'Absurd!': US Billionaires Pay Lower Tax Rate Than Working Class for First Time
'Absurd!': US Billionaires Pay Lower Tax Rate Than Working Class for First Time
"It's time to tax the billionaires," economist Gabriel Zucman argues in a new analysis.
Their tax rate isn’t the real issue. The fact that they extract that much wealth out of the labor and production of others is the real problem.
No human being should have a billion dollars. The workers who got you to your level of privilege and status should be paid based on their worth.
A boss that pays fairly would never become a billionaire, and their workers would live good lives being paid the actual value of their labor. Increased demand from increased household discretionary income would create a boom on the supply side.
But it will never happen, because billionaires own everything and will always manufacture consent. Democracy will die to thunderous applause.
That there are even billionaires, let alone multi-billionaires. It's an immoral, unethical system that fundamentally exploited labor that allowed for this.
That productivity has gone up but wages have remained stagnant should boil everyone's blood. All the wealth stolen and sent upwards into fewer and fewer hands. Legalized theft by way of capitalism.
Great article. Nice to see an economist doing such important work. I don't really understand finances. I snipped the parts of the article that helped me understand the finding/headling. There's a great chart in the article of taxation differences since the 1960s too - staggering! Plutocracy in action!
Published in The New York Times with the headline "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires," Zucman's analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they "live off their wealth"—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.
Stock gains aren't currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.
"But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets," Zucman noted. "Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter."
BREAKING NEWS: Republican voters still learning about the Trump Era Tax Reform 8 years later!
But it isn't for the first time. This has been happening for years
They used to push for a flat tax where everyone, billionaires and minimum wage workers alike, would pay the same rate. They did one better and now billionaires pay a lower rate than everyone else. Steve Forbes was an idiot. They managed to do it far better than he could have ever imagined when he ran for President in the 90's. Fucking nepo babies...
The moneyed class wet dream come true. 🤬🤬🤬
but they graciously pay salaries of so many people, we shouldn't even tax them!
Not even our closest cousins would tolerate a member that hoarded bananas so. No, it would be fangs, and ripping and all sorts of face-eating, and a whole bunch of other stuff we should be taking inspiration from.
Eat the riches!
Taxing billionaires will just get rolled back, the problem is Capitalism itself.
Collectivize the Means of Production.
