alt Hacker NewsThe top 1% already pays more than 40% of all federal income tax at a 26.09% effective rate. The bottom 50% has an effective rate of 3.7% and contributes only 3% of all tax revenues.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share?
Replies
If we limited individual wealth to $999 million--just outright capped it, and enforced that--it would not impact these people in the slightest.
What it would impact is how easily these people could influence the political system and get themselves out of trouble.
At $400 billion net worth, Elon Musk could retire one hundred thousand times. He literally wrote multi-million dollar checks to various politicians and ran an illegal pay-for-votes scheme in Pennsylvania. And he'll face zero consequences for it.
Top 1% of the US holds 30% of the country's wealth
Bottom 50% only 2% of wealth
50% of the economy my ass, these takes don't even pass basic accounting logic these days
> How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share?
Someone with $1b of assets gets far more value from a modern stable western society than someone with $10k of assets
> How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share?
How exactly do you propose that they pay their fair share when they literally do not have the money or assets to do so? Are you proposing modern day slavery? Perhaps people selling their family? I'm curious what happens if you take this line of thought to it's actual conclusion.
I did a bit of mild googling.
1% of Americans control 30% of the wealth of the nation, and apparently 12% of property.
It's more than reasonable that people with that much wealth to their name pay the vast majority of the taxes, as it used to be.
From a nation building perspective, there's no reason to allow a couple hundred people to wield 52,000,000,000,000$ worth of assets. It means the economy has gotten far too clumpy and needs some redistribution. This isn't even really all that anti-capitalist. Capitalism can't survive long term without budding up against a government that regulates it.
> income tax
They don't get money through income! They get most of it through capital gains or unrealized capital gains which are taxed at special low rates and zero rates respectively.
It's transparently self-serving and completely indefensible -- though I'm sure you'll try.