Strikes

[ousdahl]

Yeah. I should add, tax capital gains or whatever just like they tax income.

go easy on me you guys. It’s not like they teach you this suit in business school.

[Mjl]

The biggest and most meaningful change to the tax code (which means it’s never going to happen) should be in how social security tax is collected. They should exempt the first $30-50k of income from the tax- the most regressive portion and raise the cap to $500k, perhaps beginning a phase-out at $250k. For purposes of social security calculations any capital gains above $100k should be treated as ordinary income, with the same caps. This way someone who is not “earning income” is still paying SS, not just working schlubs

So SS would be different in terms of its purpose. Instead of being a safe retirement fund, it would be a vehicle for the wealthier people (though not necessarily even wealthy) to pay for the retirement of the poor?

[PhDhawk]

Yeah. I should add, tax capital gains or whatever just like they tax income.

go easy on me you guys. It’s not like they teach you this suit in business school.

Even then capital gains are only taxed when you sell them.

And I'm not trying to be hard on you or anything, and I'm certainly no expert on this.

You and I probably disagree on what the tax burden should be for a billionaire, but I'm pretty sure that we both agree that they are not paying their fair share, and that they should have a higher tax burden than they do.

I feel like wealth taxes are a messy slippery slope. (Although, I'd feel the same way about income taxes if they didn't exist and were proposed today...and maybe I'd be right about that). Capital gains taxes have their limitations.

But it seems to me like anyone on the Forbes 500 list should be paying more in taxes than I do...and not just a higher rate, but I think a lot of them pay less in TOTAL taxes than I do. And that's fucked up.

[ousdahl]

Yeah.

Who cares if those Amazon workers are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s up to them to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps. Cuz the important thing is, Bezos gets his space vacation.

[zsn]

The biggest and most meaningful change to the tax code (which means it’s never going to happen) should be in how social security tax is collected. They should exempt the first $30-50k of income from the tax- the most regressive portion and raise the cap to $500k, perhaps beginning a phase-out at $250k. For purposes of social security calculations any capital gains above $100k should be treated as ordinary income, with the same caps. This way someone who is not “earning income” is still paying SS, not just working schlubs

So SS would be different in terms of its purpose. Instead of being a safe retirement fund, it would be a vehicle for the wealthier people (though not necessarily even wealthy) to pay for the retirement of the poor?

It would actually be closer to SS original intent to provide for the less well-off retirees. Under the suggestion I made a majority of people would only see a modest, if any, change in the SS tax payment. It would just remove the regressive nature of the tax

[Mjl]

The biggest and most meaningful change to the tax code (which means it’s never going to happen) should be in how social security tax is collected. They should exempt the first $30-50k of income from the tax- the most regressive portion and raise the cap to $500k, perhaps beginning a phase-out at $250k. For purposes of social security calculations any capital gains above $100k should be treated as ordinary income, with the same caps. This way someone who is not “earning income” is still paying SS, not just working schlubs

So SS would be different in terms of its purpose. Instead of being a safe retirement fund, it would be a vehicle for the wealthier people (though not necessarily even wealthy) to pay for the retirement of the poor?

It would actually be closer to SS original intent to provide for the less well-off retirees. Under the suggestion I made a majority of people would only see a modest, if any, change in the SS tax payment. It would just remove the regressive nature of the tax

You're right that it's not politically going to happen.

Why cap at all? That's just making me pay a higher percentage than the top 1%. Unless you're saying I would get that money back by increasing the amount social security can pay out.

[ousdahl]

Who owns the Post, again??

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... lionaires/

[Sparko]

Who owns the Post, again??

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... lionaires/

Misses the point. It is about clawing back enough of the ill-gotten gains. Sleeping at night not fearing the reaper is a huge win for Bezos. But he scorches his human responsibility with an army as ruthless and red as the embers of Hell.

[Deleted User 863]

Rich man bad!

[ousdahl]

When they’re that rich, yea.

My favorite part of the article was this:

“People should pay taxes on untaxed capital gains” is what you come up with if you just don’t think anyone should have enough money to be able to shoot themselves into space, and you think that the government should tax that money even if it doesn’t benefit anyone else — heck, even if it costs the rest of us something.

They might as well have just said “because fuck you lulz”

[Deleted User 863]

Don't think i will ever understand that way of thinking.

[ousdahl]

Which way?

[Deleted User 863]

That rich people are bad just because they're rich and they are the cause of all your problems.

[ousdahl]

Bro did you even read the excerpt?

The only bad thing is making the rich pay their fair share. It doesn’t benefit anyone else, and in fact, somehow costs the rest of us something.

The important thing is rich folks really should have enough money to shoot themselves into space.

[Deleted User 863]

All depends on what you consider "their fair share".

We've done this all before. It's a philosophical difference we will never agree on.

Imo, many/most rich people already pay their fair share.

[Deleted User 863]

Rich folks should spend their money however they want. If they want to spend 25mil going to space then more power to them.

[ousdahl]

I’d ask how taxing the rich doesn’t benefit anyone else, and what something that something is that it costs the rest of us, but yea, we’ve done this all before.

#TemporarilyEmbarrassedMillionaires

[Deleted User 863]

I’d ask how taxing the rich doesn’t benefit anyone else, and what something that something is that it costs the rest of us, but yea, we’ve done this all before.

#TemporarilyEmbarrassedMillionaires

You always come off as feeling super entitled.

Taxing in general benefits all of us. Never said it didn't.

I want to work and keep my money that i earn. I suspect rich people feel the same. I want to pay a reasonable amount of taxes that support and pay for things our society sees as important.

[Deleted User 863]

I do not think that we all deserve to live a life of luxury.

You know why Jeff Bezos has more money than us? It's because he was smarter and worked harder than us. Think he spent hours a day on a messageboard complaining about rich people? I don't. He was probably working or coming up with ideas to make himself rich instead.

[ousdahl]

I’m not sure how questioning a billionaire’s logic for why he shouldn’t pay taxes makes me come across as the entitled one, except that it’s par for the course here in Merica.

And sure maybe Bezos is smart, and maybe he even works hard! But I’d say he has more money than us by first winning the tech bubble lottery, then by perpetuating a trickle down corporate culture that funnels wealth to the top while exploiting tax loopholes and suppressing workers.

But hey, I don’t wanna come across as entitled.

And we agree that not everyone deserves to live a life of luxury. If I may ask you though:

at what point does a life of luxury become a life of excess?

How many of us deserve to live a life of poverty?