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Why taxing U.S. billionaires’ wealth will never work

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By Beverly Moran

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while the vast majority of working people are paying their fair share of them.

The reality in the U.S. is that the largest tax demographic, which comprises the poor and lower working class, pays zero in income taxes. This accounts for about 45-50% of the country, depending on the year. It’s only when we get into the fourth quintile that we start to find significant numbers who pay more than a thousand dollars yearly in income taxes.

The top quintile sees its income reduced by about 20 percent because of taxes. The bottom quintile sees its income increased by about 50 percent by means-tested transfers.

What counts as “fair” is up for debate, but the claim that most working class people are paying their fair share has trouble holding water because most aren’t paying any income taxes at all. Especially for families with children, it’s only when we reach the middle class that people become net tax payers instead of receivers.

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Atlas is not the right WIND of Marx at all.

Um, as a hyper-partisan extremist viewpoint of the world that would never actually come about, it's Atlas Shrugged is exactly the right-wing equivalent of Karl Marx. Your comment only shows you haven't read one, the other, or both of these.

I shrug at your disinterest.

You shrug at my lack of hyper-partisan extremism.

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Atlas is not the right WIND of Marx at all. It is showing that those that want to put down entrepreneurship and creation of what is good for the society and not to be spread around for those incapable of doing for themselves is absurd.

Xi in China is now killing freedom of growth and prosperity trying to distribute wealth and it will be his demise. He should hand out debit cards for his bank accounts.

I shrug at your disinterest.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Don't any of you billionaire haters read? Try reading Atlas Loss and other Rand novels.

I read Atlas Shrugged. It’s the right-wind version of Karl Marx. It’s an idea, but not one that would ever actually come about in the real world as described. But right-wingers will use it as justification when using the logical fallacy of “slippery slope” to push their ideals.

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Ah yes, Ayn Rand helped create a country where people don't give a crap about anyone except themselves, a country of continuous wars for resources, a country that will support brutal dictators if it's good for business, a place where healthcare is meted out to anyone but the poor and where kids have huge student debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Her entire personal life was a disastrous reflection of her failed ideas.

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I prefer capitalism. I love billionaires and wish them luck. The more money you have the more your life becomes a jail ... We need brilliant people to keep society running openly and to create jobs.

Who is John Galt. Don't any of you billionaire haters read? Try reading Atlas Loss and other Rand novels.

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But we have a situation where the very rich pay almost nothing at all by using loopholes while benefiting from the taxes paid by ordinary people.

This is such an exaggeration crap that the media continues to spin about the rich.

https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/who-are-the-rich-and-how-might-we-tax-them-more/

The rich generally pay more of their incomes in taxes than the rest of us. The top fifth of households got 54% of all income and paid 69% of federal taxes; the top 1% got 16% of the income and paid 25% of all federal taxes, according to the CBO. Some people argue that inequality is not as bad as some accounts suggest because they don’t take into account “transfer payments”—government benefits such as Social Security, food stamps, and the like—that are designed to help lower-income folks more than upper-income folks. Still, as the chart here shows, even after accounting for all federal tax and benefit programs, incomes of the top 20% rose faster than those of the rest of the population. And the after-tax-and-transfers income of the top 1% rose by 226% between 1979 and 2016, nearly five times faster than the incomes of people in the middle of the income distribution

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They were told not to bite the hand that feeds them

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Well, I have been saying this for over 30 years, it will never work. This is a lost endeavor for the DNC they will never get money from the wealthiest people, just won’t happen, not to the extent they want.

There is a truth that the higher you push taxes, the more they will seek to avoid them.

But we have a situation where the very rich pay almost nothing at all by using loopholes while benefiting from the taxes paid by ordinary people.

What surprises me is how some people who are not part of the ultra-rich still welcome this scenario, despite being the ones who suffer - a kind of cross between masochism and Stockholm syndrome.

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Why taxing U.S. billionaires’ wealth will never work

Prohibiting intoxicants like drugs and alcohol will never work

Private ownership of property is enshrined so banning indentured servitude and slavery will never work

Banning child labor and having children go to public school will never work

Arguing from an American constitutional perspective is why so many regressive policies injurious to the American polity are enshrined historically.

The alternative: Let's welcome neo feudalism and have the proles pay taxes to help the wealthy. They create all thses wonderful jobs!!!

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

This is a lost endeavor for the DNC they will never get money from the wealthiest people

They will get 0 (zero) percent? The US sounds like a tax haven. Don't pay any taxes in USA at all?

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Well, I have been saying this for over 30 years, it will never work. This is a lost endeavor for the DNC they will never get money from the wealthiest people, just won’t happen, not to the extent they want.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

The income tax is a direct tax and constitutional because of the 16th Amendment

Amendment. An interesting word that gets used a lot without pausing to think what it actually means.

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