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What are you referring to, specifically? The Constitution is a living and interpretable document, I fail to see how it can be construed otherwise. Vague ideas of liberty are protected, and they are vague for a purpose. Times, paradigms, social and material conditions all change, as well as its interaction with "liberty". True freedom is impossible, as every person is interconnected within a system: every freedom to act results in lack of freedom from that act, to speak broadly.
I never liked inflexible rules anyway. Everyone pretends morals are so darn simple, I fail to see it that way. Call me anti-Constitution or anti-American, whatever.
I already said why it is illegal specifically - apparently you failed to read and understand - it is not meant to be interpreted as you like to do something that is illegal as well as immoral. You cannot interpret around specific items that are not allowed -
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.
U.S. Treasury defines duty as “a tax levied by a government on the import or export of goods,” imposts as “a tax, especially an import duty,” and excise taxes as “taxes on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of goods, or upon licenses to pursue certain occupations, or upon corporate privileges.”
Taxing wealth is not Duties, Imposts, or Excises - they added the 16th amendment specifically to allow taxation of income - wealth is not income.
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Article 16: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
In no way is wealth subject to any of these allowed taxes so would need to have an amendment to allow it, similar to the 16th.
The other issue is that the 4th and 5th amendment would be violated - the 4th against illegal seizure and 5th against taking property (money) without compensation - you cannot just take it by passing a law to take wealth without violating these.
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Article 4: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
Article 5: No person shall be .... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
It is not about what you like - you can't just ignore what it says is specifically not allowed. The Billionaires have the right to be treated fairly just like you do - why do you think you get rights but they do not?
No, I don't mind progressive tax rates. As long as the money goes where it should (it usually doesn't). Building roads, infrastructure, funding schools etc. isn't cheap, and it benefits both the public and all of industry. As long as I have a living wage + reasonable compensation for in-demand skills/hard labor, I'm not afraid of taxes.
Agreed, but that doesn't argue against the opinion that the rich should be taxed more.
You took the bait to get the middle-class riled up against the lower class. This is exactly how the rich don't get taxed.
The rich are already taxed significantly more - the 16th amendment specifically allows that for income, not for wealth. Also just FYI - most infrastructure as you laid out is state and local taxes, not federal taxes.
The rich already pay almost all taxes, the top 1% paid about 40% of taxes, the top 5% paid about 60% of taxes and the top 25% paid about 87% of all income taxes - just over 60% paid no income taxes in 2020. Even most of the middle class pay little in taxes.
To your first point, that I highlighted, you didn't happen to work for Eastman Kodak, did you?? With regard to the second highlighted point, I agree, completely.
Not Eastman Kodak, although it is a large and widely recognized company. I'm not going to mention the name here in public.
With a minute of thought, I can count 14 different CEOs that ran the companies I worked for while I was an active employee. From my perspective as an employee, most were neither incompetent nor brilliant. Some were handed a legacy company and ran it more or less the same in the past. Sometimes that worked, other times it did not. Some were on a mission of making acquisitions. Some were on a mission of cutting costs.
As I mentioned upthread, only one stands out as a really great leader. He did a good job of balancing his responsibility to all the stakeholders... customers, employees, and share owners. He did not overpay for acquisitions. Share buybacks were done in an intelligent manner, with long-term investment performance in mind.
My beef is that they're all compensated very well, even the mediocre ones and the horrible ones.
They do. But it's a reasonable lament, that the "middle wealthy" pay disproportionately more, than the "super wealthy". Look at the marginal tax rates of people earning $150K or $300K or something like that, vs. those earning say 20 times more. Or 200 times more. Our income taxes are highly progressive, but the progressiveness especially hits the merely affluent, instead of the super-wealthy.
To truly penalize or demonize wealth is, I think, abhorrent. But why do our federal income tax brackets rise so sharply into the mid-six-figures, and then plateau? We could revise the long term capital gains rate, for example, to something like this:
well, we know there's some rhyme or reason to why - above are links to the marginal rates and to breakdown by income %-ile. I see what you're saying - at $83,550 taxable income your marginal rate jumps from 12% to 22%. Without further consideration, this means a family with $83,499 would pay $9,615 but the family who earns one more dollar - $83,550 taxable - would pay 22 cents not 12.
We know that the bottom 60% of earners take the standard deduction only (only ~5% itemize). It jumps to around 14% for the 60-80% group, which is about 87K of taxable income.
To be in the top 10%, you have to have $152K of taxable income, and those folks itemize 1/2 the time.
Throughout human history, we see a repeating pattern, that when wealth and power become too concentrated, society eventually becomes unstable and often the result is that the masses are left with no way to regain a decent life except by overthrowing the ruling class.
In order to prevent this from happening, some safeguards could be put into place, such as a "Prohibition on Trillionaires". It has not happened yet, but more than one person has had a net worth in the 12-figure range for some time now. Before anyone manages to become a trillionaire, a legal structure could be created in order to stabilize society by limiting wealth.
For instance, it could be made unlawful to be a trillionaire, with the limit being automatically adjusted for inflation going forward. The fine would be $250 billion per offense, with each calendar quarter resulting in a new violation until such time as the individual is in compliance. The fine would be raised to $500 billion if the individual is found to be attempting to conceal substantial assets overseas and failing to report them. Repeated asset concealments would result in mandatory prison time or a revocation of citizenship followed by deportation to the host country. (All dollar amounts in this paragraph should be auto-adjusted for inflation going forward.)
The USA could take the initiative to try this, for example, hoping that the movement would catch on internationally, in order to make it impossible to evade. Would you support a Constitutional amendment that prohibits trillionaires, in order to stabilize society against the types of events that belong in the history books?
Just because those with wealth and those without exist doesn't automatically mean the wealthy only became that way at the expense of the other.
Has it happened? Sure. Not all those with wealth are righteous. At the same token, not all of those that don't have wealth are victims either.
By proposing this - there is a general accusation that anyone wealthy is a criminal... no? Is that fair?
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Originally Posted by sheena12
The thing is, many of them do not pay their fair share of taxes. Most, I would say. With that kind of money, they can pay for the best and brightest to help them out of the "horror" of paying taxes.
People who are fraudulent with the money they earn and hide it in offshore bank accounts, should not be permitted the right to vote. The IRS seems very good at auditing middle class people but ignoring the gains of the ultra-rich. We should audit those who are not transparent about their funds every few years - or, if they do not give to an approved charity that is helpful to many citizens. Example - a hospital that serves lower income people, a public school, a charitable foundation. An example, Warren Buffet, who famously said that a person like him should give more money in taxes, donate a huge portion of his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Ask a super-rich person if they would prefer to earn $ 200,000 per year or submit to routine audits and pay more money than the average Jane. Their answer will be swift.
And NO, I do not want to punish anyone for success. I do want then to pay their fair share.
The best way to level the playing field in through taxes.
What is "fair"? There's always seems to be this argument that the rich don't "pay their fair share". But that's comparing % of income taxed. However, if you look at the total % of taxes paid, the top 1% pays about 1/4 of the taxes collected. Now they also earn about 1/5 of the income... so there is no doubt that there is a wealth gap.
And as for tax revenue.... what is the issue? Is it not enough is collected? or perhaps it's not managed as well as it should be? Which gets into another debate....
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Originally Posted by ncole1
I'm confused. Do you believe that someone with $1 Trillion worked harder than someone with $100 billion, or that someone with $100 billion worked harder than someone with $20 billion?
When it comes to those with massive wealth, the higher amounts often result from having a larger customer base for the companies that you own, rather than how hard you work. For example, Amazon has a large market cap due to the total amount of demand for home delivery of shipped goods. You would never be able to achieve comparable wealth by (for example) selling the world's most delicious smoked ham sandwiches, no matter how much effort you put in. You simply do not have the customer demand to do it.
Furthermore, once one company has a quasi-monopoly in a given industry (such as Amazon for delivery, or Epic for healthcare records), the next person who tries to break into the industry will face a much steeper hill to climb. Not because they were not working hard, but because they were, in a very real sense, "not born soon enough".
But even if I were to, for the sake of argument, grant your (unreasonable) hypothetical that more wealth comes from working harder, what reason is there for thinking that would be a good thing? Should someone who neglects their children in order to "work harder" be rewarded for it? If your hypothetical were true, those with the most wealth would be those with the worst work-life balance, in other words, those who sacrificed literally everything else in order to get more and more money. I don't see how any reasonable person would see that as a good thing.
How do you quantify "hard work"? And should that be the "measure"?
Certainly Jeff Bezos didn't work any harder than many entrepreneurs that also sacrificed similar time/money/effort. But the fact that he is more successful means he should be punished?
I like how one can just easily "minimize" success attributes as "well, they simply have a bigger customer base". Of course, can't the same arguement be flipped around? Hey, not my fault that everyone want's to throw money at me....
And there are always new opportunities. So the "not born soon enough" is a lame excuse. Otherwise, everyone should be pissed at Edison and Ford.
Should we provide more opportunities for the "economically disadvantaged" (however you can define it)? Absolutely - and I don't have an answer for that as I'm simply not that smart. Although i think it needs to be a support structure vs. free handouts. However, it seems that the "repeating pattern" in "human history" is also whining about what other's have rather than figuring out how to make the most of their opportunities or create new ones.
Just because those with wealth and those without exist doesn't automatically mean the wealthy only became that way at the expense of the other.
Has it happened? Sure. Not all those with wealth are righteous. At the same token, not all of those that don't have wealth are victims either.
By proposing this - there is a general accusation that anyone wealthy is a criminal... no? Is that fair?
What is "fair"? There's always seems to be this argument that the rich don't "pay their fair share". But that's comparing % of income taxed. However, if you look at the total % of taxes paid, the top 1% pays about 1/4 of the taxes collected. Now they also earn about 1/5 of the income... so there is no doubt that there is a wealth gap.
And as for tax revenue.... what is the issue? Is it not enough is collected? or perhaps it's not managed as well as it should be? Which gets into another debate....
How do you quantify "hard work"? And should that be the "measure"?
Certainly Jeff Bezos didn't work any harder than many entrepreneurs that also sacrificed similar time/money/effort. But the fact that he is more successful means he should be punished?
I like how one can just easily "minimize" success attributes as "well, they simply have a bigger customer base". Of course, can't the same arguement be flipped around? Hey, not my fault that everyone want's to throw money at me....
And there are always new opportunities. So the "not born soon enough" is a lame excuse. Otherwise, everyone should be pissed at Edison and Ford.
Should we provide more opportunities for the "economically disadvantaged" (however you can define it)? Absolutely - and I don't have an answer for that as I'm simply not that smart. Although i think it needs to be a support structure vs. free handouts. However, it seems that the "repeating pattern" in "human history" is also whining about what other's have rather than figuring out how to make the most of their opportunities or create new ones.
I really admire Jeff Bezos, and the Amazon empire he built, literally from his garage. He's a smart guy. I use and enjoy the shopping service they provide. It's very convenient for me. Their presence here in Seattle is controversial to the locals to say the least, which I fully get all that, but I personally don't boycott them, like some people I know do. I'm a Prime member and I buy stuff online all the time, and I go to the Amazon stores in person here, too. Their general existence is mostly fine with me, and I think they do a really good job.
I have no problem with him being the wealthiest or among the wealthiest person on the planet. I fully appreciate the guy's work ethic and good business decisions, and I would never deny him anything he's earned. I wish him all the best, in all of his ventures.
But, you know, I'm sorry- right now, in the current era, I don't think he's earning most of this insane vast wealth, with any hard work or great smarts or any of those nice qualities that he definitely has.
Amazon makes over $1.29 billion in revenue, a day. Every single day.
They are, virtually, or at least something approaching, a monopoly in the e-commerce market. No one has the ability to compete with how low they're able to set their prices, which they can achieve via economies of scale, their great size and cash, and leveraging their general advantageous position.
Jeff Bezos, obviously his income and wealth accumulation has nothing to do with a salary at a job. If you break down what he's actually making, it's something like $2,500 per second, or $150,000 per minute:
Jeff Bezos’ net worth in 2021 amounted to $197 billion, which means he earned about $250 million per day or $1.75 billion per week.
He makes $9 million an hour. When the guy goes to lunch and sits down and eats a salad, he makes hundreds or thousands of times more money than most people will earn in their entire lives of hard work.
It's not envy. I'm definitely not envious of that level of wealth. It just bothers me that one person has that much of the total share of human wealth, especially considering that there are many who have nothing. And many more who have very little.
It's not about robbery. It's not about any particular person or class or group or whatever. The people who are concerned with the extreme wealth inequality situation are looking at the whole human species, and why this may not be the best for it.
Here is a good overview article on this topic for those interested. It even provides a link to a counter arguments from Cato:
My other main problem, is how money controls us. Politics and money and that sort of influence, obviously. And Bezos owns the Washington Post, so that's a news outlet, that he obviously is going to have influence over. Elon Musk owns Twitter.
Seems like Bezos and co, could look at the factory worker situation a bit more.
Maybe it's not greed that motivates these guys, maybe they want to do a lot of things like space projects and electric cars and all that, and that's great. But the US should have more progressive tax policies, higher minimum wage, etc.
And yes, for right now, I think there should be a wealth limit, effectively. Until we've solved more of society's general problems and more people are wealthy or doing ok, then yeah, I think it's wrong and insane that a few hundred people have trillions of dollars, when there are 8 billion people in the world.
I think we should be able to set aside questions of whether they earned the first billion or the first few billion. Give them that. I'm sure they did. But that's a fraction of the amount of money that we are talking about, here. We will probably see the first trillionaire within the next few years.
I really admire Jeff Bezos, and the Amazon empire he built, literally from his garage. He's a smart guy. I use and enjoy the shopping service they provide. It's very convenient for me. Their presence here in Seattle is controversial to the locals to say the least, which I fully get all that, but I personally don't boycott them, like some people I know do. I'm a Prime member and I buy stuff online all the time, and I go to the Amazon stores in person here, too. Their general existence is mostly fine with me, and I think they do a really good job.
I have no problem with him being the wealthiest or among the wealthiest person on the planet. I fully appreciate the guy's work ethic and good business decisions, and I would never deny him anything he's earned. I wish him all the best, in all of his ventures.
But, you know, I'm sorry- right now, in the current era, I don't think he's earning most of this insane vast wealth, with any hard work or great smarts or any of those nice qualities that he definitely has.
Amazon makes over $1.29 billion in revenue, a day. Every single day.
They are, virtually, or at least something approaching, a monopoly in the e-commerce market. No one has the ability to compete with how low they're able to set their prices, which they can achieve via economies of scale, their great size and cash, and leveraging their general advantageous position.
Jeff Bezos, obviously his income and wealth accumulation has nothing to do with a salary at a job. If you break down what he's actually making, it's something like $2,500 per second, or $150,000 per minute:
He makes $9 million an hour. When the guy goes to lunch and sits down and eats a salad, he makes hundreds or thousands of times more money than most people will earn in their entire lives of hard work.
It's not envy. I'm definitely not envious of that level of wealth. It just bothers me that one person has that much of the total share of human wealth, especially considering that there are many who have nothing. And many more who have very little.
It's not about robbery. It's not about any particular person or class or group or whatever. The people who are concerned with the extreme wealth inequality situation are looking at the whole human species, and why this may not be the best for it.
Here is a good overview article on this topic for those interested. It even provides a link to a counter arguments from Cato:
My other main problem, is how money controls us. Politics and money and that sort of influence, obviously. And Bezos owns the Washington Post, so that's a news outlet, that he obviously is going to have influence over. Elon Musk owns Twitter.
Seems like Bezos and co, could look at the factory worker situation a bit more.
Maybe it's not greed that motivates these guys, maybe they want to do a lot of things like space projects and electric cars and all that, and that's great. But the US should have more progressive tax policies, higher minimum wage, etc.
And yes, for right now, I think there should be a wealth limit, effectively. Until we've solved more of society's general problems and more people are wealthy or doing ok, then yeah, I think it's wrong and insane that a few hundred people have trillions of dollars, when there are 8 billion people in the world.
I think we should be able to set aside questions of whether they earned the first billion or the first few billion. Give them that. I'm sure they did. But that's a fraction of the amount of money that we are talking about, here. We will probably see the first trillionaire within the next few years.
while about 95% of your post discussing $$ is nonsense and deserves to be redacted in a reply, I'll start by saying it displays a gross misunderstanding of income vs wealth.
Jeff Bezos, at some point is/was worth $200B because that is the value of his Amazon stock. He didn't earn any fraction of $200B per day. The only way one could even attempt to claim that he earned billions is when the value of Amazon stock goes up. ie, if it rose $10 over a 90 day period and he owns (example) 50 million shares, then one could (still erroneously) say he "earned" $500,000,000 over that 90 day period.
Conversely, since Amazon's stock price has gone from $165 to $90 this year, an unknowing person might say Bezos has LOST about 40% of his wealth. Don't cry for him - he still owns about 50 million shares.
Now, if one wanted to say Congress should consider changing capital gains tax on very high earners - so Bezos paid 36% on a $9B stock sale and not 20% - that would be a talking point about paying his "fair share".
Jeff Bezos, at some point is/was worth $200B because that is the value of his Amazon stock. He didn't earn any fraction of $200B per day. The only way one could even attempt to claim that he earned billions is when the value of Amazon stock goes up. ie, if it rose $10 over a 90 day period and he owns (example) 50 million shares, then one could (still erroneously) say he "earned" $500,000,000 over that 90 day period.
I'm agreeing with you. He didn't earn $200 billion dollars. Because no one could earn such a ridiculous amount of wealth as that. He is in a position of ownership where the wealth just accumulates to him automatically.
And I don't even blame him for taking advantage of the situation. But there should be a lot more and higher taxes on all that stuff, when things start to get over multiple billions of dollars for a single person.
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Now, if one wanted to say Congress should consider changing capital gains tax on very high earners - so Bezos paid 36% on a $9B stock sale and not 20% - that would be a talking point about paying his "fair share".
Personally, I never said anything about "fair share". I don't think, or use terms like that. He's paying his fair share as long as he's not breaking any laws, and to my knowledge, he's not. So it's not a question of him not paying something, or anything about a "fair share".
My issue is that society deems this to be a fair tax system when considering the ultra rich, that would enable this kind of extreme wealth accumulation in the hands of the 1% (who are insanely more wealthy than even the very wealthy), especially in light of current epidemics of homelessness, poverty and hunger, which I see in person firsthand every single day right here in Amazon's hometown. So, yes, I think we should be increasing these types of taxes, or whatever we can do. I think we should strive to be a better society. Not just a version of America that's becoming like an exploitation playground, where 1% of us will eventually own everything and have all of the political and economic power, and not because they're out there innovating or earning anything per se, but just by accumulation of wealth from the profits and appreciations from the insanely valuable shares and properties that they own. (And Fox News will hail the oligarch ruler class.)
I'm agreeing with you. He didn't earn $200 billion dollars. Because no one could earn such a ridiculous amount of wealth as that. He is in a position of ownership where the wealth just accumulates to him automatically.
And I don't even blame him for taking advantage of the situation. But there should be a lot more and higher taxes on all that stuff, when things start to get over multiple billions of dollars for a single person.
Personally, I never said anything about "fair share". I don't think, or use terms like that. He's paying his fair share as long as he's not breaking any laws, and to my knowledge, he's not. So it's not a question of him not paying something, or anything about a "fair share".
My issue is that society deems this to be a fair tax system when considering the ultra rich, that would enable this kind of extreme wealth accumulation in the hands of the 1% (who are insanely more wealthy than even the very wealthy), especially in light of current epidemics of homelessness, poverty and hunger, which I see in person firsthand every single day right here in Amazon's hometown. So, yes, I think we should be increasing these types of taxes, or whatever we can do. I think we should strive to be a better society. Not just a version of America that's becoming like an exploitation playground, where 1% of us will eventually own everything and have all of the political and economic power, and not because they're out there innovating or earning anything per se, but just by accumulation of wealth from the profits and appreciations from the insanely valuable shares and properties that they own. (And Fox News will hail the oligarch ruler class.)
you're still confused, it seems. Maybe Liz Warren etal misled you, because that IS what they have consistently done. They spent the 2nd half of 2020 declaring how much company founders at IPO had earned because of the stock market boom after the initial Covid drop. They didn't declare Elon, Bezos etal "lost" 35% of their money (or put a $B on it) when the market dropped between Feb 9 and March 15. No, they just whined about how much ill-gotten $ (their political position) those men got the next 6 months.
Your usage of "earn" above seems to be related to "justified". Justified is a purely subjective term.
Now, so is Bezos' wealth justified? Well, he took AMZN public in May 1997, at $18/share. 7 years later, you could have still gotten it for about $100.
And by the way, if you taken a mere $1000 in May '97 and bet on Amazon, you'd have 13,333 shares today and the "value" would be $1,253,000. Would that be earned/justified?
Bezos ONLY earns when he sells. He no more "earned" (per Liz W) $60B in 2020 than he "lost" $80B the last 12 months because of the stock price. But what Liz W wants to do is take that $60B paper gain and literally tax him for it. Bezos doesn't have $10-30B in cash anywhere, so he'd have to sell that much stock to pay her tax.
Just because those with wealth and those without exist doesn't automatically mean the wealthy only became that way at the expense of the other.
True, there's no way to conclusively prove this, one way or another. But honestly it does not matter. Perception is important. The bigger the disparity, the easier it will become to convince large numbers of people they have been taken to the cleaners.
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