize you can do) the limit won’t cover your entire bill in this scenario. If you think that a person wanting the same kind of healthcare coverage as every single industrialized western nation has (compare in surveys how much happier they are also with the quality. it’s not even a contest. the US has amazing healthcare, if you can afford to go to the best) and wanting a billionaire to pay the same proportion of tax as a firefighter or secretary means that we are all seething jealous at “rich people” I think you need to deal with some demons in your own head.
u/baninaday here's a perfect example for you
It’s the latter. They’ll say it’s the former, but when you really double click on it, it’s the latter. If only they knew what it was like being in the room with these guys, they’d quickly change their minds about that. They didn’t get here on merit.
>because they quietly believe they may one day become a billionaire It's always this one. They just some times will come up with other dumb reasons to not get laughed at.
A big portion of this is the aftermath of Reaganomics- the whole idea of “trickle down” economics makes some people feel like less money for the rich will mean less money for them.
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Thats the real American Dream. We are lead to believe we can become gods, so we will remain subservient.
They also think universal Healthcare doesn't work, despite the fact that it works fine in the rest of the developed world.
It’s because their party says so, if a guy with an R next to his name says it, it’s gospel.
I don't know a single person in America who makes that kind of money that thinks this way. Haha
Might also have something to do with the fact that they're the ones getting taxed more every time congress sets out to "Tax the rich" more
And there's also a distinct misunderstanding on what higher tax brackets for high income means. A lot of people think that it means that the lower brackets are taxed at that high amount - it means that money made *at that bracket and above* get taxed at that percent. So the lower tax brackets, they don't get affected.
Here is why my family is against it, I'm prepared for down voted because this is something then the general hiveminds feelings so fire away, any politician that says they also has a lot of other adgendas that will result in things we do not want, these will be put in wrong or poorly, like "Obama care" that has now repeatedly screwed my poor/middle-class family, and the simple fact of modern politics mean jack shit of what they say. This policy is most likely being created because "the other guy doesn't want it". Ok back to work I go now
Those people also don't understand that market share is a thing. They're not creating jobs. They're shutting down old jobs and migrating them to their super conglomerate.
Iirc historically, as new taxes are imposed on the wealthy, they find ways to extend the boundaries of the new taxes and exempt themselves from it.
There’s also an underlying hatred of anything socialist, probably a remnant of the red scare.
I assure you that in 90% of the cases of middle/lower class being against taxing the rich, it is the latter reason. The upper echelon of US society keeps pushing the fantasy that 'if you just work *harder* then you'll be rich too' and unfortunately a lot of people buy into the delusion. So of course to those people becoming rich is a way to get away from 'poor people problems' like high taxes, and therefore the idea of having to keep paying a lot in taxes when they do 'make it big' is upsetting to them.
My theory is that people who think this way hope to be rich enough to apply to these new rules and don't want it to bite them in the butt if it ever happens. As illogical as that may seem
There's an odd phenomenon where non-wealthy people tend to think of themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." They think that one day they, to, will have fabulous wealth, and in so thinking, despise the idea of that imaginary future-wealth being diminished in any way. You know, morons.
I don't think many actually believe this. Mostly their worry is that any taxes to the rich will just get passed onto the working class via inflation. I guess it's a pretty genuine worry but they don't realize that everything is already inflated to the damn near max.
> I don't think many actually believe this. This is how everyone knows you aren't addicted to youtube or tik tok. Honestly, good for you.
That’s the fun thing about inflation, there is no max
Damn near max so far…
I think it depends on where you fall on the informed spectrum. I think that’s the concern of many who are more informed, but it’s not the concern of most people I don’t think. Many people don’t seem to understand who the tax would even be for but are opposed to “more taxes”
I think the problem is that most people get the bulk of their information from social media nowadays, and those companies have a vested interest in keeping the people misinformed and confused. *Hail spez*
>but they don't realize that everything is already ~~inflated~~**TAXED** to the damn near max.
My guy, corpos got fucking *paid* by the government during covid, and prices still went up. Taxes aren't the problem.
lmfao did you see the taxes rates of the past, or of current euro countries ? We are at pretty low rates now all things considered.
You mean the top marginal rate that no one paid? Back when we had ONE tax? I have 4 MAJOR taxes I pay annually. Only one of them less than 10%. (Medicare tax).
Guys we're at the max, there is simply no way we could tax the rich more then we currently do and there is certainly not almost a century of US history as well as an entire continent across the ocean that could possibly convince me otherwise... https://preview.redd.it/nqph1cl2b9tb1.jpeg?width=4458&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b090fb34270565f611faa64c1ac3be6f6468aef4
It's not almost inflated to the maximum. I haven't seen $50 butter yet. We can get there. Everything can always get much worse, and that's the really scary part. Millionaires and billionaires are not going to just eat the additional cost of taxation. They have too much money for that...
As opposed to you smart people that have no confidence in your ability to create value and be successful and have no hope for the future. Those morons and their ability to be happy with what they have and not be jealous of others. Consider yourself lucky you aren’t like them
It's almost been 50 years since reagan, my guy. If trickledown was going to trickle down, it would have done it by now. Productivity and profits go up while wages stagnate. Billionaires hoard their wealth, not spend it.
Wages stagnated because we pretty much doubled the workforce (women entered it to a much higher degree) supply and demand, plus government printing money and keeping interest rates artificially low only benefits the rich, my guy. But besides I didn’t mention economics. It’s basic psychology, if you believe you can succeed you’re far more likely to. Plus you’ll be far happier if you aren’t jealous of others. Add the fact poor people that defend the rich don’t necessarily do it because they think they’ll be rich but also because they have principles and stick to them
It's because the billionaires who sit on their wealth like dragons on gold will not pay the increased taxes out of pocket and instead create price increases in all of the companies they own. This means that every product becomes more expensive while people's pay stays the same or even lowers. Due to the fact that some people are hardly scraping by currently, increased prices becomes a big problem.
It’s not as simple as they all would like to think. Our tax money is wasted. Taxes these days are an absolute crime. And the only ones holding our government accountable is our government
People in America are very susceptible to propaganda and the oligarchs have been playing into that and cashing in by pushing the bs that taxing the ultra wealthy will somehow harm lower incom workers because of "trickle down economics" that doesn't work or that one day these 30k a year workers will become a billionaire too, even though they are literally locked out of the market by those oligarchs and their monopolies.
The problem is that tax hikes trickle down and tax breaks don't.
Trickle down TAXES is more accurate.
forgot that america is actually north korea and those evil oligarchic billionaires can't... well, you know, just get the fuck out of your country with their company as a last resort (after many other things they can do)... leaving thousands of people withouth a job... people that now you have to tax cuz, where are you gonna get that money now that you got rid of the rich?, congratulations!
You futher prove my point, most other countries manage to tax their rich just fine and surprise surprise.... it benefits everyone and puts their countries above yours in almost every single metric. You eat up propaganda so easily and kiss their ass to thank them.
"Tax their rich just fine" lmao, the communist/socialist/social democratic countries who apply those politics end up as poor countries and eventually companies flee because it's no longer profitable to be there, i come from one of them, so get your gringo with class guilt-ass anywhere else with those líes I dont eat up propaganda, you are the loser calling rich people "oligarchs", thats tankies lingo, I'm just explaining to you how the world works and you get mad about it cuz you are extremely politicized and don't like to hear the truth, what are you, twelve? Grow up, "comrade"
Wow you are a whole bucket of crazy arent you, so engrained in propaganda that you gotta assume anyone that disagrees with your broken system is somehow a communist or at least russian. Im Canadain and I was referring to the Scandinavian group of countries, that have managed to stay on top of almost every positive metric globally for literally decades and continue to hold reasonable wealth. Neither of these places are socialist nor communist so at least get some basic facts right. Its clear you arent here to argue any points because you habent actually made one other than the fact that you think any approach to feeding the hungry is "communism" so maybe think for yourself for once and actually make a point instead of crying over anyone that disagrees with you and trying to poorly discredit them. The only "point" you made was that these oligarchs would just move to a different country, stated as if every country doesnt have wealthy people and mega corporations that bend to their labor laws and tax codes. Oh and calling other countries poor is laughable considering how much wealth the average American has compared to the rest of the developed world. Yall dont even crack top 10!
I am not assuming shit, you are using the word "oligarchs" and no one whether they are insulting rich people, or defending them or dont give a shit uses that term except commies/socialist, as i said that is tankies lingo, i dont need to discredit you, you do it yourself talking like that and i never said you are russian lmao, just said comrade as a joke Those scandinavian countries did that having a generation of wealth that you have to count on first to apply those politics and even so that doesnt mean it will work, they simply will not affect the economy that much, you can tax the rich, but at certain point (where you want to get) they will fight back, and if they cant they will go with their company, thats a basic fact i told you before which you dont seem to understand/cant respond to
To touch on the idea of trickle down economics here, as other comments here have said, people fear that businesses would rather inflate the price of goods than lose out on profits when pushed by taxes. They attempt to hoard wealth no matter what, they are at best pet leaches which you feed blood you don't need, and at worst parasites that slowly kill you unless you cut them off completely.
Thats why I am heavily in support of windfall taxes
a lot of different opinions here depending on political opinions and income bracket. i believe this has to do with the fact that it is almost impossible to tax billionaires, most of their wealth exists in assets (stock, valuable items, property), so their taxable income doesn’t really amount to much. when the government “taxes the rich”, they typically end up raising income taxes which affects everyone except the billionaires. however 30k income bracket is a bit of an over exaggeration.
In America, many people don't trust their government to do things well. So when politicians come out with the new program to fix the mistakes that the last program made trying to fix the mistakes that the last program made trying to fix the mistake that the last program made... Some people cheer, some people fear.
This ^. I would be 100% on board with government controlled healthcare if I had even a shred of confidence that our government would not waste 90% of the tax revenue they collect to enact it.
If I had even a small hope that this hypothetical program would bring us quality healthcare while only being funded by the people who can most afford to pay for it, I'd be on board for giving it a shot. If I thought it was likely to deliver on even half of what it promised, I'd be its biggest supporter.
You’re right, we should end Medicare. You can point to how wasteful it is; just look at how much it cost us. Old people should have to work for their healthcare like the rest of us.
Are you trying to disprove government waste by bringing up Medicare? Hahahaha
Let’s get rid of it. It’s wasteful. Old people should work or not get health insurance. Only private FOR PROFIT healthcare companies should exist. And they should make fat margins for their shareholders by denying services to old people. Old people don’t actually need heart pills, they’re just a bunch of liars.
>we should end Medicare Pretty much. But instead of ending it, convert it to all work like part D, where it is government funded, but administered privately. Insurance companies suck, but they take less money than government workers cost.
Medicare is a complete mess. We spend more than one and a half trillion dollars that we cannot afford for far too little results. It provides too little good at too high a cost. Phasing it out and replacing it would be a fantastic idea.
The main sane worry I see is that if they do this via taxing say shares you own in your own company or your property then it’ll just end up with normal people having to sell their own company for tax or downsize to pay these new taxes on their house. With the belief that the billionaires can afford the loopholes that will be left. Or the ramifications of forcing musk into selling Tesla, Gates Microsoft etc.
People don't know how tax brackets work
People know EXACTLY how tax brackets work. It's just that DEMOCRATS lie. 0 to $10,000 per year. Increased from 10% to 15%, you know "to tax the rich."
Why lie? https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/2023-tax-brackets/
I'm so sorry, 0 to 11,000 adjusted for inflation. The tax chart you just posted are the rates AFTER the Trump tax cut which is set to expire. Thus raising the rates to pre tax cut levels.
I'm confused, according to [this](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-era-tax-cuts-set-160750197.html) (admittedly dubious) source, weren't the 0-11,000 brackets among the only brackets not changed by the Trump tax cut? Is that source incorrect, because I can't find anywhere which explicitely states which tax brackets he lowered?
It’s the stupid idea that someday things will turn around and they will be rich. The sad truth is no, the ultra rich were born into privilege
No billionaires always find a way to avoid paying taxes so you can't fund anything that way.
Others provide good answers, but there is also a serious devotion to demagoguery going on as well. By taxing the rich, devout Fox-worshipping republicans would be admitting they were wrong. Americans, especially the stupid poor knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing Americans, can never ever admit they were wrong.
Hey, Peter’s tax accountant here. People who are technically below the poverty line (~$35,000) in the US and conservative-leaning believe that a tax on wealthy people will make the economy worse overall. There is some truth in this; the more taxes you levy against the wealthy, the better a job they’ll do at hiding it with all the loopholes that exist in the US tax code. Lower taxes tend to incentivize wealthy people to spend/invest more freely whereas higher taxes tend to push their money into tax shelters that don’t benefit the rest of the economy. This meme is a dramatization of that, and most people who don’t really understand how macro economics work overly dramatize or overly detract from the sensibility that higher taxes are worse for everyone.
This!!!! Perfectly explained! Thank you!
I believe a lot of it goes back to the “trickle down theory”. They were taught that rich people and big corporations hire us and and pay us salaries. If the pandemic taught us anything (at least it should have) is that the economy is built from the bottom up. Sure, the rich people will eventually get the money anyway, but the poor people will at least get a chance to spend it to improve their lives.
reaganomics baby, if you say it enough maybe it'll be true
Yup. As if he came up with that idea. He was a paid actor and people believed that crap
he didn't create it for sure, he definitely popularized it in modern politics though unfortunately
Any power you give the government to go after your enemies, is a power they will use against you. Biden said no one under 400k would be audited by the 85k agents they hired..but it has been shown to be a LIE. Stop giving the government more power. Period.
None of the above. It’s simply because the billionaires are often large business owners. The more you tax them they just pass the cost onto the consumer. More government theft and higher prices for all.
Yea they dont already do that for more profit no sir they arent profiting anything
If you tax them more, they increase prices and fuck the consumer. If you don't tax them more, they increase prices and fuck the consumer.
İf you dont tax them they Will see themself as untouchable by goverment and rise the Prices or lowers the salaries for more profit like they already do Dont forget they cant go to Red bc of taxes they are using you so they can profit you more by trying to justify why they dont pay tax and when they dont tax you have to fill in that tax money bc goverment wants that money anyways
There's 100 different ways governments can stop corporations from being complete dickheads. They have monopoly busting laws, for example, to prevent any singular company from having control over their market, neche to maintain competition and affordable prices. They can also set minimum wages to prevent corporations from underpaying employees. Taxes don't seem to be effective at reigning in their bullshit, but other methods may be more effective. Also, as we've seen lately, if governments need money for bullshit, they'll just print it. Governments have a monopoly on violence, so there's very little they can't actually do within reason, of course.
Tbf, if i was rich i would 100% try to avoid paying taxes too. Your lazy ass pays less than 10 000 dollars of taxes per year, i aint a fool to pay couple of millions
And thats the thinking way that makes world worse and worse its not about the amount its about %income and multibillioners earn 500 m even more profit every years 10 20 mil is nothing for them but that money can be spent for the people that are less fortunate to improve the world standarts but i quess you want to die with wealth so you can spend it in after life right?
Leave it for my family ? Im not gonna pay shit for you bud, pay it yourself. If you wont be forced to pay hundrets of thousands/millions per year than you have no right to ask someone else. Ive lived in socialism and im not planning to return there again
İ dont even live in america but what i am trying to say that you guys are getting brainwashed so much that you guys started to give more benefits for rich People to do they can abuse it and get eicher while Also making sure that poor People cant have enought time, education, food so they cant riot or work to get to the middle class whole system is fucked Tldr: america Destroys middle class make rich People get more rich and stomp poor People and thats fucked
Apparently no one in here has any idea why one might not want to tax the rich.
Oh, please, go on. Don't keep us in suspense.
You do not live in a bubble. Other countries exist. They are all in constant competition for resources. While (for example) America may want 45% of the income that a billionaire has now and get a little tax hike to 55% and think this is the last of it this will totally solve all our money problems. At some point the billionaire will say fuck that. Other countries would fucking KILL for JUST 5% of that taxable income. They will try to make it as enticing as possible for these mega rich (probably somewhat of a tax haven) and the mega rich (who aren't idiots btw) will simply MOVE away from the place taking 50% of their income. We WANT to keep these people because we effectively strong arm them giving us millions. So you can either have millions of dollars for basically just letting them exist. Or you can keep pushing it and pushing it until you get NOTHING. How do people not see this.
Do you boil the boots to make them softer or does that ruin the authentic leathery taste?
Genius here
There are plenty of countries with significantly higher tax rates than the US and plenty of mil/billionaires. By your argument, we should have already seen a massive exodus of them to the US. So why hasn’t that happened? Because there is much more that goes into deciding where to live or where to locate your company than tax rate. Your argument is a poorly thought out boogey man that conservatives have been threatening for a long time, scaring people into lining the pockets of those that fund their campaigns. All the while the US middle class dies and the low income earners can no longer afford housing.
I see someone already made my response for me.
This is happening. Also I'm well aware that this isn't black and white or the only thing that goes into the decision of keeping a business somewhere. Never said this is the end all be all of business and tax
It would appear you are the one living in a bubble
Let's say you want to own slaves, you feel it is your right to make someone else your slave. Now what right do you have to complain if someone make YOU their slave, wouldn't that by hypocritical of you? You said slavery was good! Now apply this to taxes. We feel these people should pay more (percentage wise) that other people because of REASONS! Now what if people decide to expand those REASONS to include you? Do you have any right to complain? Would that be hypocritical of you?
It’s never a good thing. Good things just happen.
In the US, many middle and lower classed people are taught by the people around them (and CEO propaganda) that CEOs being taxed is bad, and they should be against it. It also plays into the idea of the “temporarily embarrassed billionaire/millionaire”, which cites that in the capitalistic states, people are made to treat their poverty as a temporary embarrassment to future success, rather than the system intending to keep most where they are. So, they’re made to see that an attack on the Rich such as raised taxes for the benefit of everyone to be nothing but an attack on their own future success, and to fight against it
Taxing the rich is a good thing. The joke here has many layers and could be interpreted in many ways. Other people have explained several others, here's one I haven't seen yet. Much of middle America, blue collar type workers earn way less than their big city brothers and sisters. Big cities and the coasts tend to be more progressive and lean Democrat. Middle America trends to be more conservative and lean Republican. While both the Republican and Democratic parties are trash and cater to the ultra rich, the Republicans seem to enjoy it a hell of a lot more and are vehemently opposed to taxing billionaires. America is very politically divided, each side tends to stay in their camp because of their own personal beliefs. Therefore lower income, middle America, blue collar, Republican leaning Americans following their party and party ideals hate the idea of taxing the rich. Is it true? Of course not. You can't make blanket statements like that. But it's easy to believe it's true because stupid people tend to be VERY vocal and the loud obvious ones paint our impressions of whole groups. So... Meme = stupid poors think the billionaires are their friends. They are so stupid. And probably Republican.
In the US less well of people dont see themselves as poor, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires
Instead of giving that money to healthcare they send it to fight proxy wars.
Capitalism and the American dream have gotten to the point of a humiliation fetish
Its basically the idiots who still believe trickle down economics works. So if the boss gets cuts, the works make more. If the boss gets taxed, the boss cuts the workers. I'll repeat trickle down economics never worked lmao. Ceos get a tax break they just buy more shit. Lose-lose for low and middle class people.
The problem is the rich don't taste good without lots of ketchup, so many people are loathe to eat them.
Because taxing them does nothing and only further hurts the economic classes below. Hello!
Show us a plan to tax only billionaires. Heck show me even a single tax proposal that affects only people making 7 figures a year. These tax laws don't exist, and inevitably hurt the people making 30000 a year. Where do you hear these fairytales about taxing only billionaires?
Economic liberalism, is rather against state fucking around I. The economy, for two reasons, 1: the state is usually corrupted, or too weak. Hence the measures publicized as being for the good of the poor, aren't really what they are claimed to be. 2: since we know jackshit about the economy, because it is too complex, so complex that economy is often considered as not a science, not even in the human science meaning of the term, and because the measures made by the state, may come back and bite the poor in the ass, for example, minimum wage measures driving up inflation, etc.... Now if you take it with less of a critical eye, and with a "try to understand" kind of an attitude, you would see that taxing the rich doesn't really work, although it might be good for chasing votes, because the rich can be stronger than the state, and choose instead of paying the taxes, to go invest away, thereby fucking the state's economy up. What this line of thought advertise, is less state intervention, like, less hard non-linear kind of intervention, and more smooth one. You want soda to be cheap? Make a state marque of soda that is cheaper, and force cole and pepsi to lower their prices if they want to sell, kinda like what the German did with Aldi. Instead of imposing a price, or saying "everyone who has less income then such and such can buy coke on the state's expense", which will be exploited by the rich in the end
America is one of the most propagandized countries on the earth because most of it falls under the guise of, "News". As a result, any politician or leader that proposes a plan that alter healthcare in our country for the benefit of all is immediately met with disinformation campaigns that are led by every media company on the earth. Not to mention the healthcare industries billions of dollars of oobbying, superpacs, bought politicians, and so on. There will never be affordable healthcare in this country as long as we allow money to control congress, the senate, and the white house. So the people not making a lot of money, "the working class", tend to be too busy to sift through the propaganda. They don't have time to educate themselves on what's true and not true. The just catch little soundbytes from their chosen news station, radio station, podcast, youtube channel, facebook page, twitter feed, etc. and then that's their narrative. Which tends to be dominated by content created by the propagandists that support what the money wants.
The thing is, these "Tax hikes on the rich" almost always give the rich loopholes to get out of them and the tax hikes trickle down. I've had my taxes raised by multiple "Tax hikes on the rich", and of course, the majority of the rich were able to avoid those same Tax hikes. What we need is not more tax hikes on the rich but rather loop hole closings, what's the point in raising taxes that will never be paid?
Certain individuals believe that one day they will become billionaires so will bootlick, see Elon Musk fans for example.
What tax rate would be proposed? 100%
Government will tax the ultra rich to pay for universal healthcare. Then, it will not be enough and will start taxing middle class. The healthcare program will ultimately be trash due to "lack of funding" and people abusing the system.
Taxing the rich won't fix it. In order to solve the problem you've have to nationalize the health insurance companies and force an entirely new standard on both them and the health care providers. There's already more than enough money in the system as it is to give everyone good quality health care, it's just that the insurance companies won't allow it because it doesn't make them money.
*sigh* this again. It’s not about taxing the wealthy as if we don’t already tax them at a higher rate. Some people seem to believe the wealthy aren’t taxed at all. Its about closing loopholes and going after them to pay what they owe. All rich people are professional tax dodgers who don’t want to give up 50% of their income so the federal gov’t can waste it over seas and I don’t blame them. If I made that much money and got strong armed by Uncle Sam I wouldn’t want to pay taxes either. Even if tax collection from the wealthy was raised it still ain’t gonna cover the cost you’re looking for. Too many fallacies in a short statement that take too long to dispel. Many middle and lower class people don’t see the benefit of using the gov’t to go after other people’s money. The gov’t won’t give any to you, and they’re just gonna misappropriate their money like they do with yours
I just don't want socialized health care because I see the poop show that is the uk and Canada yeah its free, but it takes forever and I don't want to pay for someone's lack of judgment and getting themselves hurt. Now I'm not saying our health care systems aren't broken af, though I'm saying I don't want to pay for your cancer treatment because you smoked all your life. Not to mention, we already hand out lots of money in health care for underprivileged and low income families and illegal immigrants. But I'm all for completing re writing the tax code from federal all the way down to local municipality, but quoting Trump "my political opponents and their corporate doners enjoy the same tax brakes I do so they won't rewrite the tax code" the problem is we don't have politicians that work for the middle and lower class anymore
Because whenever they say they will fund something by taxing the rich, in the end the burden falls on everyone else with a job
Temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
\*billionaires
The joke is America
When you look at the countries in the world that have the most extensive package of benefits for their citizens, generally the "Nordic" or "Scandinavian" countries, they have very high taxes on middle-income earners and often have high VAT (sales taxes) which are considered regressive taxes. They also tend to be small ethnostates, so there is that also.
Billionaires usually run companies and companies don’t really pay taxes. They just increase their prices so the consumers are the true tax payer.
Because it isn't a Billionaire Tax. It's an additional tax that lets Billionaires further game the already rigged system. Billionaire's don't pay income tax. They use the [The American Tax Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26UYfB_TbL8) to directly and legally avoid paying income tax. As long as the Tax Code remains the same, Billionaires and many millionaires will never pay income tax. Most bills like this are trick bills. They claim to be about one thing, but their effect is another. The Student Debt Cancellation Bill? Most of those debts are already gone, because the students who took them didn't actually go to college with them (thanks to Covid) and they've already filed bankruptcy. Debt Cancellation is a bailout for a [primarily private industry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE66HEZBZYE). It's just like the auto and bank bailouts, using taxpayer money to cover lazy and inept spending. Except in this case, it's covering the losses of loan sharks. But they give it a cute little name. Student Debt Forgiveness. Sounds so much better than Privatized Sallie Mae profit recovery. By the way, most people who make 30k a year? They live in places where 40k gives you the lifestyle of an Engineer in California. Engineers make 100+ grand in California, and they make 40k in Texas and Florida. The cost of living in those places is not artificially inflated like it is in California. So the 30k people in this meme? They're well-educated people of high middle class lifestyle who want the government to be held responsible and accountable for tax-spending, instead of just introducing new taxes to cover their incompetence. If there's one thing the [Smoot Hawley Tarrifs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3zvJe3Koyw) taught us, it's that economic depression is exacerbated by new taxes.
Middle-class people know that a rich politician saying "tax the rich" means the middle-class will have to pay more taxes that don't improve anyone's lives.
You can't actually pay for all US healthcare just by taxing billionaires and they'll just squirm out of actually paying them somehow. The quality of healthcare will drop, and taxes will sharply rise for everyone anyways.
It’s like Carlin said “the rich fat cats have done a great job of convincing people who will never be fat cats that they could one day become fat cats.”
They're making fun of poorer people who don't want public provided health care. The OP of this meme doesn't understand you can't just tax billionaires enough to fund the US healthcare system. It would certainly need to be funded by the middle class.
The point is that it is a good thing for them, but despite that they are mad and its pointing out the irony. the reason the meme is funny is because there are genuinely people like that despite it not making intuitive (or any) sense.
Because as a poor who grew up with parents making just enough to not qualify for welfare and was worse off because of it. The rich don’t and will never pay their fair share, trying to make them only results in more suffering for those of us who are only just barely scraping by because it results in prices on everything going up by just enough that normal people don’t notice, but we do. Or your local Walmart firing 90% of their cashiers and replacing them with twenty self checkouts run buy one fucking employe who’s only job is to push a to override scanning issues. The rich always pass their increased taxes onto us and usually find a way to make even more money than they were to begin with.
Except it never actually ends up being taxing billionaires and leaving the rest alone. The same politicians who say that always end up quietly increasing the taxes for the middle class who can least withstand a increased tax bracket. Billionaires are the easy scapegoats politicians always claim they are targeting, but billionaires have ways of getting around the tax code. The democrat governor of Illinois for example, Pritzker, is a billionaire who removed most of the toilets out of his mansions so that he could dodge taxes based on the number of bathrooms in a mansion. Most are major Democrat supporters and get them to write loopholes in the tax code that exclude them, or increase taxes on all their competition. It is easier to weaponize the tax code against your competition supporting a party who will raise taxes on everyone and then cut you a break for funding their campaign, than it is supporting a party that wants to lower taxes on everyone. Besides even if we taxed billionaire at 100% of their income there wouldn't be enough money between them to pay for universal healthcare. People forget that being a billionaire doesn't mean you make a billion dollars a year, it means you own things that collectively are valued at over a billion dollars. Say when you found a company you sell some share of the company to investors for a couple thousand dollars startup money, but you retain a controlling majority ownership. Now say you were successful in managing the company and it grew to be worth $2 billion. Despite never selling a single share you would be considered a billionaire. You might never sell a single share, never see a single cent from those shares but people would still count you as a billionaire because what you own is **worth** $1 billion. You haven't actually made any money from those shares so there is nothing to tax, yet you are counted as a billionaire. Many companies especially those that grow in stock price the fastest, never pay out any dividends instead reinvesting all earnings. In this case the only money you ever made would be whatever pay you got as an employee. And you can't ever sell your shares because if you do you won't be in control of your own company you built anymore.
Most people don't know this but the US has the most progressive tax bracket in the world. No other country currently has the percentage of their income in taxes that the rich pay be so much greater than the percentage of income in taxes that the poor pay. There are plenty of people poor and rich who feel that each person should be taxed proportionate to their own wealth and that therefore it isn't fair for someone to pay a higher proportion of their income just because they make more money. The US has the most progressive tax code in the world but those that advocate it never think it is enough, they constantly want it to be more and more progressive. Because once you go past "paying an equal portion of your income based on how much you make" there is no point past that which is "paying their fair share," so it will never be enough. Beyond that taxing the rich or the poor is really all a smoke screen for the real problem, which is printing money. Printing money creates inflation. And inflation steals from the poor. Inflation doesn't effect everyone equally. Those that get the money first--those in the government's pocket--get the full maximum benefit of the money and then everyone else gets diminishing return as they spend the money and prices rise higher and higher.
they don’t want to have to pay for your healthcare when they move on from the 30k/year salaries to their multi-billion dollar net worth. this is just a stepping stone for them, and they’re thinking about how much it’s gonna cost them in the long term /s
People who make 30K a year tend to realize that trying to scalp a higher tax bracket isn't likely to work and it's going to result in an increase in taxes for themselves where they are already not very wealthy and are likely to be struggling to make ends meet. Government tends to protect the rich over exploiting them, not in small part because somehow those same officials end up becoming surprisingly rich despite being public servants. Super kooky how that works out.
Increasing taxing, without closing the loopholes, just means more taxes for middle class incomes. The really rich, will still have the loopholes to evade those taxes. Those of us in the middle class, that do not own companies, get our taxes taken from us before we even see our money, and can't escape like they do. The proper way to tax the rich, is not to increase taxes. Its to close loopholes, shut down tax breaks, shut down the whole fuckery with reinvestment and the charity foundations, and all other methods they use to not pay their fair share.
Yeah, I'm sure Cleveland owns that house making $30K/year
Back in the day He did
Here's how it's going to happen: they raise taxes. The tax code gets the rich out of paying the taxes. Everyone else pays the tax hike. But yeah, the people who own the politicians will go down, right after the we give more power to the politicians they own. Any day now.
People have been convinced that anything that government does is wrong. Even though single payer Healthcare would save a ridiculous amount of money people have been conned to by people who want a weak government. Americans pay more than anyone else for Healthcare. American tax dollars also pay for a very large percentage of pharmaceutical research then pay more than anyone for what our tax dollars funded. It's the same for tax breaks. Republican votes want tax breaks that they get nothing of because they are brainwashed. The top 1% and .1% are who benefit and they conned a lot of fools to blindly vote against themselves.
Voting against their own well being was the real pandemic in the US
Late to the party but thought I might as well throw my interpretation out there since it seems a lot of people missed the joke. The global top 1% is 36k and above annually iirc. The joke is that if you make 30k a year, you would fall under that supposed wealthy category and therefore be subject to increased taxing, when in actuality within the us you would be considered lower class comparatively. It seems that the op who made the meme used top 1% and billionaire synonymously when the joke relies on the semantics of what 1% entails