"Like being born into poverty?"

Being born into poverty isn't why you remain there. Most likely, those born into poverty spend a lifetime being trained to stay there.

Let's hypothesize...

If the top 1% of global income earners had never been born, would the remaining 99% be better or worse off?

"How about we start taxing the uber-wealthy who have, for the past 40 years, been able to dodge their financial responsibilities that provide them with a country that protects them and their money and their property?"

We already are doing that.

Be happy we are in the worlds top 5%."

I would hazard that every last participant in this conversation is in the world's top 1%. That's anyone making more than $60k per year.

"Tax law always favors the very rich."

How so?

It's the rich who pay the majority of taxes in this country. The poor, almost nothing. In absolute amounts or percentages of earned income.

"Bezos pays less in taxes than you do."

You've seen his tax returns?

I have the overseas tax exemption. The only taxes I (and everyone) are obligated to pay are FICA taxes.

"More money to go around instead of a tiny minority hoarding most of the social product."

So your argument is that wages would be higher for the remaining 99% if the top 1% had never been born?

Why?

How would the lack of the 1% change the labor value of the remaining 99%?

Look at the Gulf States. Rich Shieks with everything and grinding poverty for almost everyone else.

Yeah. Did you know the median monthly household income for a Qatari citizen is ~$20k?

Not exactly grinding poverty.

"Most of the government's federal income tax revenue comes from the nation's top income earners. In 2022, the top 5% of earners " people with incomes $261,591 and above " collectively paid over $1.3 trillion in income taxes, or about 61% of the national total.

If you include the top 10% " everyone who made at least $178,611 " that figure rises to $1.5 trillion, or 72% of the total.

The top 50% of earners contributed 97% of federal income tax revenue."

"What's the cost of living in Qatar?"

Not so much that you can't do it on $240k per year.

"Billionaires who pay no taxes"

They don't pay FICA taxes? Do those not count?

I need to learn that trick.

"It's not the top 5 percent that are so much the problem, it's the top 0.001 percent who pay around 3 percent in a bad year for them."

Really?

The problem is .001% of the population?

That's 1300 households nationwide.

And BTW, in 2019 the effective tax rate for this group was 24.7%.

"So, MB, did you know this or just not mention it? As it kind of Destroys your Arguments."

I knew it. And no, it really doesn't destroy anything.

Most Qatari citizens don't work. They don't need to Tamim the Glorious gives them everything. The country is run by foreign nationals, who do everything from manage key industries to mopping floors.

"And the actual rate they paid was 3.4 percent."

Not according to the IRS.

Really, the biggest winners tax-wise in the US are low-income earners.

"from the link you ignored... it will save you asking silly questions."

From your post:

"Overall, according to ProPublica data, the 25 wealthiest Americans paid taxes equal to 3.4% of their wealth gain from 2014 to 2018. Bloomberg paid just 1.3%, while Bezos' "true tax rate" in those years was less than 1%."

Pro-Publica uses something called a "true tax rate," which isn't really a thing. It includes unrealized capital gains, which are not income and not taxable until they become realized capital gains.

To say they are the biggest winners is ludicrous... which is why you added the 'tax-wise' caveat, which is fooling no one.

"America will never have a European-style welfare state without a VAT. Democrats want European-style spending but without the efficient tax that makes it possible."

"Tax refunds for poor families are exceptionally generous. In 2019 a single parent of two children earning two-thirds of average pay faced total net labour taxes of only 10%, according to analysis by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. In egalitarian Sweden the rate was nearly 33%."

"A White House analysis found that the 400 wealthiest U.S. families paid an average federal income tax rate of just 8.2% from 2010 to 2018 when their wealth growth was included as income."

It's not real wealth.

Let me give you an example. During COVID I bought Peloton stock at $48 per share. It topped out at $168 per share. So my unrealized capital gains had more than tripled. I sold it when hit $38.

So, if you can get taxed on unrealized capital gains, should you be able to claim unrealized capital losses as a deduction?

Technically, I guess the government would be obligated to cut you a check if your unrealized capital losses exceeded the amount you owed in taxes.

#87

Again, when they make those claims, they are not using a real tax rate because they are including unrealized capital gain, which are not income.

"They are destroying the ecosystem and the social contract."

How have they made your life more difficult? Did you get poorer as a result of Musk or Bezos existing?

I am going to hazard a guess that many of you want Bezos and Musk to continue engaging in behavior that earns them billions of dollars, you just want the government to be able to control those billions.

Amiright?

"I'm sorry, really sorry to be the one to tell you this, MB... but you are never going to be Bezos or Musk or anyone anywhere nearly as wealthy."

Bezos pulls his schooner into Durres sometimes. Maybe I'll go have a beer with him when he's in port. Musk is just too ------- weird.

"So it's really not to your benefit to shill for them because you won't EVER be able to not pay any taxes at all some years the way they do.".

Way ahead of you, bro. I have the overseas income exemption, which means that the first $130k of my income in not taxable. The rest is, but I'm able to offset it with different deductions. Like everyone else, I do have to pay FICA. There is no getting out of that.

"Perhaps were you to encourage politicians to make Laws that Corporations have to pay a Living Wage to workers rather than $7.fiddy an hour, St. Peter might be influenced when you get to that Gate."

You think that St. Peter would be happy that I supported a system where workers were unable to sell their labor unless that labor met a certain value threshold?

I don't. I think St. Peter would have wanted people to be able to sell their labor, something granted to them by god, for as little or as much as they wanted.

"The loss of Common goods. Like open land and access to it."

Much of the land west of 110W longitude is BLM land. It is yours to spend as much time on as you wish. As are national forests, wilderness, etc.

"I'm talking about Social Outcomes not whether or not a rich guy has more."

You'll have to define "social outcome" for me. I don't know that term.

"I'm poorer as a result of the concentration of buying power that warps the economy in favor of a few very rich individuals."

Walk me through that while you're at it. It sounds to me like what you are saying is that they are able to spend more money on an object than you are, and that makes you poorer. Is that about right?

"Set by the Invisible Hand of the Almighty Free Market?"

No. Set through an agreement between the seller of labor and the purchaser on the price at which that labor will be purchased.

"There are other ways, including minimum wages, which need to be increased."

Why?

If a 16-year-old kid wants to work for $7.50 an hour, why shouldn't they be legally allowed to do so?

Why does a 16-year-old kid need a living wage?

"Labor is sold to provide cash income. For People with no other way to get it."

You don't need cash.

More than a few people live off the grid in places like Alaska, using their labor not to earn cash, but to satisfy their own needs. Food, shelter, things like that.

Cash is a relatively recent advancement in the history of mankind, but it's only a necessity if you choose to live in a world that requires it.

"I think it's #1. Madbomber knows less about Christianity than he does socialism."

That is 100% true.

"The same exact labor has different value, based on those externalities?"

Yes.

A teenager may be willing to work for $3 an hour, even if the employer is willing to pay more.

It's no different than selling anything else.

"But if you try living without Capitalism, The West conquers you."

There are lots of primitive tribes out there who would disagree with you.

"Which ones?"

Dani-Papua New Guinea
Sentinalese-India
Shompen-India
Ayoreo-Bolivia
Asmat-Papua New Guinea

These are just a few...

"How does that actually alter the intrinsic value?"

You're approach the question in the way Marx did. There is no such thing as "intrinsic value." That's why marginal value is a thing. You may pay $6 for the first slice of Pizza, and maybe the second, but at some point, that next slice of Pizza is going to be worth less and less. The baker may continue to charge $6 per slice, but he is not going to sell any more Pizza. But, if he lowers the price, the marginal value of the pizza might be greater than the money spent to purchase it.

"A piece of pizza being worth zero to me, right now, since I just had lunch, doesn't make the pizza worth any less to somebody who is hungry."

But using your logic, that slice of Pizza would still be worth $6.

Even wonder why stores offer deals where you buy one object at full price and get the second at a discount?

"There's only a few places on earth that haven't been conquered by the West when the West wanted to conquer them, since the dawn of Capitalism."

The west?

Invasions and colonization pre-date capitalism by a thousand years. In fact, I would argue it was capitalism that led to decolonization.

"That's not true at all. For example, there's an entire subset of Americans who've been systematically victimized by everything from slavery to family destruction to suppressed wages to redlining."

You know someone who has been victimized by slavery? And "family destruction?" Like what the Germans did in WWII?

"As for explaining the monetary side of that equation, I always use The Twin Test: If one twin starts maxing out their savings at 20, and stops at 40, while the other twin starts at 40...how old will they be when one twin's savings catches up to the other?"

So, that goes back to the decision space. Assuming both twins earn the same amount of income, one twin chose to save, while the other chose to spend. Neither one necessarily made a bad decision, just a decision that was right at the time based on their own calculus. I save some, but I am far more of a spender. In my mind, that makes the most sense. Why be rich at 70, when I'm too old to do stuff?

"Now apply that theory to "old" money in the US, after 20 decades. It's one of the reasons the wealthiest keep getting a larger slice of the pie."

Except that "old money" is as much a myth as the welfare queen is. 70% of family fortunes for the ultra-wealthy are gone by the second generation. It's 90% for the third generation.

In fact, there is no permanent upper class. If you look at the richest people in the US, none of them came from wealth. What characterizes them all is a high level of intelligence, combined with the fortitude to take risks on innovative ventures.

"Just like ICE is deporting people for writing bad checks."

You go to jail for writing bad checks. You get deported for not being in the country legally.

"As in: killing two men clinging to the wreckage of a boat. That's also not justice."

I'm glad you brought that up, because this is what I do for a living.

Killing a distressed Seaman, or Seamen in this case, is unequivocally a war crime. Initial reporting was that Pete had ordered that all the people be killed.

That was walked back. The target was the ship. And if the commander's guidance was to "destroy" the ship, that meant rendering that object in such a way that it could not be reconstituted to perform its intended purpose. The people on the boat would have been collateral damage.

It's not much different than what we did in Syria. ISIS was collecting oil and driving it to Turkey to sell it. The coalition would target these trucks and destroy them. The drivers weren't the targets. It was the trucks.