Redistribution of Wealth, Why the Outrage?
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
The top 1% say; "bend over and take it like a poor person"
How many of you have money to spare? Well since you’re viewing such an abstract and low profile blog you probably have a lot of extra time so that pretty much means you’re unemployed or so rich you don’t have to work. I hope it’s the latter though I know it’s probably not because the majority of people in this country are not even near rich. We may be doing well enough and have enough and some to spare but maybe you’ve noticed that things seem to be getting tighter around the wallet for the past thirty to forty years? Here’s why, the top one percent of people have more money than the combined lower ninety five percent isn’t that wrong? depends if you’re on top or not.
Now, I’m not calling rich people dishonest or saying that they’re doing anything illegal. But there is something to be said about the lack of taxes being paid by the people on top and the huge chunk that the lower end pays, not in dollars but in percentage.
If you’re in the top 20% according to the heritage foundation (here) you pay 70% of income taxes, but when the top 5% make 350% more money than the median household is it really such a burden? and it’s not 70% of their income it’s 70% of the TOTAL tax paid, the average percentage they pay is a lot lower than the median household pays. The median household pays about half of what they make in all taxes combined. The taxes the rich pay are much lower in percentages but higher in dollars. The difference is how much of their income in percentage is being taken out of their pocket? not as much as is taken out of yours.
Sure paying a million dollars of income taxes seems like a lot to you but when you make six million dollars in a year a million in taxes is only one sixth of your income. but if I pay about 20 grand out of my 60 grand yearly salary that’s a third, for all those math wizzes out there it’s twice as much and none of it is disposable income because it leaves 40 grand and not five million dollars. I work with a guy who says, what do you think about redistribution of wealth? and he is seriously outraged that I think that it’s bad one way and good another and since he seems to be conservative at heart (if they have those) he will not be swayed and even though the social mobility in America is seriously less than even Britain he claims that it’s wrong to tax rich people more. So, I said let’s tax them the same. He said they already pay more than I do. Well sure, I said, in dollars. He looked at me as though to say duh! I get the hint and tell him that sure they pay way more dollars than I do in taxes but they pay way less in percentage. The average income family will pay about half of what they make in taxes every year, but an upper income family will pay only around a third or less. To which he made a flummoxed grunt and wandered off to some town hall meeting with his gun and as usual without his brain.
The bottom line (sorry about the pun) is that the top money makers have been gaining wealth since the 60′s and 70′s while the rest have been losing wealth even though the dollar amounts we make are about the same it’s the percentages that matter. And it’s the percentages that are shrinking for us and growing for them.