That’s a pretty slanted analysis. If everyone started off on a level playing field, it would be easy to attribute wealth and success to their own ideas, initiative, and hard work. Everyone doesn’t, however. Government often isn’t the answer to any social problem, but if the government can ameliorate the effects of absolute destitution as well as provide some additional avenues of opportunity so that individuals can work hard to succeed (i.e. student loans, funds for schools and after-school programs, adult training), is that really so horrible? So long as there is money, there will be poor people. But if for no other reason than to prevent a peasant uprising/revolt every few decades, it’s in both the people’s interest and the government’s interest to try to prevent absolute extremes in poverty from developing or continuing.
If this was the case, then there shouldn’t be any opposition from conservatives to inheritance taxes. The people that worked hard for their money get to die with it, but their children (who didn’t have to work hard for it) won’t simply be wholly rewarded for their accident of birth. They would still get a large portion of the inheritance, but not all of it.
I’d like to point out, for the record, I’ve got nothing against wealthy people or their place in society.
I occasionally work with an individual who is, I’m pretty sure, a billionaire. He’s in venture capital. He has three houses in three states. He has a plane. He has a Bentley. He’s a very nice, down to earth guy who likes his privacy and doesn’t try to wave around flashy things to show off his wealth. If you saw him at a supermarket, you’d think he was your average middle-american, not someone who could buy the skin off your body and sell it back to you at a profit.
And this is the relevant thing: he spends a ton of money. Being wealthy is expensive. The pools are serviced often, his house is cleaned, his cars are washed and serviced. His expenditures on household groceries is several thousand dollars per month. The guy’s economic footprint is probably a thousand times larger than any other person’s. Him simply existing keeps the economy stimulated. I do not begrudge him his wealth, he clearly earned it with hard work and business acumen.
So, the wealthy needn’t be maligned on principle. They’re not all evil. They’re only mostly evil.
This guy’s former business partner, a man with equivalent wealth, would probably have no problem kicking a crippled war veteran widow from her house if it meant he could earn a small profit.
Just to expand a little, suppose a thousand people save that $100 with the bank. That bank now has $100K it can use to fund that great new business idea someone has. Or lend to someone as a mortgage.
Question, then: how often do the wealthy use American banks that deal with the public (especially those of middle to lower tax brackets) in that way? It seems to me they wouldn’t, especially given the tax shelters offshore and the low FDIC limits.
There less than 1000 billionares in the world. He is most likely a mere multi-millionare.
The actual reason is that Joe the Plumber believes that his plumbing business will put him in the $200,000+ a year income range that would be affected by tax cuts for the rich. Whether that is realistic is debatable.
Neither is an example of supply-side or “trickle down” economics.
You’re probably right. Wikipedia apparently keeps a list of all the billionaires in the country. Though, it starts at over $2 billion. Surely some dude has greater than $999m and less than $2b. Anyway, for a completely subjective scale of his throw-around money, the internet says he spent $26,000 on personal political contributions in 2008.
The standard of living that you would enjoy were you dropped naked in the wilderness is what you are worth. Every incremental increase in your standard of living over that is a benefit that accrues to you as a result of living in society with the rest of us. We expect you to pay taxes on the benefit you derive.
Wealthy people benefit disproportionately from living in society. Military spending, police protection, fire departments, infrastructure spending, government funded research, even educational institutions benefit the rich more.
Even the money in your pocket only has value because we as a society have agreed to pretend that it does. Try a barter economy and see how well you do. A subsistance farmer can get by on barter, how about an investment banker? How do you store $100 million worth of goods?
Anytime you want to try living without us, go ahead. I don’t know who is John Galt, but I know he’s not you.
I think you have a strange idea of how money works. They use whatever bank suits them at the time. You can’t exactly withdraw from your Cayman account using an ATM so you use Chase, or Bank of New York. I used to have a Bank of New York account and someone there finally explained to me that it’s a rich person’s bank. It was kind of odd it wasn’t even in an offensive way more like, “You’re getting reamed for charges because this bank is for people with millions.”
Of course rich people use the same banks that you or I do. Why wouldn’t they?
This sort of mentality is what I have always seen as what separates the rich from the poor. The wealthy have currency, the poor have money. Money is a tangible and concrete thing with a more or less fixed value. Currency on the other hand is a mass or resources that one can use to dynamically leverage value. All of the assumptions about rich people putting things in savings or in offshore accounts miss the point of thinking of dollars as currency rather than as money. When rich people have money it’s always at work except for the small amount that they keep liquid, which is of course put into a savings account and earns interest, but a savings account isn’t useful for that size of money. Why? Because FDIC only insures up to $ 100,000.
Most rich people keep their money in stocks and bonds or illiquid property like real estate. Sure they have savings accounts but it’s not the bulk of their amassed wealth.
A coworker and I were talking yesterday, comparing notes, about our education 30 years ago about fiscal matters. He’s from a well-to do family, went to a private school, and didn’t get much of an education on practical fiscal matters, figures it was just left to the family to do it. He didn’t need to, as his Dad had taken care of it. I went to public school, child of a University professor with no money to spare, and there wasn’t any school education there about practical fiscal matters, even balancing a checkbook. Perhaps there is nowadays.
But, if not; if this is truly the American Dream, why aren’t the basic principles to participate in and strengthen that system taught to every child as basic education? Teach every citizen how to invest and prosper, with specific information on wise market tactics. Can’t see any downside in this. Why isn’t this a basic teaching in our schools?
Back to the OP…there are a number of reasons. If I’m busting my butt to make $500,000 a year then what I create adds to the total wealth of the country. If there’s more wealth then there’s more for everyone. If you tell me that I can’t keep much more than $250,000 then I don’t work so hard. Let’s say I’m a surgeon and I do knee replacements or breast implants. Or I manufacture widgets. Or tutor kids in math. I’ll just do less work. And that impacts everyone.
Second, and this has been mentioned before, I have to do something with that money. In my own case, I’m in a nice level of middle class. Since September I’ve done my best to earn a lot and spend a lot. It seems to be the right thing to do. If things calm down or I start to feel resented because I spend money then even I will work less and spend less.
Third, wealthy people are mobile. They can go elsewhere. And they do. I don’t have the time to find the cites right now, but I’ve read recently that there are lots of examples of states raising taxes on the wealthy and finding that there are suddenly less wealthy people paying taxes…and buying stuff.
Finally, some people have ethics. Just as a rich guy can preach socialism, why can’t a working class guy believe in and live small government?
Because you are taught to your social station. Also, if you are not then it is likely that as in the case of your friend he is the beginning of the decline of family wealth unless he eventually learned it on his own.
Because society needs toilet cleaners. You can’t have a society consisting entirely of capital owners - someone’s gotta do the menial work.
This is the fallacy of Joe the Plumber; they’ve been sold a recipe. its ingredients:
*a tablespoon of a throwaway phrase “personal responsibility”
*a pinch of “government inefficiency, private efficiency”
*a few social cleavages that play very will with work-effort prejudices
*a minimizing of the notion of the benefits that government provides to everyone, especially *those farther away from the noble savage baseline.
*and lastly a dash of a little faith based crap like “charity” that seeks to give help to those only deemed worthy in the eyes of the donor, so they can feel a little more powerful than the person they’re helping out
and you’ve got the foundations of a party ripe to exploit working class people for the benefit of the wealthy.
If you’re a doctor, and are just in it for the money, then you shouldn’t be a doctor.
You assume that people will do the least they can to make the most they can. That may be true iin your case, but there are plenty of people who see their jobs as ‘callings’, or just really enjoy what they do. I frequently put in more time than I have to, just because I like playing with data and because, even though I could pick up where I left off the next day, I like to finish things. There are loads of people like that. Higher taxes does not necessarily equal lower productivity.
Well, it makes sense. People want the greatest possible reward for the smallest possible effort. What makes it more complicated is that everyone has their own personal definition of ‘reward’ and ‘effort.’
Yes yes, but look… people don’t have to save up for 2 years to buy a fridge. Clearly the availability of cheap fridges is due to pro-wealthy tax policies. That’s progress you can believe in!