So if you are a celebrity, you are being paid a market wage, and not off the backs of the common people that buy tickets to movies, concerts, sporting events, or are enticed into buying products that they don’t need that are promoted by said celebrities. These are the rich.
But the wealthy include managers and executives in corporations that are paid market wages for the services they provide to those corporations, that also employ lots of other people that are paid market wages for their services, but since the market wages of these laboring people are lower than those of the executives, these executives are considered wealthy, but not rich (as defined by the OP)
And for these reasons the wealthy should be taxed more than the rich?
If people have the ability to manage money successfully the barrier to entry is very small. Jeffrey Epstein started as an assistant to a floor trader and became a partner in four years. Warren Buffet started out as a salesman and was a millionaire in 11 years. Micheal Burry was a doctor who did investing at night and starting a fund that was managing 600 million after 4 years.
Jordan started with the hoop in his backyard. Those same roads and public transport are available to transport your fans. Those public airwaves and wires are available for you to broadcast your athletic feats. Those same ports, railroads, and roadways are available for you to import and sell a shoe with your name on it.
If you have not had the same success as Micheal Jordan it was not because he had access to a separate infrastructure but that he used the shared infrastructure in a more productive way.
There will always be slackers and moochers; this is part of human nature.
The key issue is what bothers you more?
That freeloaders get stuff, or that people who try to do the right things (and may make mistakes) still suffer?
From my experiences of 60 years wandering the Earth, I feel that republicans/conservatives are more bothered by the former. Democrats/Liberals, the latter.
It appears that you either have never invested or invested incompetently. If my investments only made 10% after 10 years I’d sure as hell find another investment advisor. I did not start with $10 million, alas, but I did start with a reasonable amount and they’ve made a lot more than that rate of return.
I’ve checked my monthly statement and found I’ve made more than my starting salary at Bell Labs many months. And what did I do for that money? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Do you think it takes above average intelligence to put money into an index fund and make a better return over 10 years than your example?
I know how tax brackets work- basically everyone’s taxed the same on each increment of income- Jerry Jones pays the same amount of tax on the first 50k of his income as someone who makes 51k, for example. The argument is about when it’s all said and done, and averaged out, not at each bracket.
I also think it’s a mistake to look at it in a way that implies that people with more money somehow derived more advantage from the taxes they paid than others have. That’s just flat out not true. I mean, I went to a private school for high school. I didn’t gain ANY benefit from the school tax my parents paid for those 4 years. And I didn’t gain any LESS benefit from the taxes paid to subsidize my college education at a state school than someone making three times my salary who went to the same school did- we got the same exact thing- a break of X amount per credit hour that was effectively subsidized by the taxpayers.
The only place that the “more to lose” notion comes into play is when public safety comes into play, and even there, it’s dubious. I mean, if my house burned down or was burgled, it’s more expensive than a low income one, but I’m also in a considerably better position to make those losses good, having some amount of financial reserves and insurance, which is not something people on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale have. Look at it this way, is it a bigger deal for a guy making $500k a year to have his million dollar mansion burn down, or for a guy making $40k have his $80k house burn down? Whose life is going to be MORE impacted if the fire department isn’t there to put out the fire?
The argument still comes down to the idea that rich people have more for the government to take without it causing them pain than poorer people do. All the rest of this is basically rationalization.
So, what are you going to do with the people whose paying jobs will now be done by those in government service? The WPA worked because there wasn’t private or state money to do those jobs, and there was a large pool of people available for them.
A freeloader is someone who intentionally does not work to get benefits. Our welfare system is not very generous, so I suspect there aren’t a lot of them around. Someone who can’t get a job because of health or mental issues is not a freeloader.
The rich may pay more than the working poor, but it hurts less. If you are making only enough to barely pay rent and feed a family, each dollar in taxes hurts a lot more than ten dollars for the guy who can hardly spend half his income. I’ve made enough in some years to pay higher taxes, and it didn’t hurt a bit.
So your position regarding Republican politicians must be:
[ul]
[li]None of them are effective (easily contradicted by recent history)[/li][li]They ascended to office by means other than appealing to the electorate (very believable)[/li][li]They ascended to office by some unmentioned way that is even more effective.[/li][/ul]
Assuming you don’t want to concede the first two points, please explain how Republicans are choosing the less-effective strategy that keeps getting them elected to office.
In that same speech, he said that he was surprised by how much money he had, and that people didn’t need to take a vow of poverty to help others. He was criticizing those people with lots of money that fight to avoid paying taxes or otherwise give back to their communities; that is different than having lots of money and helping people even while you are basking in success.
(Emphasis added)
Note that he is not saying that people shouldn’t have big houses, lots of food, or nice trips - he’s just saying that there are other ways to use your wealth that have a greater impact and value than yet another home, meal, or trip can provide.
It is hypocritical to criticize people for building a big house instead of giving the money to charity and then buying a big house instead of giving the money to charity.
Thanks. If accurate, then this means any idiot who inherits $10 million can pretty easily live a very comfortable lifestyle without doing any work at all. In my experience, there are indeed a significant number of trust-fund babies who live comfortable lives while doing very little that’s productive for society.
Of course he did, he very effectively used the infrastructure that HE DIDN’T BUILD* to earn lots and lots of money. He was way better at it than me, that’s for sure.
Do you have a point that doesn’t support that Obama quote? Because, as you noted so eloquently in your earlier post, Obama said “you didn’t build that” not “you had access to a separate infrastructure”. Do you have any information to suggest that Michael Jordan had any part in building the arena he played in, the roads and transit of Chicago, or the cargo transport infrastructure of our great nation?
*I also had little to no part in building any of the large infrastructure projects that allowed me to get an education and hold down a job.
Exactly. And in 1996, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown died in a plane crash in Croatia trying to get Billy’s dad a job at the factory there. Oh wait, no he didn’t. He died while trying to identify investment opportunities in the former Yugoslavia for wealthy Americans.
But remember, all of the federally-funded public/private research collaboration that takes place in American universities is published and then placed in public trust for equal benefit to all citizens. Oh wait, that’s not true either.
But of course, the FBI has equal interest in investigating all crimes. Oh wait, nope, you have to demonstrate a loss of at least $10,000 for the FBI to touch your cybercrime report.
You have to have some pretty sturdy blinders on to believe that services offered by the government are of equal benefit to everyone at all levels of society.
Then that argument relies on looking at raw numbers, rather than percentages. Each person pays the same percentage of their income in taxes, but not the same amount. I think we agree on that; the issue is whether this is fair.
Since the thread is about very wealthy people, I think your focus is too narrow. We aren’t talking about people who make $500 a year; we are talking about people earnings tens of millions. And when you get to that point, your wealth is nearly always the product of other people’s labor (as others have noted, even individual athletes and celebrities need other people to do their jobs in order for them to make their income) - thus, you are very reliant on the society that has ensured that those people are educated, healthy, and well adjusted before they come to you for work, on the streets, roads, and broadband that lets you do business, the laws and enforcement mechanisms that make your deals enforceable, et al. This is a dependency far above that of an individual who is earning a working wage while employed by another.
(And, more fundamentally, I disagree that you did not get any benefit from the taxes used to fund education while you went to a private school or attended a public university; education directly ties into being able to earn a living, which directly ties into abiding by laws and customs; you walked down the street and didn’t get robbed? Maybe your (parents) taxes towards education played a role).
I think the argument boils down to, ‘we need to have certain things paid for’ (with an acknowledgement that those ‘things’ are subject to debate), and therefore we need to figure out how to get the money, and the fairest system is to make everybody equally responsible for giving the same proportion as everybody else, with the understanding that people with more will, by virtue of how proportions work, give a larger absolute share.
And why is that fair? Because it treats people the same (I don’t agree that wealth should be categorized different for who inherit it and those who ‘earned’ it). And to the extent that people do pay a larger absolute number, they are doing so because they are more able to without having to make sacrifices, and because they have more vested in ensuring that the system they utilize remains functional.