Is the Purpose of Taxes to Raise Revenue or Punish the Rich?

When the uber rich donate their money, which is what usually happens to much of it, it often goes to other countries.

Why not tax them at a much higher rate and keep that money here? Give that money back to the people who make it possible in the first place - the people working their butts off for scant wages in jobs that suck.

How much of your money has gone to Bill Gates? He has sure gotten a lot of mine! And it's not like I really had a choice either.

 

It has nothing to do with how "hard" you work. The wealthy risk capital. If they succeed, they enjoy the rewards and provide jobs for hundreds if not thousands. If they fail, they lose their capital. There is working harder and then there is working smarter.

 

I am an entrepreneur. I know all about risk. But unlike Trump, for example, I didn't have a rich dad.

Unlike Gates, I didn't happen to be in just the right place at just the right time with just the right idea and a willingness to steal. I got an education, worked my ass off, took risks, and made money. But I am worth a tiny fraction of someone like Gates. It has nothing to do with earning wealth. It has a lot more to do with luck and timing.

I was once wiped out by a 500 year flood. Probably cost me a fortune - it wiped out a new venture just getting off the ground. Does that mean I am not worthy? OR was it just bad luck?

When a young wife accidently gets pregnant and the husband has to drop out of college and get a regular job, and works his life away for nominal wages in order to support a family, is he not worthy?

 

Why complain about the rich using legal methods to pay less taxes. If you want them to pay more then you will need to illiminate all loopholes in the tax code. Stop blaming rich people for all the problems in the world. We are the ones who elect the people in Congress and the Senate who make the laws so if you think things are not fair then we only have ourselves to blame. If you dont vote then you are to blame.

 

The total wealth of the US is about 118 trillion. That means that 118,000 people can have 1 billion dollars each. And that's it. That's all the wealth in the country.

118,000 out of 285 million is 0.04% of the population.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerrya...cas-richest-people/?ss=forbes400#684a12647517

With an average of 6 billion each, we only have enough wealth for a little over 19,000 people - the size of a small town.

 

I'd like to be a star player on the PGA tour. Boo hoo.

 

Do you mean the wealth that produced the middle class? That wealth?
Do you know what you get when you take all the wealth from the top and give it to the middle? A country with very rich politicians and a select few toadies and a populace of low to lower middle class.

 

I guess a scant few might see it as punishment. I think the majority just believe in progressive taxation, and think that they wish they were in such a tax bracket to have to pay that amount in taxes. But of course, many of the really rich people are paying a lower rate than middle, middle class, and upper middle class taxpayers due to these rich people not actually working for their income, but earning it by owning investments which are taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rates. This is how Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Before the hollowing out of our economy, our middle class paid more of the total tax revenues than the rich. But as those middle class jobs were sent to slave labor wages in poverty stricken nations like china, due to being able to exploit poor nations with a billion poor, the income pie in America saw the rich getting more of it, to the point that they end up paying more taxes than what is left of the middle class. For you tax the money where it ends up.

So to see taxes paid by the rich as punishment, is what some on the right dream up, a way to view it which makes the non elites look bad. There is a loathing of the non elites, by some on the right, who are also the same people who do not believe essential jobs that people have to do deserve a living wage. So if you can get some dirt poor farmer in china or Vietnam to do that same work for cents on the dollar, they think all such work does not deserve living wages. It really is a peculiar view to have, but as I said, some on the right, and even now the left loath these blue collar workers. It seems only those that are rich deserve their income. LOL.

We saw the rise of the largest middle class in world history here in the US simply by following what Henry Ford thought. He thought that his workers should be paid enough to buy the cars they were making. This received great resistance from the rich industrialists who wanted to keep more of the income pie created by their workers, and didn't think their own workers deserved a living wage. So today some on the right think just like these greedy rich men. But our middle class was created, its size, by paying blue collar workers a living wage. And that worked out great, until a change happened, and the FDR model was dismantled, once again sending the income to the top, creating an ever worse disparity in income than seen in the Gilded Age. This is the economic model we now have once again, and just look at what it caused. More people on welfare than ever before, and a threat to have only a small middle class, limited to professionals.

Given what has been allowed to happen to the American worker, this elite scheme of globalization, our tax rates on the rich should be 50 percent again, just to address the damage of elite greed upon the working American. That is, if globalization is not reversed which will suck eventually all of the non elite wealth out of the People, into the pockets of such a few rich elites.

 

No you have what we had here back in the 50s - 80s when the wealth wasn't so highly concentrated at the top. Your post is ludicrous.

 

So you have no intelligent response. That's what I expected.

So tell me this: we have enough wealth for 19,000 people to have an average of 6 billion each. How many should we allow? Do we allow 19,000 if that's what it comes to; rather than admitting that capitalism results in an unacceptable distribution of wealth?.

So again, a simple question. How many 6x billionaires is acceptable? We have enough wealth for 19,000. Then they would have it all.

 

Doesn't matter. You're mouthing their philosophy

 

I'd like to think I'm espousing a simple philosophy of fairness. Should Bill Gates pay more for milk at the grocery store than me? Of course not. So why should he pay a higher percentage in taxes?

 

I disagree that capitalism results in an unacceptable distribution of wealth. Rather, it is a perfect analog to the human species. The strongest, smartest, cleverest, best-looking, bravest get the best results, get to mate with the most desirable mates, and generally have more success in life than those less gifted.

So you see, my PGA analogy is perfect. Unless you lack imagination and can only see the world in some pedantic binary.

 

That's a ridiculous trolling rant. Can't you think more clearly and honestly than that?

 

Nobody wants to punish anybody.

But let's talk about the threat this is to the economy. The middle class is shrinking. It is slowly migrating to the lower class. The country is being gradually divided into the obscenely rich and the pathetically poor. The changes taking place are clear but there is still time to correct it. In the meantime, with the historically low taxation of the rich, there is insufficient revenue to fund infrastructure and other needs. So the establishment answer is to cut or eliminate pensions, minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, the EPA, and anything else that benefits the 90% of us. The wealth accumulating at the top is creating an oligopoly. And it is making it possible for the ultra rich to buy government off. This threatens the destruction of any shred of democracy we may have left.

I know many on the right will claim none of this is true. They have to. But if this worries anyone, then what can be done about it, -assuming it's possible to get a government in place that will act to correct it.

Anybody got a clue?

Right. That will keep it all as it is, and doing what it's doing. The rich will get richer, bringing about everything I listed above, with no solution in sight. We need to go back to doing what was done when these conditions were not developing. And guess what that is.

 

Raise revenue. But doing so requires focusing on the people who have money. In order to have a "fair" tax system, the wealthy have to pay an amount that effects them the same way as the middle class when they pay their amount.

 

Maybe, maybe not, but this thread is five years old and he was banned almost as long ago.

 

So should the wealthy also have to pay more for a gallon of milk? By your calculus, Bill Gates should pay about $1.4M for the same milk that a single mother of three pays $4.29 for.

 

Well milk isn't a mandatory payment to allow the government to function and fulfill its purpose so no. Stupid comparison.

 

Clearly you are not following the discussion.

 

Two minor points. Henry Ford didn't reach his dream by paying workers a lot more; he was referring to getting the price of his cars down.
As a general rule, but not always, lowering taxes on everyone including the "rich" 1) increases government revenue, and 2) increases the stature of everyone.

 

Ludicrous, possibly; True, absolutely.
There may have been a very few that actually paid a 92 % tax rate but virtually all did not even come close.

 

What should be the maximum that anyone is allowed to earn from all sources of income? What is the maximum wealth that anyone should be allowed to hold?
Remember when they tried to hit the rich by imposing a big tax on yachts? Hundreds of boat builders lost their jobs.

 

Are you telling me he might not reply to my post?
Pretty funny! Maybe I should remember to check dates!

 

Ah! So then it worked! Good. It could work again. The high top bracket stopped them from even trying to take that much income, so they ended up not paying much of that high tax. And that kept the income disparity low. And a high estate tax kept the wealth disparity low. Great! Let's do it again! We need it.