How? Most people this rich have next to nothing in their bank accounts. The ridiculous numbers you see are not bank account balances or sports cars and yachts. Its primarily shares of the companies they manage. E.g. if you tax them conventionally, you force them to close the factories and everyone becomes poorer. If you just confiscate the company (shares), now the government owns companies, and we saw how that goes plenty of times: USSR, North Korea, Cuba, … Or you give the shares to people, but the company would still need to be managed by someone who no longer has a proportional incentive to make it succeed, causing the same result as if it was government run.
…or you have the workers communally run the factory and elect the person to run it and if they don’t do a good job, they lose the position. Which seems like a pretty good incentive to succeed. In fact, “do this right or you’re fired” rarely seems to apply to the person at the top.
Lets pretend they would not become corrupt. What about unpopular decisions, such as layoffs? As much as people hate them, they are sometimes necessary to keep peoples work productive.
Again, if they do a bad job, they can be taken out of office by the other workers. If they handle layoffs the right way, they won’t be taken out of office.
First off, if you think people will vote for unpopular things because they are handled correctly and the right thing to do, you are not paying attention to any elections.
Second of all, lets say I am elected to run this company. I have two options:
Operate the company to the best of my abilities and in the best case scenario, I will get a bit above average wage. More likely something out of my control will happen that I will be balmed for by the next guy who wants to run the company.
I give way overpriced contracts to people who will give something of value to me. Of course vaguely enough that you can’t prove it in court. Then I just lose my job in a year or two, when people figure it out. Of course by then, I gained more in that year than I would gain in my entire life working honestly.
What do you think the kind of people thick skinned enough to win a company election would do?
And if your solution is to lower the burden of proof in court, who would take normal salaried job with high chance of being falsely imprisoned? Not the honest ones…
Ignore that last part, just me writing ahead too much. I was trying to say this kind of corruption is incredibly hard to prove, so courts are not helpful.
Well, I live in a formerly socialist country so we remember what incredibly corrupt looked like. Most modern CEOs look outright virtuous in comparison.
I agree a wealth tax is difficult to implement, but that alone is not a reason to dismiss the idea. Also, for shares, you can always sell shares to pay the taxes that are due. The point of wealth tax is to wealth, not income. Much like a property tax. I don’t understand why they would be forced to limit their own income potential (by closing factories or decreasing production) in order to pay taxes on wealth they own.
Better than a wealth tax is a land value tax. Key properties are that it doesn’t cause capital flight (you can’t move land), it’s almost impossible to evade (you can’t hide land), it’s economically efficient (it literally doesn’t even harm the economy in the slightest to implement it), it can’t be passed on to tenants (both in economic theory and in observed practice), and it’s progressive.
Plus, it incentives denser, transit-oriented city development and disincentivizes wastage of prime real estate (which contributes to the housing crisis). All in all, a terrific policy that people aren’t talking nearly enough about imo.
At least in the US, most people already pay local and state property taxes that are higher in high population density areas. The problem with this tax is that it still disproportionately affects middle class home owners instead of only affecting the billionaire class. Also, land is just 1 aspect of wealth. Most of the wealthy in the US don’t keep any significant part of their wealth in land.
Most of the wealthy in the US don’t keep any significant part of their wealth in land.
This is really key. If it was 100 years ago, this would make more sense, but the vast majority of measured wealth created in the world today is in intangible assets, like stock prices.
Sell them to whom? You are taxing everyone rich enough to buy them.
They would close factories to sell them for parts and blow the cash on whatever before paying taxes: casinos, yachts, moving to a country without such taxes, …
You make it sound like factories don’t actually net them profit LMAO. Even after paying taxes they’re still making money. If they weren’t, it would be a terrible business. Also what do you mean sell them to whom? Other billionaires that still exist even with a wealth tax, non billionaire investors, international investors. If they can’t find someone to sell their shares to, then clearly their shares are overvalued and that’ll take care of some of the problem in itself.
Also shutting down factories won’t affect their wealth, which is actually what’s being taxed. And it won’t matter weather they sell $1 billion of whatever to buy $1 billion of something else. You’re taxing their wealth, not their business or cash in hand. If they’re holding on to $1 billion in one form or another, then they’re holding on to $1 billion that can be taxed.
Once again, billionaires don’t have large sums of money in their banks. It is all invested. So if all of them in the country have no money and need to sell to pay these massive taxes, who are they selling to?
And sorry to say this, but if you genuinely think selling a significant portion of a countries industry/businesses to foreign investors could be good for the people of the country, than I am wasting my time here.
In the only countries that still have a ‘wealth tax’, the thresholds are so broad that they are primarily a burden of the middle and lower classes, making it effectively no different than a more conventional/mundane tax, versus what everyone talking about a “wealth tax” in these kinds of discussions invariably expects; namely, a tax that only/primarily targets the wealthiest.
Before the income tax was implemented, there were promises it’d only be aimed at the rich, too.
Youre right about income tax and to some degree income tax does primarily effect the wealthy except the brackets haven’t been updated to reflect inflation and the new ultra wealthy class appropriately. The other thing is, many of the wealthy don’t have incomes in the traditional sense, and it makes no sense to differentiate capital gains from regular income. The argument that you don’t want retirement investment income taxed as regular income tax is a little moot since that’s why we have tax advantaged retirement accounts. If those accounts aren’t enough for all retirement investments, maybe those limits need to be increased or the way the tax advantage works for them needs to be changed.
Past failed attempts are also a good point, but to me they sound more like administrative failures rather than a failure of that type of policy. In the US we already have some wealth taxes on the value of homes and cars. Some of these failed European policies seemed to define wealth poorly and as a result either weren’t fully taxing wealth or spending more resources on administration than collections. But banks already do a great job of assessing an individual’s wealth. This is how the ultra rich are able to get huge lines of credit to play with rather than having to use their own capital directly. I don’t see how the government can’t use similar systems to calculate an individual’s total wealth. And the argument about the wealthy fleaing the country are also a little moot in the US. The wealthy in the US make money off of American tax dollars. Amazon/Bezos is rich because the US government started using AWS. Tesla is successful because the US uses their influence in South America to cost effectively obtain raw materials for batteries (not to mention those tax credits on EVs). There are all the military industrial companies, and the insurance companies. If the government had the backbone to say Americans who got wealthy using the American market have to pay taxes in America or they lose their right to sell to the American market (government or to the public), no one is going anywhere.
Or you give the shares to people, but the company would still need to be managed by someone who no longer has a proportional incentive to make it succeed, causing the same result as if it was government run.
Would it? Give the shares to the workers and they have a huge incentive to run a company well. Right now a CEO’s only priority is to maximise shareholders return. A workers led company would maximise both shareholder return AND have an incentive and pride in doing a job properly instead of the low morale and poorly built crap we have today.
History has shown anytime control is in the hands of the few, it’s run into the ground in order to maximise the wealth for the few so giving control to the masses of workers in companies would lead to more compromises and might sound bad at first but would likely work better the more people required to make drastic changes.
And as said many times, no billionaire has ever ‘earned’ that. They’ve all gained it through exploitation and wage theft either directly or indirectly!
So how do the workers run the company? A vote on every little decision? If not, you have to still have a CEO, for whom it is now far more profitable to make decisions that profit them rather than the company. And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
Also, what about layoffs? While everyone loves to hate layoffs, they are part of keeping peoples work productive. Are the workers going to vote/approve them?
then that’s for the workers to decide on. If 51% of the workforce agrees, thats the decision! If that doesn’t ‘fit’ with the workers, make it 60% or 75%, or whatever number the majority agree on!
It really isn’t that difficult. There are plenty of voting systems, the issue comes down to people and a change of thinking how companies are run.
You can make any argument why it wouldn’t work when you don’t want something to work but given the current system is working soooo well… new ideas are better than no ideas! 😎
You say that ironically, but average people in developed nations have arguably better lifestyle and more resources than kings used to. And living standard in developing nations have been steadily improving. The system is incredibly flawed because the humans it is made of are incredibly flawed. Considering how flawed it is, it is working astonishingly well.
Thankfully, workers are deciding every day they would rather work in the current system, then stop working based on some hopeless dreams of flying castles.
then that’s for the workers to decide on. If 51% of the workforce agrees, thats the decision!
But the vast majority of workers don’t have the slightest idea how to run a business effectively. A very large proportion of them mismanage their own finances, let alone a larger responsibility like that.
And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
Yeah because 32hrs would become 40 and we would discard another 8. 6hrsx4. When that happens we are no longer deprived of time edilucate and discuss the matter with the relevant folks.
And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
Yes. Because of the above.
Also, what about layoffs? While everyone loves to hate layoffs, they are part of keeping peoples work productive
No. They aren’t. They actually doing the exact opposite. Your statement to contrary of the obvious is a sucker delusion. Stop consuming sugar to begin with and finish by stopping to listen to money.
Are the workers going to vote/approve them?
Yup. Your delusion is thinking that mass is any kind of importance. Its not when it is compared to life because shit might come from the magick of people but there will never be life as a part of them unless they were to begin with and in that case, you were never the creator. Workers MUST have the right to make decision where they work or the entire planet will die. No fucking exceptions with any financial delusions because ALL of it is doing and being exactly that.
No, I am saying that often, company may need to downsize to remain productive. For example, lets say we have a company that makes headphone jacks. For obvious reasons, they are no longer able to sell as many as they used to, but maybe half.
The company now needs to layoff half the workers. Is the elected CEO going to promptly do it? Or will he delay it and causing both financial damage to the company and productivity damage to the economy?
And also, do the fired employees still get to vote? Is just firing malcontents the tyrant CEOs weapon?
Production should be run by the workers via a democratically run and accountable worker-government.
The government owning companies is not a bad thing. The US Postal Service and Fire Department are state-run and operated, and are highly popular. Why do you think a profit-motive is necessary when it’s the source of enshittification?
Why should we have a stock market in the first place? Seems like all it does is act as a means for the rich to shuffle their wealth around, funnel it to the top and claim they have next to no liquidity.
First of all, it matters if the stock market is fulfilling its original intention. Which it obviously is. Second of all, some of the biggest traders on the stock market are pension funds of common workers, appreciating their retirement money. Fuck over how exactly?
And third, let’s say none of what I wrote is true. Why are we somehow better of not having a stock market at all instead of fixing it to fulfill its purpose? Or making a new one if it is easier? Do you regularly throw away things without getting a replacement when they stop working? Never replaced your car and phone after they got old and broke?
Second of all, some of the biggest traders on the stock market are pension funds of common workers, appreciating their retirement money.
“The rich now own a record share of stocks,” Axios reported on January 10, noting that the top 10 percent hold about 93 percent of U.S. households stock market wealth.
You’re being misleading, or have been misleading about the allocation of wealth within the stock market.
Retirement should be a public service, not a form of gambling within a system set up for the rich.
Why are we somehow better of not having a stock market at all instead of fixing it to fulfill its purpose?
Because it would be one less way for the rich to obfuscate their wealth growth, because the original purpose of distributing ownership through shares is an inherently flawed idea.
Do you regularly throw away things without getting a replacement when they stop working?
“Why would we get rid of the orphan killing machine!?!?!? We would have to replace it with a new one.”
Ok, lets do some math. The GDP of the US is $28 trillion. The population of 15 years and above is about 273.85 million. That gives about $102,000 annually per person in this category. The median personal income is about $40,500 annually. So almost 40% of the entire economy goes to wages and other income of normal people alone. And yes, it is median (not average) so we are talking normal people wages, not CEO wages. According to wikipedia, about 17.3% of the GDP is government consumption and 17.2% is capital investment. That leaves little over 25% unaccounted for. This will include everything not accounted above. Charities, rich people wages, lottery winnings, … and of course, stock market gains and dividends.
I can’t account for more of the 25% right now (it is late, maybe someday), but even if it all went to the filthily rich along with a proportional part of government consumption and capital investment, then the normal people still get 61% of the economy. In the absolute worst case. Seems to me like lot of the “ultra-wealthy own most of america” is just misinformation.
Ok, lets do some math. The GDP of the US is $28 trillion.
You shouldn’t be using GDP for this, as GDP is a notoriously bad metric for understanding the flow of wealth. If I pay you $100 to wash my car and you pay me $100 to wash your car, the GDP of our actions is $200 even though both of our wealth is unchanged. GDP is simply a measure of how fast money is circulating.
You need to be looking at that actual allocation of the wealth, as the rich like to use a myriad of loopholes to obfuscate their acquisitions.
So you are explaining why the rich get less than what I calculated because GDP is overestimated while the way I calculated income of median people is solid.
Thanks for helping to make my argument.
The whole point is people are obsessed by the rich having ridiculous wealth on paper because of owning companies, but them owning companies does not take anything away from society. The factories produce goods for people and who receive the goods is determined by who buys the goods which is determined mainly by income, not wealth.
Or let me put it in different words: Let’s say you and I have the same wage across our lives. I save third of my paycheck for my entire life to build up savings. I only buy what I need. You spend yours on luxuries every month. After 40 years, is it unfair I have a lot of money and you don’t, since you spent it all? Should I be taxed more then you? We calculated what the income of the rich is above. The reason they have so much wealth is because instead of spending it on luxuries, they not only save it, but invest it. Investing does not give them sports car or better lifestyle. It helps produce more goods for the people that spend their money. It helps everyone become richer by increasing the overall economic output.
And yes, they get a share of this increased output as calculated above for helping make it by investing instead of spending their money on lavish parties, exotic trips or whatever you would spend that kind of money on.
How? Most people this rich have next to nothing in their bank accounts. The ridiculous numbers you see are not bank account balances or sports cars and yachts. Its primarily shares of the companies they manage. E.g. if you tax them conventionally, you force them to close the factories and everyone becomes poorer. If you just confiscate the company (shares), now the government owns companies, and we saw how that goes plenty of times: USSR, North Korea, Cuba, … Or you give the shares to people, but the company would still need to be managed by someone who no longer has a proportional incentive to make it succeed, causing the same result as if it was government run.
…or you have the workers communally run the factory and elect the person to run it and if they don’t do a good job, they lose the position. Which seems like a pretty good incentive to succeed. In fact, “do this right or you’re fired” rarely seems to apply to the person at the top.
Lets pretend they would not become corrupt. What about unpopular decisions, such as layoffs? As much as people hate them, they are sometimes necessary to keep peoples work productive.
Again, if they do a bad job, they can be taken out of office by the other workers. If they handle layoffs the right way, they won’t be taken out of office.
Where does the corruption enter into it?
First off, if you think people will vote for unpopular things because they are handled correctly and the right thing to do, you are not paying attention to any elections.
Second of all, lets say I am elected to run this company. I have two options:
What do you think the kind of people thick skinned enough to win a company election would do?
And if your solution is to lower the burden of proof in court, who would take normal salaried job with high chance of being falsely imprisoned? Not the honest ones…Lower the burden of proof in court? What?
Ignore that last part, just me writing ahead too much. I was trying to say this kind of corruption is incredibly hard to prove, so courts are not helpful.
Okay, well CEOs and other executives are incredibly corrupt now, so I’m not sure why this is a complaint.
Well, I live in a formerly socialist country so we remember what incredibly corrupt looked like. Most modern CEOs look outright virtuous in comparison.
Money.
Guy want companies to become the government
No, guy wants companies to be owned and run by workers rather than just be wealth machines for the investor class.
I agree a wealth tax is difficult to implement, but that alone is not a reason to dismiss the idea. Also, for shares, you can always sell shares to pay the taxes that are due. The point of wealth tax is to wealth, not income. Much like a property tax. I don’t understand why they would be forced to limit their own income potential (by closing factories or decreasing production) in order to pay taxes on wealth they own.
Better than a wealth tax is a land value tax. Key properties are that it doesn’t cause capital flight (you can’t move land), it’s almost impossible to evade (you can’t hide land), it’s economically efficient (it literally doesn’t even harm the economy in the slightest to implement it), it can’t be passed on to tenants (both in economic theory and in observed practice), and it’s progressive.
Plus, it incentives denser, transit-oriented city development and disincentivizes wastage of prime real estate (which contributes to the housing crisis). All in all, a terrific policy that people aren’t talking nearly enough about imo.
At least in the US, most people already pay local and state property taxes that are higher in high population density areas. The problem with this tax is that it still disproportionately affects middle class home owners instead of only affecting the billionaire class. Also, land is just 1 aspect of wealth. Most of the wealthy in the US don’t keep any significant part of their wealth in land.
This is really key. If it was 100 years ago, this would make more sense, but the vast majority of measured wealth created in the world today is in intangible assets, like stock prices.
Sell them to whom? You are taxing everyone rich enough to buy them.
They would close factories to sell them for parts and blow the cash on whatever before paying taxes: casinos, yachts, moving to a country without such taxes, …
You make it sound like factories don’t actually net them profit LMAO. Even after paying taxes they’re still making money. If they weren’t, it would be a terrible business. Also what do you mean sell them to whom? Other billionaires that still exist even with a wealth tax, non billionaire investors, international investors. If they can’t find someone to sell their shares to, then clearly their shares are overvalued and that’ll take care of some of the problem in itself.
Also shutting down factories won’t affect their wealth, which is actually what’s being taxed. And it won’t matter weather they sell $1 billion of whatever to buy $1 billion of something else. You’re taxing their wealth, not their business or cash in hand. If they’re holding on to $1 billion in one form or another, then they’re holding on to $1 billion that can be taxed.
Once again, billionaires don’t have large sums of money in their banks. It is all invested. So if all of them in the country have no money and need to sell to pay these massive taxes, who are they selling to?
And sorry to say this, but if you genuinely think selling a significant portion of a countries industry/businesses to foreign investors could be good for the people of the country, than I am wasting my time here.
What about the fact that it’s been tried and failed a ton of times already in a bunch of countries? That’s a pretty good reason, I think.
In the only countries that still have a ‘wealth tax’, the thresholds are so broad that they are primarily a burden of the middle and lower classes, making it effectively no different than a more conventional/mundane tax, versus what everyone talking about a “wealth tax” in these kinds of discussions invariably expects; namely, a tax that only/primarily targets the wealthiest.
Before the income tax was implemented, there were promises it’d only be aimed at the rich, too.
Youre right about income tax and to some degree income tax does primarily effect the wealthy except the brackets haven’t been updated to reflect inflation and the new ultra wealthy class appropriately. The other thing is, many of the wealthy don’t have incomes in the traditional sense, and it makes no sense to differentiate capital gains from regular income. The argument that you don’t want retirement investment income taxed as regular income tax is a little moot since that’s why we have tax advantaged retirement accounts. If those accounts aren’t enough for all retirement investments, maybe those limits need to be increased or the way the tax advantage works for them needs to be changed.
Past failed attempts are also a good point, but to me they sound more like administrative failures rather than a failure of that type of policy. In the US we already have some wealth taxes on the value of homes and cars. Some of these failed European policies seemed to define wealth poorly and as a result either weren’t fully taxing wealth or spending more resources on administration than collections. But banks already do a great job of assessing an individual’s wealth. This is how the ultra rich are able to get huge lines of credit to play with rather than having to use their own capital directly. I don’t see how the government can’t use similar systems to calculate an individual’s total wealth. And the argument about the wealthy fleaing the country are also a little moot in the US. The wealthy in the US make money off of American tax dollars. Amazon/Bezos is rich because the US government started using AWS. Tesla is successful because the US uses their influence in South America to cost effectively obtain raw materials for batteries (not to mention those tax credits on EVs). There are all the military industrial companies, and the insurance companies. If the government had the backbone to say Americans who got wealthy using the American market have to pay taxes in America or they lose their right to sell to the American market (government or to the public), no one is going anywhere.
Would it? Give the shares to the workers and they have a huge incentive to run a company well. Right now a CEO’s only priority is to maximise shareholders return. A workers led company would maximise both shareholder return AND have an incentive and pride in doing a job properly instead of the low morale and poorly built crap we have today.
History has shown anytime control is in the hands of the few, it’s run into the ground in order to maximise the wealth for the few so giving control to the masses of workers in companies would lead to more compromises and might sound bad at first but would likely work better the more people required to make drastic changes.
And as said many times, no billionaire has ever ‘earned’ that. They’ve all gained it through exploitation and wage theft either directly or indirectly!
Winco
So how do the workers run the company? A vote on every little decision? If not, you have to still have a CEO, for whom it is now far more profitable to make decisions that profit them rather than the company. And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
Also, what about layoffs? While everyone loves to hate layoffs, they are part of keeping peoples work productive. Are the workers going to vote/approve them?
then that’s for the workers to decide on. If 51% of the workforce agrees, thats the decision! If that doesn’t ‘fit’ with the workers, make it 60% or 75%, or whatever number the majority agree on!
It really isn’t that difficult. There are plenty of voting systems, the issue comes down to people and a change of thinking how companies are run.
You can make any argument why it wouldn’t work when you don’t want something to work but given the current system is working soooo well… new ideas are better than no ideas! 😎
You say that ironically, but average people in developed nations have arguably better lifestyle and more resources than kings used to. And living standard in developing nations have been steadily improving. The system is incredibly flawed because the humans it is made of are incredibly flawed. Considering how flawed it is, it is working astonishingly well.
Thankfully, workers are deciding every day they would rather work in the current system, then stop working based on some hopeless dreams of flying castles.
But the vast majority of workers don’t have the slightest idea how to run a business effectively. A very large proportion of them mismanage their own finances, let alone a larger responsibility like that.
Yeah because 32hrs would become 40 and we would discard another 8. 6hrsx4. When that happens we are no longer deprived of time edilucate and discuss the matter with the relevant folks.
Yes. Because of the above.
No. They aren’t. They actually doing the exact opposite. Your statement to contrary of the obvious is a sucker delusion. Stop consuming sugar to begin with and finish by stopping to listen to money.
Yup. Your delusion is thinking that mass is any kind of importance. Its not when it is compared to life because shit might come from the magick of people but there will never be life as a part of them unless they were to begin with and in that case, you were never the creator. Workers MUST have the right to make decision where they work or the entire planet will die. No fucking exceptions with any financial delusions because ALL of it is doing and being exactly that.
Bro what.
Are you saying we need to lay off workers to scare the rest into line?
No, I am saying that often, company may need to downsize to remain productive. For example, lets say we have a company that makes headphone jacks. For obvious reasons, they are no longer able to sell as many as they used to, but maybe half.
The company now needs to layoff half the workers. Is the elected CEO going to promptly do it? Or will he delay it and causing both financial damage to the company and productivity damage to the economy?
And also, do the fired employees still get to vote? Is just firing malcontents the tyrant CEOs weapon?
Production should be run by the workers via a democratically run and accountable worker-government.
The government owning companies is not a bad thing. The US Postal Service and Fire Department are state-run and operated, and are highly popular. Why do you think a profit-motive is necessary when it’s the source of enshittification?
https://youtu.be/YmK24VAaZrg
Why should we have a stock market in the first place? Seems like all it does is act as a means for the rich to shuffle their wealth around, funnel it to the top and claim they have next to no liquidity.
If you think that, you obviously don’t know what the stock market was created to do. Just google it. No point for me to write it here.
Original intention isn’t relevant when the current purpose is to fuck over anybody who isn’t the rich.
First of all, it matters if the stock market is fulfilling its original intention. Which it obviously is. Second of all, some of the biggest traders on the stock market are pension funds of common workers, appreciating their retirement money. Fuck over how exactly?
And third, let’s say none of what I wrote is true. Why are we somehow better of not having a stock market at all instead of fixing it to fulfill its purpose? Or making a new one if it is easier? Do you regularly throw away things without getting a replacement when they stop working? Never replaced your car and phone after they got old and broke?
“The rich now own a record share of stocks,” Axios reported on January 10, noting that the top 10 percent hold about 93 percent of U.S. households stock market wealth.
https://ips-dc.org/the-richest-1-percent-own-a-greater-share-of-the-stock-market-than-ever-before/
You’re being misleading, or have been misleading about the allocation of wealth within the stock market.
Retirement should be a public service, not a form of gambling within a system set up for the rich.
Because it would be one less way for the rich to obfuscate their wealth growth, because the original purpose of distributing ownership through shares is an inherently flawed idea.
“Why would we get rid of the orphan killing machine!?!?!? We would have to replace it with a new one.”
Ok, lets do some math. The GDP of the US is $28 trillion. The population of 15 years and above is about 273.85 million. That gives about $102,000 annually per person in this category. The median personal income is about $40,500 annually. So almost 40% of the entire economy goes to wages and other income of normal people alone. And yes, it is median (not average) so we are talking normal people wages, not CEO wages. According to wikipedia, about 17.3% of the GDP is government consumption and 17.2% is capital investment. That leaves little over 25% unaccounted for. This will include everything not accounted above. Charities, rich people wages, lottery winnings, … and of course, stock market gains and dividends.
I can’t account for more of the 25% right now (it is late, maybe someday), but even if it all went to the filthily rich along with a proportional part of government consumption and capital investment, then the normal people still get 61% of the economy. In the absolute worst case. Seems to me like lot of the “ultra-wealthy own most of america” is just misinformation.
You shouldn’t be using GDP for this, as GDP is a notoriously bad metric for understanding the flow of wealth. If I pay you $100 to wash my car and you pay me $100 to wash your car, the GDP of our actions is $200 even though both of our wealth is unchanged. GDP is simply a measure of how fast money is circulating.
You need to be looking at that actual allocation of the wealth, as the rich like to use a myriad of loopholes to obfuscate their acquisitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
So you are explaining why the rich get less than what I calculated because GDP is overestimated while the way I calculated income of median people is solid.
Thanks for helping to make my argument.
The whole point is people are obsessed by the rich having ridiculous wealth on paper because of owning companies, but them owning companies does not take anything away from society. The factories produce goods for people and who receive the goods is determined by who buys the goods which is determined mainly by income, not wealth.
Or let me put it in different words: Let’s say you and I have the same wage across our lives. I save third of my paycheck for my entire life to build up savings. I only buy what I need. You spend yours on luxuries every month. After 40 years, is it unfair I have a lot of money and you don’t, since you spent it all? Should I be taxed more then you? We calculated what the income of the rich is above. The reason they have so much wealth is because instead of spending it on luxuries, they not only save it, but invest it. Investing does not give them sports car or better lifestyle. It helps produce more goods for the people that spend their money. It helps everyone become richer by increasing the overall economic output.
And yes, they get a share of this increased output as calculated above for helping make it by investing instead of spending their money on lavish parties, exotic trips or whatever you would spend that kind of money on.