Do you? What is the definition of "inheriting wealth"? Because from what I understand, if an individual grows a significant portion of their wealth from what they inherited, that would still be counted as "self made". If an individual inherited 2 million, wisely invested and 20 years down the line was worth 20 million, would that be considered "self made" because I would love 2 million in capital to invest in and so would 99% of Americans.
an old source but one that disputes the claim in bold https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/real-1-percent slightly newer but making a similar point https://www.financialsamurai.com/who-are-the-top-1-income-earners/ if you can find more accurate information about the "top 1%" I'd appreciate seeing it
The top 1% are not the influence peddlers who's voices are heard more in DC. That's more of the top .1%. Top 1% also includes people who earn $400,000 which is well within the range of high skilled proffesional and small business owners. I guess I'll ask you but unlike jcf, I doubt you'll answer sincerely. Do you think wealth should buy you more influence over our legislators?
apparently it is "open season on the rich." Excerpt: It is an astounding proposition that no one could have earned a billion honestly. Question to Prof. Reich: Does this apply to Oprah? Was her monopoly on herself illegitimate? Should it have been broken up . . . somehow? How about Paul McCartney, who also has a net worth north of $1 billion? Is his ownership of his songlist and recordings illegitimate or immoral? Which brings me to the subject of the wealth taxes that are suddenly popular with the left. Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposes an annual 2 percent wealth tax on everyone with assets over $50 million, which, she claims, would only affect about 75,000 American households, and would yield maybe $3 trillion dollars over a decade. (This, along with a new 70 percent marginal income tax rate starting at $10 million, which might bring in $7 trillion—both taxes still far from sufficient to fund the current spending wish list of the left.) Quite aside from the technical problems of imposing such an annual wealth tax (it would soon run into significant liquidity problems, which would affect underlying asset valuations, which would cascade in various negative ways into capital markets, at which point liberals will blame Wall Street all over again), does anyone really believe that these kind of taxes would remain limited to just the very rich? Since the left loves to point to the social democracies of Europe as their model nirvana, it is worth pointing out that their high income tax rates start at decidedly middle class levels. Denmark’s 60 percent top income tax rate starts at around $55,000 of income. Sweden’s is similar. What those social democracies know is that if you’re going to fund a lavish welfare state, you have to tax the middle class heavily, because that’s where the money is. There just aren’t enough rich people to loot to pay for all of the goodies. Don’t forget that Sweden, Denmark, and the other social democracies also soak the middle class with a 25 percent value added tax on just about all purchases—a tax so regressive that even our money-grubbing liberals won’t touch it with a ten-meter pole. Which is why the next question is: Why would any sentient human being believe that the left would limit higher income tax rates and a wealth tax on just the very very rich? The critics of the original income tax when it was proposed in 1913 said that it might someday reach ten percent on the highest incomes! We know how that worked out. If we ever get Sen. Warren’s wealth tax, you can be assured that it will very quickly be extended downward to anyone with a decently funded 401K. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/open-season-on-the-rich.php
I would appreciate it if you actually addressed my post instead of reading the first sentence and the last sentence of my post.
look. if we really cared about INEQUALITY, per se, we could accomplish that end by either of two means: One. Reduce the level of the haves to that of the have-nots. or Two. Elevate the level of the have-nots to get closer to the level of the haves. Typically we do not think that method One is fair or just. So typically we try to do some rough approximation of method Two. Only problem now (with method Two) is that not everyone is born into the same circumstances (i.e., "moral luck"), or with the same talents, skills, aptitudes, goals, dreams, fortitude, etc etc etc. Some are content to live like Thoreau and others want to be Donald Trump or Jeff Bezos. You have to allow for "variation within the species." Couple this latter realization with our basic ideas of fairness, justice, and desert. Desert is the idea that you get what you are owed. If you work hard, you should be compensated. If you don't work, you don't eat. Now in the modern welfare society we allow for the possibility that some people CANNOT work, and thus we provide them with a social parachute (which is probably not big enough, but at least it's there), to keep them alive. But that still does not negate the basic principle of earning your keep and deserving what you get as compensation. Is life fair? no, probably not. I wish I was born with the basketball skills of James Harden. Alas I was not. But I don't sit around the keyboard all day crying about how unfair life has been to me. (I do however find myself posting this gif an awful lot: go figure.) The point I'm trying to make here is a familiar one to political philosophers and ethicists . . . namely, we really do not seem to have a convincing justification for trying to eliminate something called "inequality" as a stand-alone political objective. There are ALWAYS constraining factors and other moral issues that override or trump our concern with inequality. Note that this does NOT make inequality irrelevant to our political discourse. It just means you cannot expect inequality alone as a political concept to do all the political policy heavy lifting. It appears to me that this is precisely what you are attempting to do here. I actually think you can make your argument fairly easily (and I would likely agree with it) if your argument was not so singularly and monomaniacally pre-occupied with the wealth of the "one percent." That resentment will never help you win your argument. You will need something far more specific than some thinly-disguised I-hate-the-rich rant. If you come up with that more nuanced argument, I will take it and you more seriously. that's a promise.
Crony capitalism and government for the rich. This is something both side dislike, or used to. There isn’t a level playing field, and tax is just an inefficient and seemingly unfair way to a larger problem of the increasing failure of exactly a none level playing field. Doing a wrong to correct a wrong if you will. In an ideal world, everyone is tax the same way, there isn’t any favorism and everyone has the same chance. In reality, those in power and with influence, make laws and put people in place for their advantage. I’m surprise this isn’t so obvious. But people generally would still be okay with this uneven playing field if they have a large enough of the pie to survive or thrive. This has been the trick that kept society going, but once in a while, the wealth get so concentrated and others are having a hard time getting by, it breaks. We are again approaching that point. What you think is envy is what people see as unfair. If you can step into the shoes of billionaire to see the unfairness from their point of view, you should be able to do the same for the other end—- but some people are so engulfed in their camp, the fears, the others are bad, they aren’t willing to do that. Edit: if interested, I would suggest reading The Captured Economy, a book written by two authors that are far apart from each other politically, but came to the same conclusion.
I hit the send button above before I even got started. please take a look at that post before dismissing the possibility of a "sincere discussion" with me http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php...s-and-other-news.293121/page-50#post-12228396
If you google it, you can find a lot of articles discussing same. However, the top ones are a few years stale. In 2012, Forbes' list of billionaires proclaimed that 70% of the billionaires were self-made. A different analysis determined that the number was closer to 60% for the very reason you site above, breaking it down between those born in the batter's box, and then the various bases. The net result of both analysis was that historically the number who are self made is rising. Here is an article from 2011 you may like (when occupy wall street was the rage): So just who are those top 1 percent of Americans that we’re all supposed to hate? If you listen to President Obama, the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, and much of the media, it’s obvious. They’re either “trust-fund babies” who inherited their money, or greedy bankers and hedge-fund managers. Certainly, they haven’t worked especially hard for their money. While the recession has thrown millions of Americans out of work, they’ve been getting even richer. Worse, they don’t even pay their fair share in taxes: Millionaires and billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. In reality, each of these stereotypes is wrong. Roughly 80 percent of millionaires in America are the first generation of their family to be rich. They didn’t inherit their wealth; they earned it. How? According to a recent survey of the top 1 percent of American earners, slightly less than 14 percent were involved in banking or finance. Roughly a third were entrepreneurs or managers of nonfinancial businesses. Nearly 16 percent were doctors or other medical professionals. Lawyers made up slightly more than 8 percent, and engineers, scientists and computer professionals another 6.6 percent. Sports and entertainment figures — the folks flying in on their private jets to express solidarity with Occupy Wall Street — composed almost 2 percent. By and large, the wealthy have worked hard for their money. NYU sociologist Dalton Conley says that “higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do.” Because so much of their income is tied up in investments, the recession has hit the rich especially hard. Much attention has been paid recently to a Congressional Budget Office study that showed incomes for the top 1 percent rose far faster from 1980 until 2007 than for the rest of us. But the nonpartisan Tax Foundation has found that since 2007, there has been a 39 percent decline in the number of American millionaires. Among the “super-rich,” the decline has been even sharper: The number of Americans earning more than $10 million a year has fallen by 55 percent. In fact, while in 2008 the top 1 percent earned 20 percent of all income here, that figure has declined to just 16 percent. Inequality in America is declining. As for not paying their fair share, the top 1 percent pay 36.7 percent of all federal income taxes. Because, as noted above, they earn just 16 percent of all income, that certainly seems like more than a fair share. Maybe Warren Buffett is paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, as he claims. But the comparison is misleading because Buffett’s income comes mostly from capital gains, which were already taxed at their origin through the corporate-income tax. Moreover, the Buffetts of the world are clearly an exception. Overall, the rich pay an effective tax rate (after all deductions and exemptions) of roughly 24 percent. For all taxpayers as a group, the average effective tax rate is about 11 percent. Beyond taxes, the rich also pay in terms of private charity. Households with more than $1 million in income donated more than $150 billion to charity last year, roughly half of all US charitable donations. Greedy? It hardly seems so. And let us not forget the fact that the rich provide the investment capital that funds ventures, creates jobs and spurs innovation. The money that the rich save and invest is the money that companies use to start or expand businesses, buy machinery and other physical capital and hire workers. It has become fashionable to ridicule the idea of the rich as “job creators,” but if the rich don’t create jobs, who will? How many workers have been hired recently by the poor? No doubt dishonest or unscrupulous businessmen have gotten rich by taking advantage of others. And few of us are likely to lose much sleep over the plight of the rich. But shouldn’t public policy be based on something more than class warfare, envy and stereotypes? https://nypost.com/2011/11/08/the-real-1-percent Edit: Woops. Os posted link to this same article already. My bad. Plus Cato Institute sounds better than the NY Post. @Os Trigonum
Actually companies take out massive investment loans to expand businesses and they only expand when demand is there. Corporations benefit far more greatly when the middle class spends more relative to the ultra wealthy spending more. If demand is there, no amount of overhead cost is going to stray massive corporations from investing hence investment loans as long as they see a return on investment. As long as the cash flow diagram shows return on investment within the next few years, corporations will take out investment loans to expand. The shortsightedness of the ultra wealthy is my largest concern. Their whispering to law makers with their increased influence mainly benefits their short term gains without any consideration of the long term future viability of their goals. It's what accelerates these massive boom and bust cycles in our economy.
Lots of arguing and finger-pointing... folks on one side of the political divide blaming the rich, people on the other side of the political divide claiming rich envy. Meanwhile, the disparity between the rich and middle class is growing. More and more people living paycheck to paycheck. And the people below middle class are struggling even to survive. All the while in the "richest country in the world." Hard to argue that the recent tax cuts didn't favor corporations and the richest Americans. So no surprise there is a growing move towards looking at dramatically increased tax levels to the very rich. And more and more people are thinking rich are bnot paying their fair share: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-support-warrens-ultramillionare-tax/ Of course, this isn't a new belief (Gallup tracks over time) but I think trump's tax cut has put the spotlight on how the wealthiest were helped while those below continue to struggle. Seems to me the people on the right should come up with a more compelling argument than "class envy". Seems to me both sides agree that the end goal should be more people improving their economic condition. And I think "trickle down" has been given enough of a chance. Someone has to come up with numbers that will be fair to the wealthy but more directly help those below. Otherwise the more drastic proposals like those that Warren and AOC are talking about will get more and more support.
The source of these massive investment loans varies (the source could be international -- say from China), but I think a major source of these loans is the savings and investments of those who accumulate capital. And when one calculates return on capital, one has to figure in the cost of capital. So, if there is less money available to borrow (due to less accumulation of capital), certain investments that would otherwise be beneficial just won't happen. During the collapse, the Government tried to infuse money into the system for this very reason and held interest rates down to promote the economy. If we adopt a tax policy that tightens the money supply but results in more TV's being purchased (for example), I'm not sure that is the optimal solution.
A graph that indicates that most people would be in favor of other people pay more to solve their problems is not very surprising. If it is meant just to demonstrate public sentiment, I get it. If it is somehow meant to show justification for taxing the wealthy more or that economically it would result in a better overall economy, it falls short (not saying that is your purpose in posting it)
This little girl is going to hand Republicans elections if she is ever nominated. She may already have done it with her New Green Deal. Is she a saboteur?
