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The top 5% still doesnt pay nearly a proportional amount to the middle class.
Are you just parroting manipulative propaganda you've foolishly believed or do you have any factual evidence to prove that? If you have evidence, post it.
Like it or not, there are poor people in our society. There have always been poor people, and there always will be poor people. Charging a poor person the same as a rich person for taxes does not make sense. The poorer person has to use a larger percentage of his income to survive. Charging the same percentage across the board puts poorer people at risk of NOT surviving. That's why EVERY society that institutesincome taxes uses a progressive tax system. That's why AMERICANS chose a progressive tax system. It's irrational to insist that someone earning $8100 a year pay the same percentage as someone earning $81 million a year.
There's a few dozen nations that apply a flat tax to earned income. Most folk would prefer not to live in any of these nations. Most have mafia controlled black markets for goods and services, any goods....any services.
In my opinion they can do more. They still hoard their money, which is just sad when there's so much suffering.
I'm not petitioning the government to take more of their money because they will just absorb it and misspend, but it would be nice if the billionaires and multimillionaires took care of things a bit more.
Nobody needs more than 10 million to last their entire lives, anyone who hangs onto more than that is just selfish. Oprah, Soros, Gates, Bloomberg are all selfish.
Wow, the upper 1% uses forum members who don't know how to Google to make posts in their defense? See, I told my fellow CEO's at Goldman-Sachs that over-paying incompetent help would be foolish. The upper 1% has an average income of $770,000 to $1.4 million depending on which sites the NSA is censoring at the moment when you do your search. If you came up with $200K, Edwin Snowden is either pulling your tail or else you did your Google search a long time ago in a distant galaxy and haven't bothered to update it since (It's SO hard to get decent help these days - why must we pay them even minimum wage?)
I really should be catching my corporate jet to the Caymans, but it IS the X-mas season...
Here: Make sure on the top of the screen it says:
~~~~~~~~GOOGLE SEARCH~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Don't be accidentally checking your FB page or your Twitter Account)
See that nice empty box about half way down the page? Type in the search terms "upper" and "1%" and "average income." Now hit the enter key. Now look at the resulting hits. Ignore the ones that are pre-1920's or mention drones. Read only the hits that are dated within the past 30 days (helps with all those mind numbing choices).
If you do a good job, I think I could send you on over to my neighbors who only make $200,000/year. So it's not being a servant. They'll still let you string all the outdoor Christmas lights if you ask nicely in Spanish.
There's a few dozen nations that apply a flat tax to earned income. Most folk would prefer not to live in any of these nations. Most have mafia controlled black markets for goods and services, any goods....any services.
I guess I'm a truist when it comes to defining a flat tax. Deductions, and maximum tax caps that create variations to me aren't a true flat tax. They are essentially modifications to a flat tax system to make it more progressive.
I have known a lot of people whose W2 says they paid X in income taxes, and then their tax return is for all of X, and a few hundred more. In some cases they get over a thousand more in their return then they paid in, so as far as income taxes go, they pay zero and receive a bonus.
I have known a lot of people whose W2 says they paid X in income taxes, and then their tax return is for all of X, and a few hundred more. In some cases they get over a thousand more in their return then they paid in, so as far as income taxes go, they pay zero and receive a bonus.
You know a LOT of those people. And I know very few.
Yes it does. Politicians, specifically Obama pandered to the lower class.
Yes, Obama and other Dems are very good at pandering to the vote wh*res, who fall for it without understanding that they're voting for their own economic oppression.
Quote:
Why did it work?
Which yields more votes? 50 people earning $20,000 each? Or 1 person earning $1,000,000?
When people realize what's going on, they'll realize why political policies keep so many people at low income levels in our country. Basically there are two reasons for that: votes (already explained above with the 50 to 1 example), and tax revenue under a progressive tax system.
When a government is over-reliant on the highest income earners for tax revenue, as is the U.S. because of our progressive tax system, it creates a perverse incentive to keep the income gap as wide as possible so that tax revenue is maximized. The more our country has to spend on social welfare programs, the more the government needs to keep the income gap as wide as possible in order to collect the taxes necessary to fund the growing welfare programs.
By supporting a 'soak the rich' mentality, the left, middle class, or whoever, is gullibly and willingly participating in their own economic oppression.
The Europeans want their social programs, but they're willing to pay for them. Left-leaning Americans want our country to have European-style social programs, but they want someone else to pay for them.
Notice, too, that the countries that have regressive tax systems also have far less income inequality. I've previously explained why our progressive tax system actually creates an incentive for the government to promote highly unequal incomes. The more the top 1% earns, the more tax revenue the government collects. More here: https://www.city-data.com/forum/28408475-post977.html
Economist Anatole Kaletsky states the same:
Quote:
Kaletsky argues that over-reliance on progressives taxes creates “a perverse incentive for governments to promote income inequality. If the solvency of the state and the ability to fund basic services for the poorest people in society depends on the rich getting even richer, it is tempting for even the most progressive politicians to support widening inequalities.”
Many Americans don't understand that very basic concept and therefore are firmly entrenched in demanding the U.S.'s progressive tax system soak the rich, which by its very nature depends on keeping the income gap as wide as possible.
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