I get people need help to get back on their feet but blaming the wealthy on being lucky/savvy/wise with their life choices and finances doesn't make them bad guys in this world because they get the occasional break to invest more and create more.
This is coming from a guy who has wired houses for people worth a half billion, believe me, we are all fucking peasants. But it isn't an excuse to get butt hurt about it. As my mom.always said. Put on your big girl britches and deal with it.
While I agree with you in many ways- and many people literally cannot understand money because they’ve never had it (just as those who have never been truly poor can’t understand it,) So people don’t get how $100k,200k or more a year could be not a lot of money. They’ve never been in a room where the poor guy everyone avoids is the guy with $5 million dollars. So yeah, lots of people like to blame the wealthy, or think that all the worlds problems could be solved by them. That said- we decide who gets wealthy. More specifically- the wealthy do. Those who don’t play ball rarely get to stay in the club, and counter to your argument we don’t have an economy where luck or skill or hard work equate to wealth. It’s most often knowing the rules and being skillful at manipulating them. That’s a big part of why we face many of the issues we do, because so much is vapor industry, not producing anything yet making some people very rich. The wealthy creating more jobs is another mixed one....
.... few people become rich spending more than they have to. With many making more money a year than most of their work force combined. There is a difference between giving someone somehing to do and putting someone to useful work, and a job is just that, a job. If you aren’t paid enough to participate meaningfully in the economy, you’re being used as a drone more or less. So yes, many wealthy people work hard and are savvy. And yes, in principal the idea to just take from someone else and give it away goes against every notion of being fair or of personal property. That said, we created the systems that allow people to get that wealthy, subsidized and facilitated them. It isn’t unfair to ask that they pay their fair share. If you live somewhere that allows you to make billions of dollars a year, asking you to give back proportionally to your good fortune isn’t ridiculous. Your businesses trucks travel these roads as do your workers. Your goods are protected and your finances...
... assured by this government. I’m so many ways you owe your success wether that’s $40k a year or $400k+ to the place and time you found it, so asking people to give back to that isn’t too much. The more you make, the more you are relying on that infrastructure. The top owners of Walmart- how many 18 wheelers do they put over our roads every day? More than I do. So they are wearing out roads and making money off it. Someone else is shopping at Walmart. Those trucks benefit them. So they pay Walmart a little money for that, and they pay a little in taxes for their share of that, Walmart investors make lots of money off that and since they carry a bigger reward and responsibility for that wear, shouldn’t they carry a bigger burden for upkeep?
You’ve got roommates.You share an internet connection. The bill depends on the data you use. Most of you browse the net or stream once in awhile- but Jane runs a file sharing business out of the apartment. She uses more data than all of you combined. You all use Hanes site to share your files sure- and you pay her like any other customer. So when the bill for the internet comes do you all split the bill equally because what she’s doing is a service you use, or do you feel that she’s the one making money and driving up the bill, so she needs to pay a little more than the rest of you?
"Tax cuts for the wealthy" is a red herring buzzword. Tell me how doubling the standard deduction specifically targets rich people and excludes middle class people. It's a trick to get you to believe you don't want more of your own money in your own pocket.
You are correct that “tax cuts for the wealthy” is a buzzword. Doubling the standard deduction would help most people. However it’s not so simple. She’d a tear for the accountants and lawyers, the real estate agents and NPO’s- because doubling the standard deduction means that they may likely see a big hit. As a pro and con it also means less itemizing. Unless your itemized deductions were over double the standard deduction, most people would no longer have incentive to itemize taxes. That feeds into services and goods that either help prepare itemized returns, or often rely on their status as tax deductible to incentivize people. It also means that married couples could shield about $25 default- giving them an even greater advantage over the unmarried in home making. There’s even more to it, depending on individual tax and employment status, lifestyle etc- doubling the deduction could really help or hurt a lot of people. It would simplify taxes for most but....
Doubling the standard deduction is only one of many proposed tax changes. The nefarious proposal of sinaltaniously removing the AMT should give some credence to “tax cuts for the wealthy.” AMT was dreamed up to close many loopholes. The wealthy can VASTLY reduce their income on paper- someone who owns multiple multi million dollar properties, rides and flies in private luxury, etc. can have almost no tax burden. An example: You can dump almost $19k a year before tax in a 401. If you make $160,000 a year for example- that would lower your tax burden by almost 10% and you keep the money. But it doesn’t stop there. Using medical deductions, writing off stock losses or business expenses, properties, and through is easy of NPO’s and other tax shelters, a person who makes big bucks can report almost no income by using pre tax deductions to shield it, then following up with deductions and balancing their ledger. With no AMT, you can use pre tax shelters to lower your income to a point...
... then take a double sized standard deduction and make out like a bandit. There are many more proposed changes to tax law right now, and on their own most aren’t outrageous, although as stated above- many will effect different people for better or worse. Mortgage debt as a write off is being considered to be removed. That means that the people who need mortals most will no longer be able to afford property, and people who have the capital that they wouldn’t need to take on a mortgage let alone write one off remain unaffected. That with other proposed changes means that people looking for property in markets with higher hone costs will have an even harder time affordin got unless they were already well off enough to do so easily. Also on the chopping block is the deduction of state taxes from federal. In places like New York, as one of my favorite funsubbers like to point out- taxes are insane. Not being able to write off that hit against federal taxes can greatly increase their taxes
Ummmm.... the money... is the reward. You are rewarded with money that you earned doing well. Your business, or whatever it is that allows you to do so well uses public roads and infrastructure. It exists because the public trust has provided the means and environment, security, stability, and opportunities for it to do so. You owe some portion of your success to that public trust and taxes are how you give back into the system that allowed you to succeed. The more business you are doing, the more you are relying on that public trust, hence the greater the debt you owe. The system of reward and incentive is still in place. If you make $500k a year and I tax you 40%, you make $300k which is still pretty damn good. If you want to take home $500, you have incentive to work harder. That’s capitalism. The nature of capitalism is to inspire innovation and improvement and work, not to say that once you reach a certain point you can quit trying because you’re set for life.
Even better when they call it a scientific fact.