82 Percent of the Wealth Generated Last Year 'Went to the Richest 1 Percent of the Global Population

On behalf of many knowledgeable American members of this forum, I'm embarrassed for you...

 

One way rich people avoid taxes is depreciating an appreciating asset, like apartment buildings or rental houses.

 

Still didn't answer my question. How would you resolve this concentration of wealth?

So your solution is raise taxes on the rich and then hand the money out to everyone else AKA redistribution of wealth.

 

Now that we've seen the claims from the Left's propaganda bullhorns, let's see what others have to say.

First, Distinguished Professor of Economics Walter Williams of George Mason University:

Next, the Pew Research Center, citing figures from the Department of Treasury, IRS and OMB:

 

Fortunately, I have no designs to be king...

 

Do you think it was the ****ers that are taking home all of this cash that did the actual work that brought that money into their company? Some executive sitting in an office building negotiating with other executives and snorting blow all day isn't bringing that cash in, it's the sweatshop kids and middle aged retail employees that manufacture their goods and sell them.

Do you think that they're blessed because God looks favorably upon them? Do you think that a loving, just god would create and bless a class of people who only stop pouring industrial waste into rivers when we hold a gun to their head? Do you think that Jesus Christ would have walked into an executive boardroom and done anything other than start overturning tables and chasing people with a whip? Jesus was a friend of whores and beggars that chased the moneychangers out of the temple. Whores and beggars are closer to God, according to the Christian faith, than any rich man.

 

So you just complain and can't think of a better system. Neither can anyone else.

 

Nope. Best read thoroughly in future before jumping in. They're not my words. Nor intention.

 

Well that's a good thing. I'd still like to know what your solution is to what you claim is a problem. How would you fix this inequity of wealth?

 

In the golden age of the American middle-class, the average executives were making 50 to 60 times that of their workers. Today, it more in the neighborhood of 300 to 500 times.

While I know it’s fun to yell “communist” at anyone who questions wealth, there is certainly room for a middle ground. Perhaps regulations that limit the differentiation to 200 times the wages of the workers. Too many disaffected workers is what leads to communism. The idea is not to let that happen.

 

It's like trying to nail down Jello, isn't it, joseph?

Former "progressive" David Horowitz wrote about this in The Politics of Bad Faith:

The late great Jean-Francois Revel discussed this at even greater length in his last book Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era. Here's the blurb about the book at Amazon:

Then again, we have the socialist utopia in Venezuela to observe...



...no annoying income inequality!

Venezuela Reaches the Final Stage of Socialism: No Toilet Paper
https://www.cato.org/blog/venezuela-reaches-final-stage-socialism-no-toilet-paper

 

Are you equally as troubled by the corresponding rise in income of Hollywood stars and sports figures? Should their wages be limited by janitors and hot dog vendors?

 

So, success is condemnable and there is no such thing as failure? There are no such things as bank robbers, murderers, armed robbers, burglars, leeches, screw offs, drunks, partiers, bums, lazy people, or people who are covetous, lustfull, and jealous of what others have? There are only wealthy people and the victims of wealthy people? LOL! Sorry but that's absurd. Since when does murdering and robbing someone make you equal to them? And you have the nerve to call my simplified proposition the most ignorant post ever!? That's rich coming from such a destitute environment. And btw, what makes you think that the countess poor and those far less than wealthy in the whole wide world are dissatisfied with their place and blessings? Maybe they are, in many instances, happier and richer than the wealthiest in the world. Should they be violently attacked and cannibalized as well, for being far too happy and joyous? Perhaps that will be in a following era, huh?

 

OK - you beat your last post for stupid. Congratulations.
Where did I condemn success? I pointed out the reality of leveraging labor to achieve wealth. As to the rest of your blathering straw-man rant ... whatever.

 

Those people are employees as well - mostly of corporate entities. Should we look at the disparity between a cameraman and a studio exec with the actors falling somewhere in-between - why not?

Eventually, it's the optics of these disparities that cause problems. The French Revolution. The overthrow of the Czars in Russia. The American Revolution. The Communist Revolution in China. The Cuban Revolution. The Revolution in Iran. All brought about by huge disparity in wealth.

I think the American blend of capitalism and socialism is one of the better forms of government - but it's starting to tip into the land of the Oligarchy that eventually leads to problems. I would rather it tip back a little the other direction. There is plenty of middle ground here to work with - it doesn't have to be just A or B.

 

Less than half the world's population live in countries that would be considered developed. These people aren't going to get any wealth, and they're not American so who cares.

 

There are two possible positions here, so far as I can see.

The first one is: any progressive income taxation is unjust. Everyone should pay the same taxes -- or their taxation should be determined by their consumption, via a sales tax (the Fair Tax idea), not an income tax, and certainly not a graduated ('progressive' income tax). People who hold this idea hold it because it seems to them fair. (Okay, like all of us, they're perhaps a teeny bit influenced by the personal impact their political ideas, if implemented, will have on them. But it's not really fruitful to discuss motivations when we can discuss ideas standing on their own.)

The second idea is that a graduated income tax -- where someone making $25 000 a year pays a smaller proportion of his income than someone making $25 000 000 -- is not inherently unfair.

If someone adheres to the first view, then the argument simply becomes one of fairness. Even if it could be proved that a society with very high taxation of the rich would flourish, and one with a 'flat tax' or a non-graduated income tax would be a Third-world hell ... that would be irrelevant. The issue is fairness. Most of the arguments against higher taxes I have seen seem to stem from the first viewpoint.

If you admit that the second idea is not inherently unfair, then the argument just becomes a pragmatic one. Given the needs of society -- for more F35s, more billions to Pakistan and Israel, etc -- then what arrangement of taxes will give us the money we need. Here is where the 'Laffer Curve' makes its appearance -- finding that point between 0% taxation, which would bring in nothing, and 100% taxation, which would pretty quickly result in the same thing -- that maximizes state income, or at least gives the state the money it needs to supply weaponry to Al Quaeda affiliates in Syria, build roads, pay veterans' benefits, etc.

So then we have to decide what are the needs of society. After we decide that, we just have to decide the most efficient tax regime for raising the money we need, which is more or less a technical question. It's deciding what the "needs of society" (i.e., the state) are that should be the focus of political argument, not the technical issue of what the tax system ought to be ... provided we agree that a graduated income tax is not inherently unfair.

If, as at least some liberals seem to believe, we need to raise more armored divisions and put them up on the border to Russia, to keep the Russians from marching through the Arc de Triomphe, then we better raise the money to pay for them.

 

Statistics, it's for story tellers.

 

Less tax measured in £ or less tax measured in lies?

Super rich pay a massive amount of tax. A poor person sod all tax.
A vested interest might seek to represent this dishonestly.

A super rich person pays more in tax than a poor person earns.
And yet people amongst us will find some spurious and dishonest way of measuring their tax so that it = nothing.

Here is the trick to tax honesty. Measure tax paid in £.

 

The American Revolution was not brought about by a disparity of wealth, huge or otherwise. It was brought about by the illegal taxes imposed on the Colonists by the British government (beginning with the Sugar Act of 1764) and the determination of Parliament, expressed in the Declaratory Act of 1766, to "bind the colonies and people of America ... in all cases whatsoever". To make a long, complicated story short and simple, the American Revolution was brought about by a TAX REVOLT.

Furthermore, some of the other revolutions you mentioned, like our own, had more to do with power than wealth.

 

Or, in the immortal words of Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, statistics are for idiots.

 

The reason is simple and the solution is also simple.

The reason? The major central banks of the world. Take the Fed? They have had incredibly low interest rates for many years. And the rich benefit FAR more from this. The poor cannot get credit. And the middle class can only get a limited amount - and what they can get they just buy stuff with..they rarely invest it. But the rich can get gigantic amounts of it. And since they already have all the 'stuff' they more or less want, instead of wasting it on 'toys' - they invest most of it and make even more money.
But what to invest it in?
Put it in equities (stocks). With the Fed (and other central banks around the world) dumping trillions into the equity markets (heck, the Japanese central bank is actually buying gigantic amounts of stocks through ETF's)...this practically guarantees that markets will skyrocket.
And who benefits the most by that? The rich by MILES.
Anyone who thinks the stock markets of the world are shooting up due to great economic fundamentals is clueless less on the subject. It's central banks propping them up...MASSIVELY.
Trump even admitted this during the election.

The solution? End/neuter central banks. Allow them to ONLY be able to manage the inflation rate. Right now, the Federal Reserve can prop up/force down interest rates, buy corporations, bail out banks (both foreign and domestic), buy stocks. manipulate equity markets and print virtually limitless amounts of money.
And who do you think the Fed is going to help? The poor/middle class? Get real. They are going to help their rich buddies in banks and on Wall Street (of course, they will never admit this).
And they are NOT a government institution. They are a private corporation with shares (owned by the banks) that the government has some oversight over.
Of course, they con everyone into thinking that they are doing it for the masses. And it works because the masses are INCREDIBLY IGNORANT when it comes to macroeconomics.

Neuter the Fed and the wealth of the world will be largely distributed amongst the lower classes. There will still be inequality - but at a much smaller level then it is today.

 

It's because the Have Nots only focus on what they don't have.

 

I don't know about the UK, but in the US the top 1% pay ~ 50% of federal income taxes.

 

Especially when looking over the fence. I see you are a student of human nature.