I know this isn’t the @KKmama thread. But I hope you accept @busdriver11 generous offer for as your blizzard hazard pay. If anyone went above and beyond, it was you.
Yea are an inspiration @kkmama. That patient was so fortunate to have you during the scary blizzard.
One reason why so many hard working and frugal people are struggling so much is … “US wealth inequality - top 0.1% worth as much as the bottom 90%”. I guess we need to elect Bernie Sanders to solve this problem a little??
My medical insurance is very good now – most visits and procedures only cost co-pays. But reading many posts here with such high medical costs, makes me rethink my retirement plan … maybe I will just work until I drop dead 
Sure, that will fix the problem, dadofs. If only we can find a way to take money from the top 0.1%, the bottom 90% won’t have to struggle so much, because wealth is finite, there is only so much of it? And if the top 0.1% have too much of it, they are obviously taking it from everybody else, right? Just confiscate that money and give it to the government, and that will fix it all. It’s not like laws have to go through the congress, and that either side is going to anger their top donors by wealth confiscation. 8-|
Or maybe we could just get together and support an uncomplicated tax code, taxing all income in the same fashion, with no special treatment. However, I doubt that would actually solve much for the middle class. I have no understanding of why “wealth inequality” has anything to do with the struggling of the middle class. Let’s figure out ways to improve the lives of people who are having a hard time paying the bills because their salary is stagnant and the cost of living is increasing, but blaming it on people who are accruing more assets is nothing but class warfare. It’s not honest, and it doesn’t solve the problem.
@busdriver11, you do realize that 6 people have the same amount as wealth as 90 million people. It’s not that hard to take some of that wealth away and spread it around.
You can fit 6 people in my dining room. 90 million people…I don’t think so. 
62 people, 62 people have the same wealth as half the world. Half the world. There are 62 people shopping in the nearest grocery store at 7:00PM
One tenth of one percent of Americans is over 300,000 people. There are a lot of assets among those 300,000 people.
“@busdriver11, you do realize that 6 people have the same amount as wealth as 90 million people. It’s not that hard to take some of that wealth away and spread it around.”
So how do you take that wealth away? Are we going to storm Warren Buffett and Bill Gate’s house, confiscate everything they have, do away with them, and give that money to many of those 90 million people? Think they’re actually giving quite a bit of it away already, actually. What’s the plan? How do you do that?
You change the tax laws. You increase the minimum wage. There is a reason those 6 are so wealthy.
So you change the tax laws, which is actually what I suggested. All income treated equally, as income. No more $1 salaries and 200 million in stock options. But I don’t think, at this point, for those six people that it would even make a dent. They are already tremendously wealthy, they will always be able to structure their income to zero, or they could retire right now as mega billionaires. Changing the tax laws will do nothing to those people.
And for the rest of the extremely wealthy people, the 62 people you talk about, changing the tax laws will change nothing for them either. They will stop producing if you tax away most of their income, or restructure a way so it isn’t taxed. Same with the 300,000 people. Why are you talking about assets on one hand, and your solution is changing tax policy? Unless your tax policy is to confiscate assets.
There are other taxes besides income taxes.
This idea that its all or none, or you have to take everything to accomplish something is wrong.
You’re wrong about the tax laws. There is a reason there are so many lobbyists.
I’m going to sleep now.
I just want specifics. It sounds like you are talking about personal property tax, or tax on net worth. When you talk about how many assets people have, and how many people could be provided for with that money, it sounds like confiscation. You might like to call it a special sort of tax to make it sound better, but it sounds like government confiscation. What, specifically, are you proposing?
Okay then, have a good sleep.
I would like to help make things better for people, but I am philosophically against taking away assets from people because they have “too much”. Taxation of income is a completely different issue, because at least people can decide how much or if they want to continue the activity that is being taxed at all.
Property taxes on assets currently commonly exist, if the assets are real estate, though they are uncommon on other kinds of assets (though Florida used to a property tax on some other kinds of investment assets, and some states have a property tax on motor vehicles, paid at registration time). Regarding income taxes, many people do not have much choice, in that they do not have enough wealth to live on their savings without needing further income that may be taxed (though the wealthy have that option).
Yes, bus. I have never seen an income that I would not be happy to pay taxes on. Assets… Like stocks? No way. I know of a person who took his own life when his assets were taxed at the peak of their valuation during the dot com bubble (bought his ISOs and had no idea how they were taxed). Then the market tanked. The entire portfolio was not enough to pay the tax due - hundreds of thousands. Yup. I am against any tax on existing “net worth” except real property tax and car tabs.
Want to have $1 salary and the rest of $20M salary in stock? Fine. Get paid in RSUs. They are taxed as ordinary income when they vest. The government collects their share, and you get to keep stock or sell it. A win-win situation.
Not to derail my own thread but, dividend income should not be taxed at a lower rate than regular income. If someone never goes to work, but has a large portfolio of dividend producing stocks, that person should not pay a lower tax rate than me, who pays over 20%.
I believe in inequality. It’s human nature.
How much inequality we have in our country is a choice.
There is so much written about this issue these days. I don’t think you are reading what’s out there.
Read Rubio’s tax plan. Read Bernie Sander’s tax plan.
One tax plan wants to eliminate capital gains taxes. Eliminate estate taxes. I am pretty confident this will increase inequality.
Another tax plan wants to increase capital gains taxes. Close estate tax loopholes. Close other loopholes. Increase tax rates and eliminate some deductions.
I am not suppporting either plan but the outcomes for society will be different depending on what plan is chosen. (I doubt either plan will be chosen).
These numbers are overstated but in the 90’s, the top one tenth of one percent of income earners paid an average tax rate of 27 percent on income. This dropped to 17 percent until about 2013. We taxed capital gains less. We taxed dividends less. This had a large effect. The way we tax isn’t carved into granite and. The way we tax makes a difference.
The country increased tax rates on capital gains and dividends recently. Now the average rate the top one tenth of one percent pay is about about 23 percent. We are talking an increase in taxes of billions of dollars.
This country could increase the average taxes the top one tenth of one percent pay back to 27 percent or more.
I don’t want a wealth tax. I agree with @BunsenBurner.
This idea of taking wealth… Would you support a system of no taxes? If we had an economy of no taxes, and we ended up with 1,000 people owning 99 percent of everything and everybody else owned the rest, you would be ok with that? Do you think the economy would work better that way? If 1,000 people pretty much owned everything? Society would be better?
That taxation resulting from ISO exercise was due to income tax, not an imaginary asset tax. It has to do with alternative minimum tax treatment of the bargain element when an ISO is exercised, but the resulting shares are not sold within the same tax year.
Geez, ucb. I know more about those issues than I need to know. I can fill out the AMT form by hand with my eyes closed. What is the point of your post?
It was an example that illustrates what can happen if we impose “wealth tax” based on the current value of someone’s net worth: when someone has a volatile asset that the IRS believes is worth a lot, and the market tanks, the IRS does not care. The tax will still be due, rain, shine, or the Great Depression.
The point is that the tax in question was an income tax, not a wealth tax like you are claiming.
“This idea of taking wealth… Would you support a system of no taxes? If we had an economy of no taxes, and we ended up with 1,000 people owning 99 percent of everything and everybody else owned the rest, you would be ok with that? Do you think the economy would work better that way? If 1,000 people pretty much owned everything? Society would be better?”
Of course not. I think a graduated tax, with no deductions, all income treated the same, would be the ultimate in fairness and simplicity. I think many people in the middle class range pay far too much in taxes. As far as the candidates plans, I looked some of them over awhile ago, and they ranged from–we’ll raise taxes even more on companies and higher income people, while providing everything for everybody, to: we’ll cut taxes like crazy and provide almost nothing for anybody. Both views are completely unrealistic, are never going to pass, are only talking points to the base, and surely won’t help the people like those in the stories on this thread.
Maybe we’ll get another national commission on fiscal responsibility to come out with some recommendations, and then ignore it. At least they can pretend they’re doing something.