Quote:
Originally Posted by bl4h
when i look at someone like bill gates, who could easily give me a million bucks and make my life perfect. i dont think this is some greedy scumbag as a lot of people have. I think, i should have put more effort into making his kind of money. I dont have the passion to do it, so i wont do it and i accept that. I understand that i may not even have the ability, the genes, the intellectual ability to do what he did. I also look at the impact this guys product has had on society which I would think is worth more money than he actually has. regular people are just a bunch of cave men, out for their own. if youre not making money, youre not doing whats needed. youre not doing whats good, or wanted by society. its as simple as that. I just dont understand how most people think theyre owed something just for existing
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That is a false narrative propped up by Fox News. I don't know a single person who feels Bill Gates or Steve Jobs were overpaid. I don't know anyone who feels they are 'entitled' to be wealthy. I don't know anyone who expects to be handed a private jet or a luxury box at a football game.
Now let's look at the much more realistic narrative. A kid born to a couple poor parents is likely raised by one or neither of them while they both work full time jobs. He goes to a subpar public school in a poor community and puts up with gang violence and a culture of educational apathy. If he wants to work hard and get a job, there likely are few or none available for him anywhere within his potential commuting distance. If he has the grades to get into college he has no life experience to prepare him for it, no support system to help him through it, no financial cushion and is immediately saddled with more student debt than he can possibly repay. Now he graduates into the worst job market in decades and finds he is unable to get a job that pays more than his basic living expenses cost. His chances of eventually climbing slightly out of that are very small... his chances of climbing far out of that are even smaller. Conversely, there are plenty of people in this country who have never worked a single day in their lives. They are living on trust fund accounts and pay 0 taxes on their income because it is 'invested' in tax free assets or schemes designed to utilize loopholes. 100 Million dollars in US Treasury bonds goes quite a long way... generation after generation.
The idea that all people who are poor are the same or that all people who are wealthy are the same is ridiculous. Hard working rich people and hard working poor people have much more in common with each other than they have in common with the small fraction of people who are idle rich or idle poor. Now, does that mean the hard working poor kid should be given a luxury condo for nothing, or that the wealthy trustfunder should have their luxury condo taken away? No. And I don't know a single person who believes that would make any sense. However, it does mean we ought to provide *basic* subsistence level services for poor people and we should have a minimum tax (the Warren Buffet rule) for people who have been opting out of the tax system for generations already or using loopholes like carried interest to avoid their tax liabilities.
Put simply, not a single person in the United States should be hungry. We subsidize the food industry and they rake in billions of dollars in profits while many people are unable to get access to nutritious food. It would cost virtually zero to make canned vegetables available for free to poor people. Nobody should be saddled with so much student debt that they can't climb out of the hole in a world where most are told without a college degree they don't qualify to be interviewed. Nobody should be without basic healthcare including wellness visits, prenatal care and similarly vital but non-emergent care.
We live in a country that produces much more than it requires. We ought to make the bare minimums free for people who earn no more than that. And we ought to be happy when a wealthy person does something stupendous or when a poor person has a roof over their head. Poor people need wealthy people and contrary to some views, wealthy people need poor people. When that symbiosis is working well the middle class expands, when it is broken the middle class contracts.
Bill Gates should be able to make a Trillion dollars and Larry Elison should continue being able to buy entire Hawaiian islands. Nobody I know is against that and nobody I know thinks they are 'entitled' to anything more than basic subsistence for free. Whether society benefits more from a trustfunder getting another $6,000 handbag with tax free 'investment income' or by feeding a few thousand kids fresh vegetables is more along the lines of what needs to be addressed.
The simple answer is a National Sales Tax. Cut the income tax significantly (down to 10 or 12%) and make it a flat rate on all income earned over $50,000 - paid exactly the same by everyone. Then add a 2-3% sales tax on all purchases with a short list of excluded items (basic food, basic clothing, heating oil, etc etc). It makes much more sense to tax what people buy than what they earn. The tax would also hit those who are in a position to spend, rather than those trying to save.
