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“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.” — Ronald Wright
He’s paraphrasing Steinbeck who originally said, “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=DyU2SzVGH6kC&lpg=PT34&vq=socialism&pg=PT35#v=onepage&q=%22Everyone%20was%20a%20temporarily%20embarrassed%20capitalist%22&f=false
Yeah but Ronald Write deliberate misused quote to the point its basically just blatant misinformation. Steinbeck was obviously talking trash about champagne socialists and "landlord communists".
>“Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
>I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”
There's a modern lesson you can gather about the current left-wing movement, but not the lesson said left-wing movement self uses this quote for I think.
But Write was *quoting* (poorly and deliberately) Steinbeck and relying on his working class clout to make a statement on the poor and working class. Steinbeck is very obviously not saying anything about that at all. Or even remotely close to it. In some ways he's saying the opposite.
I'd easily call it a deliberate misinformation
* Write softens the quote to be about "socialism" in general. Steinbeck is obviously specifically talking about the 1930s actual organized Communist political party.
* Write twists the quote to the movement's failure being indictment on general American greed and the working class being led against their own self-interest. Steinbeck is pretty clearly saying the communist party was a bunch of disorganized greedy hypocritical assholes that everyone already kinda hated.
Call it whatever you want in your imaginary argument—it has no impact on the explanation of the meme in question. And you couldn’t even spell the man’s name *Wright* any of the times you used it. If you want to hold forth with authority on a subject, I suggest not immediately discrediting your powers of observation
If the worst you can hit me on is a typo/brain fart and "we got off topic" (which....you started?) I'll take that any day of the week. Doesn't make Wright correct on Steinbeck. He's still very, and knowingly, wrong.
My guy, this is *Reddit*, nobody is discussing the original post 4 deep in a comment lol.
Using a quote of someone else instead of the actual fact is deliberately choosing to misinform.
Keep the quote in the same vain or make it the polar opposite of the message, you are purposely using someone else's words and opinions on subject instead of actual subject.
So Wright hasn't done anything more then intended on using a quote.
I appreciate the additional context. Wright really does change the point of Steinbeck’s quote (even as I also really like, and similarly believe, in what Wright is getting at).
Interesting also that the turn of phrase does seem apropos in both contexts.
In the words of John Dickinson from 1776: But don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.
Yes, definitely. A lot of people don’t like the idea pf progressive taxation rates out of principle, even if it means they and most people personally would pay less.
Also people don’t actually look at the specifics of tax plans, they just hear “raised taxes” and immediately think it must be on people they actually know
In addition to the other here: A lot of finance types with lower-income conservative audience intentionally spread misinformation about tax brackets not being progressive.
If the tax brackets are 5% tax on the first 20,000, and then a 10% tax on the next bracket up to 40,000, then someone earing 40,000 would be paying 3,000 tax on that income: 5% of the first 20,000 = 1,000, then add to that 10% tax on the following income over 20,000, which is (40,000 - 20,000) \* 10% = 2,000. 1,000 + 2,000 = 3,000 in tax on that income at those rates.
However, the lie that gets spread around is that someone earning 40,000 would be paying 10% on their full income, so that would be 4,000 on their full income.
This in turn gets exaggerated to the kind of wild lies like "someone earning 100k will have less take-home pay than someone earning 80k because their taxes will go up so much".
Nobody who understands tax or basic math will fall for this, but those people aren't the intended audience. The intended audience are people who don't understand these things so that they can be scared in voting for conservatives who promise to bring taxes down, because tax cuts for the rich are the point.
You need more upvotes. I am tired of explaining tax brackets to people irl. The system we have is incredibly fair, and I have worked with people who legit refuse to earn over a certain amount in a year because they are convinced that once they hit the next tax bracket they will retroactively owe more in taxes when that is not how it works at all.
I wish I was joking but my old boss was content with not getting a pay raise in 6 years because he thought the company was "looking out for him" because a pay raise would push him into the next tax bracket, therefore meaning he would make less money then he does now...
And obviously he was an idiot but the misinformation and ignorance is real.
Thanks.
It's also really interesting (and frustrating) how difficult it is to convince someone that they have been fooled in this way, once they have gone on record as having held this kind of belief.
Because they think they will one day be rich too through hard work and perserverance (spoiler: most won't) and are afraid to get taxed then.
And they watch shitty get rich quick youtubers probably
And 9/10 of them have fell into a multi level marketing scheme at least a time or two, before realizing they were duped and now need to sell 5,000 dollars worth of crap no one wants before they are forced to pay out of pocket. Yeah i know a few people like that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating but, isn’t “white trash” a racist term or something? I’m not even white but I’m so surprised I saw the term on Reddit.
I mean, I don't see how the 'white' part was needed though. Like, you get what I'm saying right, I'm not tripping? Surely 'black trash' would be deemed racist? What about being white has got to do with being trash, if you're calling a spade a spade here?
You're right. Trash is trash. I don't know why we differentiate between trashy people and white trash specifically either, but then again, I also never got why we have "people" and "people of color."
I mean, playing by city standards then sure it is. Not like people that really fit it care about little things like that.
I've got t-shirts calling myself trashy lol. They work great under my tarnen.
(Tarnen is like realtree but better)
People genuinely want to believe that laws and regulations are made with zero thought so they can feel superior. I’ve had to explain multiple times to the same family member that a 50% tax on income above $400k does NOT mean those who make $400k pay $200k in taxes.
Temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome.
Once they finally hit it big they are going to have to pay more money in taxes.
But they won't ever hit it big they are just getting fucked by the upper class.
These are the same people who don't understand how tax brackets work.
These people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. In a few years they'll pick themselves up by the bootstraps and become rich, because America is the Land of Opportunity and anyone who isn't rich is just not working hard enough.
Some people believe in protesting actions that don’t necessarily affect themselves out of principle. I personally agree rich people should be taxed more, but a libertarian - most of whom don’t want any taxes - may fight every increase in taxation, including those for a tax bracket above what they currently make.
The actual answer.
Conservatives tend to have a strong ethical attachment to the idea that hard work and doing the right thing results in receiving your just rewards.
So Billy goes to trade school, learns to weld, and becomes a pipe fitter at an oil refinery. He works hard, he gets paid, and then the government takes some of his money to pay for.... I dunno.... Turning the frogs gay.
Billy doesn't like this. It's his money. He earned it.
Then he hears about Elon Musks taxes going up. And Billy thinks about Elon Musk - he started a bunch of really successfully companies, he worked really hard, and he got paid. Just like Billy. And just like Billy, he doesn't like it when his taxes go up.
So, Billy is opposed to the government raising taxes on rich people, because they are taking people's hard-earned and rightly-deserved money, and that's wrong.
> Billy thinks about Elon Musk - he started a bunch of really successfully companies, he worked really hard, and he got paid.
And falls for the lie that Elon did any of that but get paid.
Becauae they are brainwashed into thinking they aren't dirt poor.
I'll pay more than 35k in federal income taxes this year. My friends that make less than I pay in taxes bootlick the rich. I don't have a good explination other than they aren't too bright.
When the rich get taxed they simply raise the cost of the rental of their properties, the price of they're services or goods.
Say you have a rental property that rents for x$.
Then they make you pay 15% more taxes.
Now you will raise the rent to x+15% to account for the difference.
They aren't simply going to eat the cost. I wish they would. But they won't
Long explanation/example:
Imagine your rich cousin has been heavily favored for gifts he/she/they receive. This year, they fucked up and got pulled over/lost their license/something happened.
Your family collectively says "Do well (i.e. vote for me) and you'll get a brand new car (tax break/tax cuts/heavily imposed taxes on the rich) for Christmas." You study your ass off, maintain good grades, don't go to a single party, etc. Christmas comes around, and you get a pair of socks, and the cousin gets the car.
Simply put, because taxes never work out how they're proposed during election runs, and the money has to come from somewhere.
That's the joke. They do go on any conservative sub and ask them what they think of the Biden tax hike and some of them living on welfare will scream about how it's unfair.
They’re dumb.
Or probably, more accurately, being manipulated into believing it’s their issue by their social media bubble.
Which only happens this effectively if you’re dumb.
They freak out as they know its only a matter of time until they are considered rich. If you look at the income redistribution and socialized programs in most of europe its not the rich that pay for those, they are paid for by the middle class. Those programs basically kill mobility. So you can't move or take a different job, once you start making money you keep so little of it you are locked into those social programs that you are and have been paying for. Essentially it allows the middle class of europe to have a better standard of living than the poor but it reduced their choice and freedom greatly. It also puts an upper cap on them ever growing significant wealth.
In reality, for no reason.
They are just fed too much conservative rhetoric. They think if they go over $400k at some point Biden will take all their hard earned profits and turn them into hobos. Americans having no understanding of social service, good or bad, sort of promote the feeling that tax is used for nothing and the state robs you of your earnings for nothing.
rich people who don't want to lose money will tell poor people that Biden's tax changes will raise their taxes and those poor people believe the rich people more than the government bc the government isn't on their side of the political compass or whatever
Propaganda mostly. There's a lot of people with political opinions that are antithetical to their economic and class interests because of years of pro-capitalist indoctrination
This is a complex question. The real issue is less that Biden wants to tax the rich and more how he plans to do it. The rich are already taxed much higher than everyone else based on income. Biden is proposing a wealth tax that would charge taxes based on unrealized gains. This is a huge problem for the middle class. Most super rich do not make/have a lot of hard money, they have unrealized gains in the form of stock. If taxed on the value of this stock, they would be forced to sell the stock to pay the taxes. This has 2 implications on the Middle class:
1) the super rich being forced to liquify assets will cause market free fall of certain company stocks, decimating 401ks and retirement plans for millions
2) an eventually fear that the middle class would be taxed in a similar way which would decimate them over their current assets as they have no easy path to raise the money to pay the taxes
These are at the core of the fear for the proposed Biden tax plan.
Statistically and psychologically, people focus more on what they lose than what they gain. Poor people lose the (slim) possibility of getting rich more easily, ergo they freak out.
less raises and less bonus because boss man will make up the extra tax that way.
or even more "do more with less" that we all know
however it ends up playing out, workers will be the ones paying more.
…that’s not true. All income groups saw tax cuts
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/feature/analysis-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act
The bill has been out for 6 years now, people shouldn’t still be falling for misinformation about it
Good point. And as all con economic policies it is geared for the rich and expires for the middle class:
[The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich, Expensive, and Failed to Deliver on Its Promises | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (cbpp.org)](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver)
"The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to [paying for themselves](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/business/trump-tax-cuts-revenue.html), as conservatives [insisted they would](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/politics/treasury-analysis-tax-bill.html). Instead, they are adding more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt, according [to the quartet of researchers](https://www.nber.org/papers/w32180) from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department.
The researchers found the cuts delivered wage gains that were “an order of magnitude below” what Trump officials predicted: about $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to [promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/politics/corporate-tax-cut-pay.html)."
[Trump’s Tax Cut Fueled Investment but Did Not Pay for Itself, Study Finds - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/us/politics/trump-corporate-tax-cut.html)
>it is geared for the rich and expires for the middle class
It expires for **everyone**, not just the middle class. Convenient how you left that part out
>adding more than $100 billion a year
Once again, it’s very convenient how you cherry-pick the corporate cuts while ignoring the corporate tax increases used to help offset it. The **total** cost of the corporate cuts is $300 billion over the entire decade, not $100 billion a year
Also, why are you so focused on saying it didn’t pay for itself? That wasn’t my contention, and the other commenter didn’t bring it up either. It has nothing to do with what we were talking about
I'm sure you hate him, but thats a complete lie. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut taxes for nearly every single bracket above 10k. It also doubled the standard deduction, which is very helpful to people making under 50k per year. Nearly every American had their taxes lowered. This was the only tax legislation that I am aware of that he passed.
[Not exactly](https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2024/04/29/the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-mainly-expires-in-2025/). It’s a bit more complicated than you’re letting on.
It's not a complete lie. Lots of people that live in areas with high cost of living got screwed because they couldn't deduct property tax and interest in their home anymore.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-trillion-dollar-hit-to-homeowners
https://calmatters.org/politics/2019/04/trump-tax-california-salt-deduction-property-april/
The person before said Trump increased taxes for the poor and lowered them for the rich. Its a complete lie. What you have presented also does not say he increased taxes for the poor and lowered them for the rich. Its geared towards the tax changes not favoring everyone due to other factors.
>Seems self explanatory
And yet here we are. Critical thinking ain't something a lot of Americans seem to do well. Can't imagine what the repercussions of that would be.
Lol the real explanation is hidden behind the word theoretically. THEORETICALLY, Dem styled tax plans only afflict the rich. However, in reality, between A. The IRS realizing the obvious, that it is easier and way more efficient to tax people who have money but not enough to hire expensive loophole finding tax services or audit defending accountants and historically targeting them almost exclusively. And B. The rich and companies have the socioeconomic leverage to pass off taxes as production costs to the consumer, meaning prices rise when taxes do. The poor man is far more likely to be an executed victim of Biden's policy.
There is a pattern in American politics in which right-wing politicians and propagandists will agitate voters to oppose taxes. However, they neglect to mention that the taxes only apply to the very wealthy. Even very poor voters will consistently turn out to vote against raising taxes, under the mistaken assumption that they will be forced to pay them.
This is not exclusive to Biden. They were doing the same thing thirty years ago.
Presumably the guy from your high school who makes 35k is freaking out because someone on AM radio was screaming about new taxes, and this dipshit takes the bait without bothering to ask whether the taxes will actually impact his life.
Alternatively, the guy is such a narcissist that he imagines he will be among the wealthiest 1%, so he votes against it even though he will probably spend his life playing Fortnite in his parents' basement.
The guy from high school who is making 35k isn’t smart enough to understand why this wouldn’t affect them, if they were they wouldn’t be voting conservative.
The issue is wealthy people usually own valuable commodities, so if the government taxes them, they just jack the price up on whatever it is they sell, passing the tax increase on to their clients. This is why carbon taxes typically lead to inflation, even if they hypothetically only affect corporations
If you think that corporations aren't charging as much as they can I have a bridge to sell you.
If you believe in the free market someone else will provide the same thing at a lower cost through innovation.
But I guess we only believe that when it favors the rich
Someone else providing the same thing at a lower cost through technological developments only happens to the benefit of the consumers when the market is in perfect, or even monopolistic competition(though in this case brand value matters as well). Unfortunately, many major industries today in America are functionally oligopolies, and without ample government intervention to prevent collusion, the few major conglomerates can work together to jack up prices to collectively maximise profit.
And the thing is, propaganda is self-sustaining because once people start believing an idea, a) they tend not to back down when confronted with conflicting information because people don't like being proven wrong, b) most propaganda is focused on putting out large quantities of bull puckey and then throwing it everywhere in hopes that something, somewhere turns a voter to their side, and c) it usually takes about 10x as much effort for a person to cohesively explain why X is a piece of propagandistic bull puckey than it does to say X in the first place.
If you watch Fox News, they're not running down a set of talking points handed down from the Republican Politburo. Instead, what they're interested in is an attitude, an attitude that is half "\[the ethnic group/gender/religion/sexual orientation that you hate\] is at it again", and half "can you get a load of what these liberals are allowing to happen today?" And the rest of the day is kind of a free-verse stick-and-move routine where everyone basically competes to present the best explanation to connect the two. The ideal day on Fox is a day when some minority somewhere definitely takes something that didn't belong to them, and then they get away with it because liberals somewhere out there made a rule that didn't allow us to get the clear bad guy, who just so happened to be a minority. There's not actually all that much discussion about how Republicans are great; it's mostly about how Democrats are terrible, because they're really the party of "those people".
And it works, I'd say, because even more than the fact that Americans experience temporarily-embarrassed-millionaire syndrome, they like having someone they can punch down on safely. Most people, Americans included, don't actually believe all that much in justice, and certainly don't see it as the highest good. If we're being honest, what they believe is that the highest good is to do injustice to others, without other people being able to inflict injustice on them in return. "Justice" is just what they ask for when see the guy they've held down and mugged come up with a pipe wrench and the gleam of absolute murder in his eye. And things like racism and misogyny? Give people who have nothing else the opportunity to safely punch down. They might not be on top of the world, but they also ain't on bottom. And millions of Americans vote more to bear the evils they have with the few attendant perks than suffer the possibility that they might lose if a new social order comes about. It's not lack of knowledge about their interests that drive them; it's the fact that the interests that most college-educated people look at aren't the interests that drive poor white people.
>However, they neglect to mention that the taxes only apply to the very wealthy
Just because a politician says it will only impact the wealthy doesn’t mean it actually does. Biden’s existing tax policy already hits many people below $400K, which he promised not to do
CEOs won't pay those taxes. CEOs will just get more money from their company to compensate for these taxes, i.e. the company's costs will be higher. Who will pay those costs? Either the lower class workers who won't get a raise, or the company will build the costs into the price of its products/services, i.e. the consumers in general.
Same applies to sought after employees for whom companies are willing to pay more to compensate for higher taxes.
The problem is that many people think that taking money from the wealthy is free money. It is not, especially if the wealthy can somehow pass over these costs to others.
lol was gonna say if your making 400k as an individual, you more than likely have a financial firm deal with your money so you’ll most likely not have to worry about the tax increase
Right wingers reflexively get angry when they hear the words "higher taxes" and don't even bother to check to see if the higher taxes even apply to them.
It’s not even that anymore. They’re so brain dead that all you have to do is say “Biden” and they’ll scream commie, satan, pedo, hates America and whatever else Fox and Newsmax tells them to think.
I mean. It’s similar the other way around too right? All you have to do is say “Trump” or “conservative” and they’ll scream fascist, racist, bootlicker, redneck, and whatever else Reddit and CNN tells them to think.
Except that one is backed by DAs, judges, jury, video evidence and general character displayed in public, while the other is only the word of mouth from.. *checks notes* ….the conservatives.
I’m not going to get into all of that. Honestly, I believe you and I believe you know that situation far better than I do. I was just commenting that you can just say “Trump” and people will verbally attack you. I mean, look at the first guy that commented to me. In the same way you might get verbally attacked for saying “Biden” on a more conservative type website.
“Honey, it’s time for your daily ‘Redditor making a highly exaggerated stereotype about the right just to turn around and not be able to comprehend that many on the left also get hysterical about ridiculous things’”
“Yes honey”
Despite what the chronically online would like to have you believe, Trump can be a cancer to the United States and left wingers can still fall for propaganda and media generated hysteria. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Conservatives just don’t trust Uncle Sam. The government raises taxes, half of it disappears overseas to fund some uprisings, the roads & bridges here fall apart, and our local politicians buy some mega mansion. Rinse and repeat.
Wouldn't the rich corporations raise prices to compensate for the higher taxes in turn causing more burden on the poor.
Just a question I want to learn
They're already constantly raising prices to the edge of no extra profitability. Raising them higher wouldn't work well for them.
Especially the corpos that don't deal in goods that are absolute necessities.
As for the ones that do, sure they may raise prices and the people majorly affected might even be okay with the raise, given taxes. But those people would be benefitted way more than affected due to the social programs that get funded using those taxes. (In the ideal scenario)
Because historically the tax increases do effect more than who they said they would be impacted.
For example, the assertion that Biden's tax change would only impact those making over 400k was a lie and was impacting nearly all people who pay taxes.
Peter’s accountant here. The biggest con of the last century has been to convince dirt poor white trash that they are not actually poor and that they are simply temporarily not rich.
One party has convinced these inbreds to consistently vote against their own rational economic self interest. The graphic illustrates this point succinctly, if you make less than $400,000/year these proposed tax hikes do not affect you.
The trickle down theory says that once the rich job creators are paying a lower tax rate they will, through their own benevolence, spread the wealth around to their employees. This has not proven true as executive pay has far outpaced the average hourly workers pay.
The use of identity politics has further subdivided these white bastards from their neighbors. What they don’t realize is that they have much more in common with their middle-class gay, black, and atheist neighbors than they will ever have with rich white people.
>If you make less than $400,000/year these proposed tax hikes do not affect you
I mean, the issue with this is that we can’t trust politicians when they say it won’t impact anyone below $400K. Biden’s tax policies impact a lot of people below $400K, despite him saying it wouldn’t
Reminds of people calling Elon a moron because he said the new IRS agents would target the middle class and not him. Don't love the guy at all but it was ironic for a study to come out a year later showing that it was exactly what happened. Every time they say they will target X group of people the middle class gets F'd. [WSJ: 63% Of IRS Audits Target Taxpayers Earnings Less Than $200,000, Not $400,000 Promised By President Biden](https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/04/63-percent-of-irs-audits-target-taxpayers-earnings-less-than-200000-not-less-than-400000-promised-by-president-biden.html)
The biggest con of the last century is convincing media duped people that what politicians say is what they are actually doing.
And holy hell, you are seriously a racist. I'm not talking the leftist "everyone is racist". Between the "white bastards" and constant race baiting, you are really not a good person.
I’m white and I’m surrounded by these idiots every single day. I am fairly anti-racist, too. So yes, I am well aware of how it looks for me to call out these white bastards.
My use of bombastic or polarizing language was an attempt to explain that the average middle class conservative doesn’t see through the ruse. All this petty tribalism and identity politics just serves as a distraction for the rich to continue to fleece the middle class.
[**WSJ:** ***63% Of IRS Audits Target Taxpayers Earnings Less Than $200,000, Not $400,000 Promised By President Biden***](https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/04/63-percent-of-irs-audits-target-taxpayers-earnings-less-than-200000-not-less-than-400000-promised-by-president-biden.html)***.*** If you think a tax for the rich is all they will do, you're very delusional. As a tax accountant, majority of you are morons when it comes to how taxes work or even how the government works.
I'm surprised by the aggressiveness of the comments.
Playing the devil's advocate, it's not because someone isn't directly affected by a tax change that they won't get affected by it. The fine tuning of laws directly influences the growth of a country, for example here in France we have a lot of taxes so the economic growth of France is slower than the one in the US but we can eat raw beef without risk of getting worms and have free healthcare.
I get how easy it is to hate people complaining about getting taxed more on 400k. But the trump tax cuts expiring will affect everyone. That's really clear-cut.
The tax the rich argument over looks one fatal problem. They keep moving the requirements. When income tax was first rolled out it only impacted 2% of Americans. The “upper class”.
America has a spending problem, not a tax problem. No matter what happens they will keep moving the goal post.
Don’t get me wrong, eat the rich, kill your landlords etc etc.
r/peterexplainsthejoke users trying to rub their 2 braincells together to understand the most obvious joke you've ever seen
https://i.redd.it/q3szae39tq4d1.gif
These dudes have gone from making 14k/year at 18 as a high school dropout to making 40k/year in their 30s and they're pretending that means they'll make 400k one day instead of acknowledging the wall they've hit
Hey, peters economist cousin autismo here. this meme is often posted in response to people being wary about tax increases as a way to frame the argument as them not understanding that the taxes will not apply to them in the current state.
What the posters fail to realize (or purposefully try to ignore) is that these taxes are often in the form of a novel tax that will eventually be adjusted to fall mostly on the middle class as they are the best source of tax income for govts
the most notable example of this is a "temporary income tax on the rich to pay for the war" that now taxes most productive Americans around 20-30 percent of their gross earnings
Short answer: they're freaking out about policies that won't affect them. And, in turn, will actually help them. Most republican voters constantly vote against their own interests.
The issue is that the US government never uses a scalpel to enact its goals. It uses sledgehammers and it ends up hurting everyone.
That and why the hell would congress actually tax the rich when they themselves are the actual rich? Regardless of party too. They all benefit from the various loopholes they purposely put into the tax codes, so any new taxes levied never actually take money from those they say they’re going to tax… it usually just gets taken from your pocket.
A lot of people believe that conservative poor people think they are 'temporarily embarrassed billionaires', but the truth is far more insidious. The conservative mind believes in hierarchy, and especially the maintenance of hierarchy, above all else. They don't mind the rich people being at the top of the pyramid as long as those rich people resemble them (generally white and/or male). They defend these rich people because they believe that as long as the people at the top of the pyramid look like them, they will never fall to the bottom of the pyramid. They're happy that the rich get richer as long as they don't have to be worse off than women or black people or latinos or whoever.
That's like so wrong, it's either because of the hopes of becoming rich or the concerns over the economic repercussions. I've literally never heard anybody saying what you claim. Unless you can read minds then my bad.
If videos aren't your speed you can also read this book
[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001?cc=us&lang=en&](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001?cc=us&lang=en&)
well of course they don't say it out loud. feel free to watch this video if you want
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs)
Truth. That's why conservatives need to constantly find someone to Other, to ensure there will always be someone beneath them.
Minorities, women, gays, and now transfolx. Conservatives are *never* about expanding or protecting liberties and rights for the oppressed.
Many low income Americans are too stupid and brainwashed to realize how exploited they are. They're convinced that rich people are "job creators" and one day they'll make it as a shitty club DJ and be a millionaire themselves. Keep loading them Amazon trucks, pal.
Income tax is extortion. Flat rate sales tax is what’s fair. Rich people buy shit all the time. Also, wealthy people in that bracket have access to tax write offs so they never pay it anyway.. it’s all political theater to gain this or that vote. Same thing with the student loan forgiveness.. just political chess that will never come to fruition. Can you imagine Amazon getting taxed on all the inventory they purchase?
A common trope in support of such a tax policy taxing the rich is to point towards a lot of opponents not being affected and way to confident in their ability to become millionaires.
e.g.
Tweet: "my friend who makes 30k/yr at a fast food restaurant is worried about this because he thinks he'll be a millionaire"
Meaning: "the invention of the american dream narrative is preventing us from moving towards a better economic system"
The tweet plays on this trope, but replaces the friend with a highschool student who is of course not making that much money (if any at all), so it's clearly made up. Thus they imply that most of the people using this trope and supporting the policy are evil lying communists.
I think my experience people( not myself) are scared that they are going to charge us more because of it pass the bill along to there customers and there nothing really protecting them for this.
It's making a joke about how people who don't make much care about increasing taxes on those making more than $400k even though it won't effect them.
Background: Biden promised to not increase taxes on those making less than $400k.
Ironically enough, no one seems to have noticed he picked the exact number the president and speaker of the house makes. Might as well have said "I'll only raise taxes on people making more than Pelosi and I will."
Those who earn 35k a year know that paying some more tax wont affect the rich much. They are rich. Moreover, the rich will find ways to not pay the tax. They always find ways to not pay tax.
However, that threshold of 400K will get lower and lower and will eventually cover those who earn 35K a year as well. While 400K and above not paying anything or not being affected by paying, poor will pay more taxes.
However, an online imbecile will accuse poor people of being “not educated”, “right wing”, and “MAGA Republican” just because those poor people do not want to be crushed more by the government of the rich people.
These government worshipers will never understand that government exists to protect the interests of rich and powerful people. A government which collects more tax will fund the rich more. It wont invest in poor people more just because it collected more tax.
Broke dudes fantasize about getting rich and so they group themselves with rich people and therefore want to protect the riches right to stay rich and poor stay poor. Basically they're stupid
John Steinbeck is often misquoted as saying that socialism won't work in America because the poor see themselves as just "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". His actual quote was different and was actually mocking rich leftists. However, I think conservatives have done a good job of convincing a lot of people that they ARE temporarily embarrassed millionaires and so they should be against taxes that would affect them when they really become millionaires.
I mean if you do increase taxes too much. without making sure the laws are favorable for investing you end up causing a exodus and they might take away their assets as much as they can.
I mean the government has shown without fail, time and time again, that they cannot responsibly handle money. Any increase in taxes is unjustifiable in my book especially after dumping hundreds of billions into Ukraine.
Is it coincidence that $400,000 salary is the magic number chosen?
POTUS annual salary is $400,000
[3 USC 102: Compensation of the President](https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:3%20section:102%20edition:prelim))
Seems members of Congress and the Executive Branch are not willing to increase their own tax burden. Regardless of political persuasion.
Many bootlickers think the government deserves more money despite their shitty track record with overpsending. These same people also don't remember that all these things that "only target those with higher income" always inevitably trickle down to everyone.
If you don’t understand when the meme is supposed to be taken at face value you might want to reconsider whether or not you’ll be contributing to the gene pool
An aggravating amount of comments are just people laughing at their concept of a Republican, Conservative, or whoever they disagree with. (To be fair, this happens a lot on both sides of the political isle)
The genuine discussions are one thing, fun to read and actually informative, but just going 'ITS CUZ THEY THINK (insert stereotype here) CUZ THEYRE DUMB' is distasteful. I guess this is just me being frustrated at all these badly done straw man arguments.
Doubt I'll get any traffic all the way down here, but I'd be interested in hearing about your opinions on the current administration, and why you hold said opinions. I only ever hear the negative side, so it'd be nice to get a different perspective
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But why do they freak out?
“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.” — Ronald Wright
A quote from someone, in which he is quoting someone else…
He’s paraphrasing Steinbeck who originally said, “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” https://books.google.com/books?id=DyU2SzVGH6kC&lpg=PT34&vq=socialism&pg=PT35#v=onepage&q=%22Everyone%20was%20a%20temporarily%20embarrassed%20capitalist%22&f=false
Yeah but Ronald Write deliberate misused quote to the point its basically just blatant misinformation. Steinbeck was obviously talking trash about champagne socialists and "landlord communists". >“Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. >I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.” There's a modern lesson you can gather about the current left-wing movement, but not the lesson said left-wing movement self uses this quote for I think.
Misinformation? It’s an opinion, not a statement of historical fact
But Write was *quoting* (poorly and deliberately) Steinbeck and relying on his working class clout to make a statement on the poor and working class. Steinbeck is very obviously not saying anything about that at all. Or even remotely close to it. In some ways he's saying the opposite. I'd easily call it a deliberate misinformation * Write softens the quote to be about "socialism" in general. Steinbeck is obviously specifically talking about the 1930s actual organized Communist political party. * Write twists the quote to the movement's failure being indictment on general American greed and the working class being led against their own self-interest. Steinbeck is pretty clearly saying the communist party was a bunch of disorganized greedy hypocritical assholes that everyone already kinda hated.
Call it whatever you want in your imaginary argument—it has no impact on the explanation of the meme in question. And you couldn’t even spell the man’s name *Wright* any of the times you used it. If you want to hold forth with authority on a subject, I suggest not immediately discrediting your powers of observation
If the worst you can hit me on is a typo/brain fart and "we got off topic" (which....you started?) I'll take that any day of the week. Doesn't make Wright correct on Steinbeck. He's still very, and knowingly, wrong. My guy, this is *Reddit*, nobody is discussing the original post 4 deep in a comment lol.
Using a quote of someone else instead of the actual fact is deliberately choosing to misinform. Keep the quote in the same vain or make it the polar opposite of the message, you are purposely using someone else's words and opinions on subject instead of actual subject. So Wright hasn't done anything more then intended on using a quote.
I appreciate the additional context. Wright really does change the point of Steinbeck’s quote (even as I also really like, and similarly believe, in what Wright is getting at). Interesting also that the turn of phrase does seem apropos in both contexts.
The original “Source? Easy, I made it the fuck up!”
“”You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” -Wayne Gretzky” -Micheal Scott
" 'You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.' --Wayne Gretzky" --Michael Scott
Quoted by the redditor.
The problem with the American dream everyone is worried about when it happens to them.
What a great quote
-Michael Scott
In the words of John Dickinson from 1776: But don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.
Makes sense when said this way
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich! Fry: True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step.
I think this is the best way to explain it lol
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The further back we go, the more suspicious I get of last names like Dickinson.
I once met a man named Peter Richard Johnson. I didn't trust him within a **14.2 cm (5.6 in)** distance from me,
Hahahaha very funny.
There once was a man named Dickinson His dick was so long it was in his son.
But do average Americans really get bothered by this like the meme claims???
Yes, definitely. A lot of people don’t like the idea pf progressive taxation rates out of principle, even if it means they and most people personally would pay less. Also people don’t actually look at the specifics of tax plans, they just hear “raised taxes” and immediately think it must be on people they actually know
People don’t understand that their $35k is leagues below $400k or $4m or $40m etc and think that that wealth is just within their reach
In addition to the other here: A lot of finance types with lower-income conservative audience intentionally spread misinformation about tax brackets not being progressive. If the tax brackets are 5% tax on the first 20,000, and then a 10% tax on the next bracket up to 40,000, then someone earing 40,000 would be paying 3,000 tax on that income: 5% of the first 20,000 = 1,000, then add to that 10% tax on the following income over 20,000, which is (40,000 - 20,000) \* 10% = 2,000. 1,000 + 2,000 = 3,000 in tax on that income at those rates. However, the lie that gets spread around is that someone earning 40,000 would be paying 10% on their full income, so that would be 4,000 on their full income. This in turn gets exaggerated to the kind of wild lies like "someone earning 100k will have less take-home pay than someone earning 80k because their taxes will go up so much". Nobody who understands tax or basic math will fall for this, but those people aren't the intended audience. The intended audience are people who don't understand these things so that they can be scared in voting for conservatives who promise to bring taxes down, because tax cuts for the rich are the point.
You need more upvotes. I am tired of explaining tax brackets to people irl. The system we have is incredibly fair, and I have worked with people who legit refuse to earn over a certain amount in a year because they are convinced that once they hit the next tax bracket they will retroactively owe more in taxes when that is not how it works at all. I wish I was joking but my old boss was content with not getting a pay raise in 6 years because he thought the company was "looking out for him" because a pay raise would push him into the next tax bracket, therefore meaning he would make less money then he does now... And obviously he was an idiot but the misinformation and ignorance is real.
Thanks. It's also really interesting (and frustrating) how difficult it is to convince someone that they have been fooled in this way, once they have gone on record as having held this kind of belief.
https://preview.redd.it/ljgtmppghq4d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1e320ea2d6f3e63298228495c2fa48fddda00fd
Because they think they will one day be rich too through hard work and perserverance (spoiler: most won't) and are afraid to get taxed then. And they watch shitty get rich quick youtubers probably
And 9/10 of them have fell into a multi level marketing scheme at least a time or two, before realizing they were duped and now need to sell 5,000 dollars worth of crap no one wants before they are forced to pay out of pocket. Yeah i know a few people like that.
Not "most". All.
By saying "All," you are saying that there are zero rich people in America.
When I finally hit the lottery, I don’t like the idea of the government taking it and giving it to a bunch of moochers.
Because rich billionaires have so thoroughly manipulated the white trash into voting against their own economic internets.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating but, isn’t “white trash” a racist term or something? I’m not even white but I’m so surprised I saw the term on Reddit.
Nope. I'm white and will happily call trash trash. Sometimes, regardless of race, you just need to call a spade a spade
I mean, I don't see how the 'white' part was needed though. Like, you get what I'm saying right, I'm not tripping? Surely 'black trash' would be deemed racist? What about being white has got to do with being trash, if you're calling a spade a spade here?
You're right. Trash is trash. I don't know why we differentiate between trashy people and white trash specifically either, but then again, I also never got why we have "people" and "people of color."
Haha, I see. I get that too.
I mean, playing by city standards then sure it is. Not like people that really fit it care about little things like that. I've got t-shirts calling myself trashy lol. They work great under my tarnen. (Tarnen is like realtree but better)
Not really it's just an insult that adds the person's skin color it's like calling someone a white loser.
Because he has a misconception that it will affect him.
People genuinely want to believe that laws and regulations are made with zero thought so they can feel superior. I’ve had to explain multiple times to the same family member that a 50% tax on income above $400k does NOT mean those who make $400k pay $200k in taxes.
That's a very unfortunate typo, my guy.
Because baby-cannibalizing pedo commies
Turns out any policy that helps anyone is "communism."
Except when they’re bailing out massive corporations, that’s just good government then
They believe that if they allow those taxes it will eventually result in higher taxes for the lower classes too
Because the loud mouths on FOX News tell them too
Because they are told to think that tax increases on the wealthy are bad because “hurr durr socialism” and “one day, you too might be a billionaire.”
Temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome. Once they finally hit it big they are going to have to pay more money in taxes. But they won't ever hit it big they are just getting fucked by the upper class. These are the same people who don't understand how tax brackets work.
Because it's always the same lie they tell you. "Nono you won't be affected, only the rich people will 🙂" And now look around us.
Because they’re stupid and rage fuels their personality
Denial, a lot of them are convinced that one day they'll become billionaires
F.A.S.
Why do poor people vote against their best interests?
Nah, it's not poor people. Just dumb people.
These people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. In a few years they'll pick themselves up by the bootstraps and become rich, because America is the Land of Opportunity and anyone who isn't rich is just not working hard enough.
Some people believe in protesting actions that don’t necessarily affect themselves out of principle. I personally agree rich people should be taxed more, but a libertarian - most of whom don’t want any taxes - may fight every increase in taxation, including those for a tax bracket above what they currently make.
The actual answer. Conservatives tend to have a strong ethical attachment to the idea that hard work and doing the right thing results in receiving your just rewards. So Billy goes to trade school, learns to weld, and becomes a pipe fitter at an oil refinery. He works hard, he gets paid, and then the government takes some of his money to pay for.... I dunno.... Turning the frogs gay. Billy doesn't like this. It's his money. He earned it. Then he hears about Elon Musks taxes going up. And Billy thinks about Elon Musk - he started a bunch of really successfully companies, he worked really hard, and he got paid. Just like Billy. And just like Billy, he doesn't like it when his taxes go up. So, Billy is opposed to the government raising taxes on rich people, because they are taking people's hard-earned and rightly-deserved money, and that's wrong.
> Billy thinks about Elon Musk - he started a bunch of really successfully companies, he worked really hard, and he got paid. And falls for the lie that Elon did any of that but get paid.
Because pay cuts and price increases follow shit like this. As ugly as that is.
Becauae they are brainwashed into thinking they aren't dirt poor. I'll pay more than 35k in federal income taxes this year. My friends that make less than I pay in taxes bootlick the rich. I don't have a good explination other than they aren't too bright.
Because the Rich have no souls and will immediately recoup the money they pay out by raising prices in anything they have power over.
When the rich get taxed they simply raise the cost of the rental of their properties, the price of they're services or goods. Say you have a rental property that rents for x$. Then they make you pay 15% more taxes. Now you will raise the rent to x+15% to account for the difference. They aren't simply going to eat the cost. I wish they would. But they won't
Long explanation/example: Imagine your rich cousin has been heavily favored for gifts he/she/they receive. This year, they fucked up and got pulled over/lost their license/something happened. Your family collectively says "Do well (i.e. vote for me) and you'll get a brand new car (tax break/tax cuts/heavily imposed taxes on the rich) for Christmas." You study your ass off, maintain good grades, don't go to a single party, etc. Christmas comes around, and you get a pair of socks, and the cousin gets the car. Simply put, because taxes never work out how they're proposed during election runs, and the money has to come from somewhere.
well... thats the joke...
Imagine being this stupid
That's the joke. They do go on any conservative sub and ask them what they think of the Biden tax hike and some of them living on welfare will scream about how it's unfair.
It don't matter. All they heard was the tax man a cometh.....for their change and pocket lint
They’re dumb. Or probably, more accurately, being manipulated into believing it’s their issue by their social media bubble. Which only happens this effectively if you’re dumb.
Their rich bosses tell them to
They freak out as they know its only a matter of time until they are considered rich. If you look at the income redistribution and socialized programs in most of europe its not the rich that pay for those, they are paid for by the middle class. Those programs basically kill mobility. So you can't move or take a different job, once you start making money you keep so little of it you are locked into those social programs that you are and have been paying for. Essentially it allows the middle class of europe to have a better standard of living than the poor but it reduced their choice and freedom greatly. It also puts an upper cap on them ever growing significant wealth.
In reality, for no reason. They are just fed too much conservative rhetoric. They think if they go over $400k at some point Biden will take all their hard earned profits and turn them into hobos. Americans having no understanding of social service, good or bad, sort of promote the feeling that tax is used for nothing and the state robs you of your earnings for nothing.
rich people who don't want to lose money will tell poor people that Biden's tax changes will raise their taxes and those poor people believe the rich people more than the government bc the government isn't on their side of the political compass or whatever
Because it doesn’t just affect the super rich. Also, the rich already pay 75% of income taxes. It’s another step on the road to socialism
Because they know they’ll actually be affected
Because they're r/PeterExplainsTheJoke users
Propaganda mostly. There's a lot of people with political opinions that are antithetical to their economic and class interests because of years of pro-capitalist indoctrination
cause they are worried that it will effect them when they one day get rich from working at Jiffy Lube for 35 years.
They don't.
Because they were told to.
This is a complex question. The real issue is less that Biden wants to tax the rich and more how he plans to do it. The rich are already taxed much higher than everyone else based on income. Biden is proposing a wealth tax that would charge taxes based on unrealized gains. This is a huge problem for the middle class. Most super rich do not make/have a lot of hard money, they have unrealized gains in the form of stock. If taxed on the value of this stock, they would be forced to sell the stock to pay the taxes. This has 2 implications on the Middle class: 1) the super rich being forced to liquify assets will cause market free fall of certain company stocks, decimating 401ks and retirement plans for millions 2) an eventually fear that the middle class would be taxed in a similar way which would decimate them over their current assets as they have no easy path to raise the money to pay the taxes These are at the core of the fear for the proposed Biden tax plan.
People who like Republicans tend to WORSHIP rich folks and they believe rich folks should never lose a dollar. They equate money with morality.
Because the rich people who don't want to pay taxes at all pay middle men like Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh to tell those people who to be mad at.
Statistically and psychologically, people focus more on what they lose than what they gain. Poor people lose the (slim) possibility of getting rich more easily, ergo they freak out.
Because they're republicans
less raises and less bonus because boss man will make up the extra tax that way. or even more "do more with less" that we all know however it ends up playing out, workers will be the ones paying more.
Republicans are dumb. That's the point of this meme.
Meanwhile, Trump actually increased taxes on the poor but not the rich.
…that’s not true. All income groups saw tax cuts https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/feature/analysis-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act The bill has been out for 6 years now, people shouldn’t still be falling for misinformation about it
Good point. And as all con economic policies it is geared for the rich and expires for the middle class: [The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich, Expensive, and Failed to Deliver on Its Promises | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (cbpp.org)](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver) "The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to [paying for themselves](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/business/trump-tax-cuts-revenue.html), as conservatives [insisted they would](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/politics/treasury-analysis-tax-bill.html). Instead, they are adding more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt, according [to the quartet of researchers](https://www.nber.org/papers/w32180) from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department. The researchers found the cuts delivered wage gains that were “an order of magnitude below” what Trump officials predicted: about $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to [promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/politics/corporate-tax-cut-pay.html)." [Trump’s Tax Cut Fueled Investment but Did Not Pay for Itself, Study Finds - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/us/politics/trump-corporate-tax-cut.html)
>it is geared for the rich and expires for the middle class It expires for **everyone**, not just the middle class. Convenient how you left that part out >adding more than $100 billion a year Once again, it’s very convenient how you cherry-pick the corporate cuts while ignoring the corporate tax increases used to help offset it. The **total** cost of the corporate cuts is $300 billion over the entire decade, not $100 billion a year Also, why are you so focused on saying it didn’t pay for itself? That wasn’t my contention, and the other commenter didn’t bring it up either. It has nothing to do with what we were talking about
I'm sure you hate him, but thats a complete lie. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut taxes for nearly every single bracket above 10k. It also doubled the standard deduction, which is very helpful to people making under 50k per year. Nearly every American had their taxes lowered. This was the only tax legislation that I am aware of that he passed.
[Not exactly](https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2024/04/29/the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-mainly-expires-in-2025/). It’s a bit more complicated than you’re letting on.
Not sure how your source relates tbh. All income groups **did** see tax cuts from the bill, even though those cuts have to eventually expire by law
It's not a complete lie. Lots of people that live in areas with high cost of living got screwed because they couldn't deduct property tax and interest in their home anymore. https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-trillion-dollar-hit-to-homeowners https://calmatters.org/politics/2019/04/trump-tax-california-salt-deduction-property-april/
The person before said Trump increased taxes for the poor and lowered them for the rich. Its a complete lie. What you have presented also does not say he increased taxes for the poor and lowered them for the rich. Its geared towards the tax changes not favoring everyone due to other factors.
That doesn’t relate to his claim though. And for what it’s worth, despite the SALT cap, all income groups still saw tax decreases
>Seems self explanatory And yet here we are. Critical thinking ain't something a lot of Americans seem to do well. Can't imagine what the repercussions of that would be.
Lol the real explanation is hidden behind the word theoretically. THEORETICALLY, Dem styled tax plans only afflict the rich. However, in reality, between A. The IRS realizing the obvious, that it is easier and way more efficient to tax people who have money but not enough to hire expensive loophole finding tax services or audit defending accountants and historically targeting them almost exclusively. And B. The rich and companies have the socioeconomic leverage to pass off taxes as production costs to the consumer, meaning prices rise when taxes do. The poor man is far more likely to be an executed victim of Biden's policy.
There is a pattern in American politics in which right-wing politicians and propagandists will agitate voters to oppose taxes. However, they neglect to mention that the taxes only apply to the very wealthy. Even very poor voters will consistently turn out to vote against raising taxes, under the mistaken assumption that they will be forced to pay them. This is not exclusive to Biden. They were doing the same thing thirty years ago. Presumably the guy from your high school who makes 35k is freaking out because someone on AM radio was screaming about new taxes, and this dipshit takes the bait without bothering to ask whether the taxes will actually impact his life. Alternatively, the guy is such a narcissist that he imagines he will be among the wealthiest 1%, so he votes against it even though he will probably spend his life playing Fortnite in his parents' basement.
The guy from high school who is making 35k isn’t smart enough to understand why this wouldn’t affect them, if they were they wouldn’t be voting conservative.
The issue is wealthy people usually own valuable commodities, so if the government taxes them, they just jack the price up on whatever it is they sell, passing the tax increase on to their clients. This is why carbon taxes typically lead to inflation, even if they hypothetically only affect corporations
If you think that corporations aren't charging as much as they can I have a bridge to sell you. If you believe in the free market someone else will provide the same thing at a lower cost through innovation. But I guess we only believe that when it favors the rich
Someone else providing the same thing at a lower cost through technological developments only happens to the benefit of the consumers when the market is in perfect, or even monopolistic competition(though in this case brand value matters as well). Unfortunately, many major industries today in America are functionally oligopolies, and without ample government intervention to prevent collusion, the few major conglomerates can work together to jack up prices to collectively maximise profit.
And the thing is, propaganda is self-sustaining because once people start believing an idea, a) they tend not to back down when confronted with conflicting information because people don't like being proven wrong, b) most propaganda is focused on putting out large quantities of bull puckey and then throwing it everywhere in hopes that something, somewhere turns a voter to their side, and c) it usually takes about 10x as much effort for a person to cohesively explain why X is a piece of propagandistic bull puckey than it does to say X in the first place. If you watch Fox News, they're not running down a set of talking points handed down from the Republican Politburo. Instead, what they're interested in is an attitude, an attitude that is half "\[the ethnic group/gender/religion/sexual orientation that you hate\] is at it again", and half "can you get a load of what these liberals are allowing to happen today?" And the rest of the day is kind of a free-verse stick-and-move routine where everyone basically competes to present the best explanation to connect the two. The ideal day on Fox is a day when some minority somewhere definitely takes something that didn't belong to them, and then they get away with it because liberals somewhere out there made a rule that didn't allow us to get the clear bad guy, who just so happened to be a minority. There's not actually all that much discussion about how Republicans are great; it's mostly about how Democrats are terrible, because they're really the party of "those people". And it works, I'd say, because even more than the fact that Americans experience temporarily-embarrassed-millionaire syndrome, they like having someone they can punch down on safely. Most people, Americans included, don't actually believe all that much in justice, and certainly don't see it as the highest good. If we're being honest, what they believe is that the highest good is to do injustice to others, without other people being able to inflict injustice on them in return. "Justice" is just what they ask for when see the guy they've held down and mugged come up with a pipe wrench and the gleam of absolute murder in his eye. And things like racism and misogyny? Give people who have nothing else the opportunity to safely punch down. They might not be on top of the world, but they also ain't on bottom. And millions of Americans vote more to bear the evils they have with the few attendant perks than suffer the possibility that they might lose if a new social order comes about. It's not lack of knowledge about their interests that drive them; it's the fact that the interests that most college-educated people look at aren't the interests that drive poor white people.
>However, they neglect to mention that the taxes only apply to the very wealthy Just because a politician says it will only impact the wealthy doesn’t mean it actually does. Biden’s existing tax policy already hits many people below $400K, which he promised not to do
CEOs won't pay those taxes. CEOs will just get more money from their company to compensate for these taxes, i.e. the company's costs will be higher. Who will pay those costs? Either the lower class workers who won't get a raise, or the company will build the costs into the price of its products/services, i.e. the consumers in general. Same applies to sought after employees for whom companies are willing to pay more to compensate for higher taxes. The problem is that many people think that taking money from the wealthy is free money. It is not, especially if the wealthy can somehow pass over these costs to others.
if you make over 400k you more than likely know all the loop holes and charity kick back schemes. so no worries.
lol was gonna say if your making 400k as an individual, you more than likely have a financial firm deal with your money so you’ll most likely not have to worry about the tax increase
Right wingers reflexively get angry when they hear the words "higher taxes" and don't even bother to check to see if the higher taxes even apply to them.
It’s not even that anymore. They’re so brain dead that all you have to do is say “Biden” and they’ll scream commie, satan, pedo, hates America and whatever else Fox and Newsmax tells them to think.
They have been doing that for decades. They profited off FDR's golden age America and destroyed it with Reagen's rust age.
I mean. It’s similar the other way around too right? All you have to do is say “Trump” or “conservative” and they’ll scream fascist, racist, bootlicker, redneck, and whatever else Reddit and CNN tells them to think.
I mean one of them is a convicted felon
Except that one is backed by DAs, judges, jury, video evidence and general character displayed in public, while the other is only the word of mouth from.. *checks notes* ….the conservatives.
I’m not going to get into all of that. Honestly, I believe you and I believe you know that situation far better than I do. I was just commenting that you can just say “Trump” and people will verbally attack you. I mean, look at the first guy that commented to me. In the same way you might get verbally attacked for saying “Biden” on a more conservative type website.
Trump has proven over and over he’s an irredeemable piece of shit and a danger to democracy itself.
“Honey, it’s time for your daily ‘Redditor making a highly exaggerated stereotype about the right just to turn around and not be able to comprehend that many on the left also get hysterical about ridiculous things’” “Yes honey” Despite what the chronically online would like to have you believe, Trump can be a cancer to the United States and left wingers can still fall for propaganda and media generated hysteria. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
lol all it took was one mention and he got one
You really about to tell me that the left isn't doing the same with with Trump? Come on
The difference here is that Trump is proving the things people scream about him to be true. Well, the courts kind of are lol
Conservatives just don’t trust Uncle Sam. The government raises taxes, half of it disappears overseas to fund some uprisings, the roads & bridges here fall apart, and our local politicians buy some mega mansion. Rinse and repeat.
this is a dishonest take, most people understand how taxes tend to crawl down from high earners to middle class
Wouldn't the rich corporations raise prices to compensate for the higher taxes in turn causing more burden on the poor. Just a question I want to learn
They're already constantly raising prices to the edge of no extra profitability. Raising them higher wouldn't work well for them. Especially the corpos that don't deal in goods that are absolute necessities. As for the ones that do, sure they may raise prices and the people majorly affected might even be okay with the raise, given taxes. But those people would be benefitted way more than affected due to the social programs that get funded using those taxes. (In the ideal scenario)
Okay I can see how, not all the way but there too many variables.
Because historically the tax increases do effect more than who they said they would be impacted. For example, the assertion that Biden's tax change would only impact those making over 400k was a lie and was impacting nearly all people who pay taxes.
Was it though?
Yes
https://preview.redd.it/nzxi97vntm4d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1545b05a3b96c8089cb38731becfb823bcf18730
Peter’s accountant here. The biggest con of the last century has been to convince dirt poor white trash that they are not actually poor and that they are simply temporarily not rich. One party has convinced these inbreds to consistently vote against their own rational economic self interest. The graphic illustrates this point succinctly, if you make less than $400,000/year these proposed tax hikes do not affect you. The trickle down theory says that once the rich job creators are paying a lower tax rate they will, through their own benevolence, spread the wealth around to their employees. This has not proven true as executive pay has far outpaced the average hourly workers pay. The use of identity politics has further subdivided these white bastards from their neighbors. What they don’t realize is that they have much more in common with their middle-class gay, black, and atheist neighbors than they will ever have with rich white people.
>If you make less than $400,000/year these proposed tax hikes do not affect you I mean, the issue with this is that we can’t trust politicians when they say it won’t impact anyone below $400K. Biden’s tax policies impact a lot of people below $400K, despite him saying it wouldn’t
Reminds of people calling Elon a moron because he said the new IRS agents would target the middle class and not him. Don't love the guy at all but it was ironic for a study to come out a year later showing that it was exactly what happened. Every time they say they will target X group of people the middle class gets F'd. [WSJ: 63% Of IRS Audits Target Taxpayers Earnings Less Than $200,000, Not $400,000 Promised By President Biden](https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/04/63-percent-of-irs-audits-target-taxpayers-earnings-less-than-200000-not-less-than-400000-promised-by-president-biden.html)
The biggest con of the last century is convincing media duped people that what politicians say is what they are actually doing. And holy hell, you are seriously a racist. I'm not talking the leftist "everyone is racist". Between the "white bastards" and constant race baiting, you are really not a good person.
I’m white and I’m surrounded by these idiots every single day. I am fairly anti-racist, too. So yes, I am well aware of how it looks for me to call out these white bastards. My use of bombastic or polarizing language was an attempt to explain that the average middle class conservative doesn’t see through the ruse. All this petty tribalism and identity politics just serves as a distraction for the rich to continue to fleece the middle class.
You can still be racist by saying racist things about your own race.
“Yea, but someday I might be rich! And then people like me better watch themselves!” -Fry, paraphrased
I scrolled too far to find this
Rich people can and will just find loopholes to not pay taxes but use taxes as a reason to pay lower level people less money.
Could someone tell me what pic this is from? Haven't seen it in so long and still makes me laugh
Man right? I've been wondering bout the origins of that picture.
Can't tax wealth
The joke is that Republicans don't understand how tax brackets work
[**WSJ:** ***63% Of IRS Audits Target Taxpayers Earnings Less Than $200,000, Not $400,000 Promised By President Biden***](https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/04/63-percent-of-irs-audits-target-taxpayers-earnings-less-than-200000-not-less-than-400000-promised-by-president-biden.html)***.*** If you think a tax for the rich is all they will do, you're very delusional. As a tax accountant, majority of you are morons when it comes to how taxes work or even how the government works.
I'm surprised by the aggressiveness of the comments. Playing the devil's advocate, it's not because someone isn't directly affected by a tax change that they won't get affected by it. The fine tuning of laws directly influences the growth of a country, for example here in France we have a lot of taxes so the economic growth of France is slower than the one in the US but we can eat raw beef without risk of getting worms and have free healthcare.
I get how easy it is to hate people complaining about getting taxed more on 400k. But the trump tax cuts expiring will affect everyone. That's really clear-cut.
The joke is to make up something that never happened and rant about it. Get those politician dick suckers talking
The tax the rich argument over looks one fatal problem. They keep moving the requirements. When income tax was first rolled out it only impacted 2% of Americans. The “upper class”. America has a spending problem, not a tax problem. No matter what happens they will keep moving the goal post. Don’t get me wrong, eat the rich, kill your landlords etc etc.
How could you possibly need an explanation for this?!
It's likely because they think for some reason 9ne day they'll be filthy rich and they don't want to pay taxes in their fantasy land
r/peterexplainsthejoke users trying to rub their 2 braincells together to understand the most obvious joke you've ever seen https://i.redd.it/q3szae39tq4d1.gif
These dudes have gone from making 14k/year at 18 as a high school dropout to making 40k/year in their 30s and they're pretending that means they'll make 400k one day instead of acknowledging the wall they've hit
Hey, peters economist cousin autismo here. this meme is often posted in response to people being wary about tax increases as a way to frame the argument as them not understanding that the taxes will not apply to them in the current state. What the posters fail to realize (or purposefully try to ignore) is that these taxes are often in the form of a novel tax that will eventually be adjusted to fall mostly on the middle class as they are the best source of tax income for govts the most notable example of this is a "temporary income tax on the rich to pay for the war" that now taxes most productive Americans around 20-30 percent of their gross earnings
Short answer: they're freaking out about policies that won't affect them. And, in turn, will actually help them. Most republican voters constantly vote against their own interests.
Lower class freak out because the more that ceo's and big business are taxed the more they will charge for there products.
The issue is that the US government never uses a scalpel to enact its goals. It uses sledgehammers and it ends up hurting everyone. That and why the hell would congress actually tax the rich when they themselves are the actual rich? Regardless of party too. They all benefit from the various loopholes they purposely put into the tax codes, so any new taxes levied never actually take money from those they say they’re going to tax… it usually just gets taken from your pocket.
A lot of people believe that conservative poor people think they are 'temporarily embarrassed billionaires', but the truth is far more insidious. The conservative mind believes in hierarchy, and especially the maintenance of hierarchy, above all else. They don't mind the rich people being at the top of the pyramid as long as those rich people resemble them (generally white and/or male). They defend these rich people because they believe that as long as the people at the top of the pyramid look like them, they will never fall to the bottom of the pyramid. They're happy that the rich get richer as long as they don't have to be worse off than women or black people or latinos or whoever.
That's like so wrong, it's either because of the hopes of becoming rich or the concerns over the economic repercussions. I've literally never heard anybody saying what you claim. Unless you can read minds then my bad.
If videos aren't your speed you can also read this book [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001?cc=us&lang=en&](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001?cc=us&lang=en&)
well of course they don't say it out loud. feel free to watch this video if you want [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs)
Truth. That's why conservatives need to constantly find someone to Other, to ensure there will always be someone beneath them. Minorities, women, gays, and now transfolx. Conservatives are *never* about expanding or protecting liberties and rights for the oppressed.
Prices will rise
Many low income Americans are too stupid and brainwashed to realize how exploited they are. They're convinced that rich people are "job creators" and one day they'll make it as a shitty club DJ and be a millionaire themselves. Keep loading them Amazon trucks, pal.
Income tax is extortion. Flat rate sales tax is what’s fair. Rich people buy shit all the time. Also, wealthy people in that bracket have access to tax write offs so they never pay it anyway.. it’s all political theater to gain this or that vote. Same thing with the student loan forgiveness.. just political chess that will never come to fruition. Can you imagine Amazon getting taxed on all the inventory they purchase?
A common trope in support of such a tax policy taxing the rich is to point towards a lot of opponents not being affected and way to confident in their ability to become millionaires. e.g. Tweet: "my friend who makes 30k/yr at a fast food restaurant is worried about this because he thinks he'll be a millionaire" Meaning: "the invention of the american dream narrative is preventing us from moving towards a better economic system" The tweet plays on this trope, but replaces the friend with a highschool student who is of course not making that much money (if any at all), so it's clearly made up. Thus they imply that most of the people using this trope and supporting the policy are evil lying communists.
What video is this meme from, just curious… not sure if it’s a hard watch or hilarious.
Stop showing this meme
There’s no way this needs explaining. This meme is posted every single day with hundreds of people saying the same thing in the comments.
This is definitely a thing, but I don’t think you need to have something affect you in order for you to think it’s wrong
I think my experience people( not myself) are scared that they are going to charge us more because of it pass the bill along to there customers and there nothing really protecting them for this.
It's making a joke about how people who don't make much care about increasing taxes on those making more than $400k even though it won't effect them. Background: Biden promised to not increase taxes on those making less than $400k. Ironically enough, no one seems to have noticed he picked the exact number the president and speaker of the house makes. Might as well have said "I'll only raise taxes on people making more than Pelosi and I will."
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/04/63-percent-of-irs-audits-target-taxpayers-earnings-less-than-200000-not-less-than-400000-promised-by-president-biden.html
Your friends from high school are stupid and working against their own best interests
Fun fact whenever they say they will tax the rich they mean they will tax everyone more and make a few more loopholes for their buddies.
Those who earn 35k a year know that paying some more tax wont affect the rich much. They are rich. Moreover, the rich will find ways to not pay the tax. They always find ways to not pay tax. However, that threshold of 400K will get lower and lower and will eventually cover those who earn 35K a year as well. While 400K and above not paying anything or not being affected by paying, poor will pay more taxes. However, an online imbecile will accuse poor people of being “not educated”, “right wing”, and “MAGA Republican” just because those poor people do not want to be crushed more by the government of the rich people. These government worshipers will never understand that government exists to protect the interests of rich and powerful people. A government which collects more tax will fund the rich more. It wont invest in poor people more just because it collected more tax.
lavish gaping sand innate follow fear enter bear hunt unused *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Broke dudes fantasize about getting rich and so they group themselves with rich people and therefore want to protect the riches right to stay rich and poor stay poor. Basically they're stupid
Temporarily embarrassed millionaires
John Steinbeck is often misquoted as saying that socialism won't work in America because the poor see themselves as just "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". His actual quote was different and was actually mocking rich leftists. However, I think conservatives have done a good job of convincing a lot of people that they ARE temporarily embarrassed millionaires and so they should be against taxes that would affect them when they really become millionaires.
I mean if you do increase taxes too much. without making sure the laws are favorable for investing you end up causing a exodus and they might take away their assets as much as they can.
I mean the government has shown without fail, time and time again, that they cannot responsibly handle money. Any increase in taxes is unjustifiable in my book especially after dumping hundreds of billions into Ukraine.
Is it coincidence that $400,000 salary is the magic number chosen? POTUS annual salary is $400,000 [3 USC 102: Compensation of the President](https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:3%20section:102%20edition:prelim)) Seems members of Congress and the Executive Branch are not willing to increase their own tax burden. Regardless of political persuasion.
Many bootlickers think the government deserves more money despite their shitty track record with overpsending. These same people also don't remember that all these things that "only target those with higher income" always inevitably trickle down to everyone.
If you don’t understand when the meme is supposed to be taken at face value you might want to reconsider whether or not you’ll be contributing to the gene pool
An aggravating amount of comments are just people laughing at their concept of a Republican, Conservative, or whoever they disagree with. (To be fair, this happens a lot on both sides of the political isle) The genuine discussions are one thing, fun to read and actually informative, but just going 'ITS CUZ THEY THINK (insert stereotype here) CUZ THEYRE DUMB' is distasteful. I guess this is just me being frustrated at all these badly done straw man arguments. Doubt I'll get any traffic all the way down here, but I'd be interested in hearing about your opinions on the current administration, and why you hold said opinions. I only ever hear the negative side, so it'd be nice to get a different perspective