<p>Nicole, the top 5% of taxpayers pay over 40% of the taxes. How much more redistribution do you think we need to do?</p>
<p>How much do you want to reduce income inequality?</p>
<p>Read Animal Farm. Some are more equal than others. And the book was about communism.</p>
<p>^
It’s about Stalinism.</p>
<p>I dont believe in equality. LOL JK only some forms</p>
<p>2% of families earn 250k or more</p>
<p>Teachers at the highest end of the salary schedule make $40 to $55 per hour. They have masters and doctoral degrees. Our family is full of them.</p>
<p>How do people get wealthy? Hard work, a good education, good advice and the willingness to TAKE HUGE RISKS–financial risks. I say congratulations. Even those who inherited money–they can and do easily lose it all if they don’t get educated and take wise advice.</p>
<p>“How do people get wealthy? Hard work, a good education, good advice and the willingness to TAKE HUGE RISKS–financial risks. I say congratulations.”</p>
<p>Yes…willingness to take huge risks…usually with other people’s money.</p>
<p>^^^Well, sure, OPM, but aren’t these usually loans, which presumably have to be paid back? And, lots of hard work–the people I know who own businesses work 70-80 hours a week and more. They shoulder a huge amount of responsibility for the families who depend upon them for salaries, etc. And they usually do need to use some of their own money, to start with.</p>
<p>In any case, the people I know who own successful businesses are hard-working, responsible, smart, risk-takers. I do admire their courage.</p>
<p>Yes, it was about Stalin. But it was about communism as well. Ergo, some are more equal than others. Or, maybe we had different English professors who had a different take.</p>
<p>As far as inherited money: A family member was heir to a fortune. They wasted the money and then were disinherited. It happens. Those who are fortunate to inherit have to keep the money intact. Ever hear the cliche, “from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in two generations?”</p>
<p>Very few people can do my husband’s job. Ergo, he makes a lot more than my housekeeper. But then again, I pay my housekeeper a lot for a housekeeper, $21.00 per hour. I have a better pool to pick from because I pay so well.</p>
<p>This is a good research report on wealth and income inequality in America…</p>
<p>[Who</a> Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power](<a href=“http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html]Who”>Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power)</p>
<p>The decline of unions, lower income tax rates, and especially lower capital gains tax rates, have led to a larger increase in inequality. </p>
<p>Those were policy decisions.</p>
<p>The top 400 people pay tax rates around 20% or less. Are these guys really overtaxed? </p>
<p>I lkke the quote, " The top 10 percent own America."
In a democracy, I don’t know why 90 percent of the people put up with that bs.</p>
<p>Policies can be changed.</p>
<p>No…the capital raised does not have to be loans. Could be stock, could be managing other people’s money for fees and a share of the profits.</p>
<p>The risk-reward ratio can get very skewed. And for those that work 70 hours a week and are getting wealthy…they are amply rewarded. And they pay lower tax rates than teachers even though they make way more money.</p>
<p>Then there are those that work 70 hours a week and have very little. Working two jobs as a security guard and a waiter doesn’t pay too well.</p>
<p>The CEO pay vs average workers pay increased the fastest under Clinton - interesting.</p>
<p>How many people really inherit money? Not many. </p>
<p>"Figures on inheritance tell much the same story. According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000). Thus, the attempt by ultra-conservatives to eliminate inheritance taxes – which they always call “death taxes” for P.R. reasons – would take a huge bite out of government revenues for the benefit of less than 1% of the population. (It is noteworthy that some of the richest people in the country oppose this ultra-conservative initiative, suggesting that this effort is driven by anti-government ideology. In other words, few of the ultra-conservatives behind the effort will benefit from it in any material way.)</p>
<p>Actually, ultra-conservatives and their wealthy financial backers may not have to bother to eliminate what remains of inheritance taxes at the federal level. The rich already have a new way to avoid inheritance taxes forever – for generations and generations – thanks to bankers. After Congress passed a reform in 1986 making it impossible for a “trust” to skip a generation before paying inheritance taxes, bankers convinced legislatures in many states to eliminate their “rules against perpetuities,” which means that trust funds set up in those states can exist in perpetuity, thereby allowing the trust funds to own new businesses, houses, and much else for descendants of rich people, and even to allow the beneficiaries to avoid payments to creditors when in personal debt or sued for causing accidents and injuries. About $100 billion in trust funds has flowed into those states so far. You can read the details on these “dynasty trusts” (which could be the basis for an even more solidified “American aristocracy”) in a New York Times opinion piece published in July 2010 by Boston College law professor Roy Madoff, who also has a book on this and other new tricks: Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead (Yale University Press, 2010)."
"</p>
<p>"The rest of the world</p>
<p>Thanks to a 2006 study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research – using statistics for the year 2000 – we now have information on the wealth distribution for the world as a whole, which can be compared to the United States and other well-off countries. The authors of the report admit that the quality of the information available on many countries is very spotty and probably off by several percentage points, but they compensate for this problem with very sophisticated statistical methods and the use of different sets of data. With those caveats in mind, we can still safely say that the top 10% of the world’s adults control about 85% of global household wealth – defined very broadly as all assets (not just financial assets), minus debts. That compares with a figure of 69.8% for the top 10% for the United States. The only industrialized democracy with a higher concentration of wealth in the top 10% than the United States is Switzerland at 71.3%. For the figures for several other Northern European countries and Canada, all of which are based on high-quality data, see Table 4."</p>
<p>I guess in our democracy, this is is why 90 percent of the population put up with our economic system.</p>
<p>"The argument for using the wealth distribution as a power indicator is strengthened by studies showing that such distributions vary historically and from country to country, depending upon the relative strength of rival political parties and trade unions, with the United States having the most highly concentrated wealth distribution of any Western democracy except Switzerland. For example, in a study based on 18 Western democracies, strong trade unions and successful social democratic parties correlated with greater equality in the income distribution and a higher level of welfare spending (Stephens, 1979).</p>
<p>And now we have arrived at the point I want to make. If the top 1% of households have 30-35% of the wealth, that’s 30 to 35 times what we would expect by chance, and so we infer they must be powerful. And then we set out to see if the same set of households scores high on other power indicators (it does). Next we study how that power operates, which is what most articles on this site are about. Furthermore, if the top 20% have 84% of the wealth (and recall that 10% have 85% to 90% of the stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity), that means that the United States is a power pyramid. It’s tough for the bottom 80% – maybe even the bottom 90% – to get organized and exercise much power."</p>
<p>I think it’s because the poor believe in the illusion that they’ll become rich if they work hard. </p>
<p>The fact is that working hard is a neccessary condition, but by no means sufficient. Luck, genes, and other uncontrollable factors play a huge role in determining success. Working hard doesn’t guarantee that a short person will make it into the NBA. </p>
<p>A lot of people will say, this rich person works very hard. But, they neglect to mention the fact that there are a lot of poor people who also work very hard.</p>
<p>What about the poor people who worked hard and became rich?</p>
<p>dstark, I am quite sure that there are some undertaxed rich. I don’t doubt that. Then there’s that small - midsized business guy whose corporate taxes and personal taxes are one and the same…who COULD be growing his business, but instead, is sending it to the government to bail out GM. There’s the doctor, making 250,000, who has 12 or more years of advanced education, and there’s the multinational corporate executive making 7 figures. There’s Steve Jobs, who IS Apple, and there is Dennis Kozlowski who raped Tyco. We need to be VERY careful with gore the rich ideology. I could also mean gore our future as a nation. And if Steve Jobs makes billions, I say…“THANKS, Steve…for the great products you produce and the JOBS you create.”</p>
<p>@Scales…
Luckier or more genetically blessed than the poor people who worked hard and are still poor.</p>