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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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politics
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The OLIGARCH Act specifically establishes four tax brackets:
· 2% for all wealth between 1,000 and 10,000 times median household wealth;
· 4% for all wealth between 10,000 and 100,000 times median household wealth;
· 6% for all wealth between 100,000 and 1,000,000 times median household wealth;
· 8% for all wealth over 1,000,000 times median household wealth
For reference, current median household wealth is around $120k: https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/
So a the current rate would be
· 2% for all wealth between $120 million and $1.2 billion
· 4% for all wealth between $1.2 billion and $12 billion
· 6% for all wealth between $12 billion and $120 billion
· 8% for all wealth over $120 billion
That top tax rate would apply to only two people, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, with a few more just barely below the $120 billion line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_Americans_by_net_worth
1 million times more wealth than the median, holy shit.
And yet somehow taxing them at a whopping whole 8% is still somehow seen as not only progress, but "radical" progress at that.
I feel bad or saying this, because I'm sure just that took a lot of doing, but wow is it pathetic when you look at the grand scheme of things.
And before anyone "it's better than nothing" 's me - it's the equivalent of nothing, those with the means will easily find ways around it, and even if they did pay the whole 8%, they'll still be a million times richer than not even the rest of us, but the wealthy half of the rest of us.
So yeah, pathetic.
The more I read and hear about extreme wealth inequality the more I am convinced we need real drastic measures: wealth cap.
yes, to abolish the system that literally feeds on that inequality to exist.
Anything else (like a cap, but especially one that high, no one needs a billion dollars, more importantly no one earns a billion dollars, not without mass exploitation of others) just allows it to continue.
Even if you'd ever get a wealth cap in (you wouldn't), they would find ways around it, if not money in the bank it'll be slaves in the factory. No one should exist in society that has that magnitude more resources and power than 99.999% of humanity. One person having even 100 times more than most others doesn't even seem justifiable to me, no one works 100 times harder than others, so a million times more? A hundred million times more? It's obscene.
Take the extra step off that ledge of comfort you're hanging on to and join us on the anti-capitalist side. It takes work and is not a fun journey of discovery, but it will open your eyes and focus you on to what actually needs to change, rather than the distractions and scratches on the surface those in power allow through once in a while to keep you occupied on anything but destroying the system that gives them all this power.
It might have been from Twitter or somewhere else, but awhile back someone said something akin to after someone passes $999 million, take the rest for the public good and give them a trophy that says "I won capitalism." I think it's a lovely idea.
Why so much money????
No single person is capable of earning 999 million.
Why are you people so so keen to keep a class of obscenely rich people above you?
Why can't you even imagine a world where individuals simply cannot exploit people and resources to the point where they have hundreds of thousands of times more than you and me for doing fuck all???
It genuinely baffles and frustrates me.
Why???
But it’s also the first step - ideally, with this change in place they could tweak it to increase the percentage over time and make it more ironclad so those rich folk pay their fair share.
It really sucks, but sometimes change takes a looooong time. And it really is better than nothing because the precedent is there at the very least.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, as they say.
The precedent was set before and destroyed. Precedent is not permanent.
Never going to happen.
Playing within the rules of a system designed to benefit the rich and powerful will never result in anyone winning but the rich and powerful.
Incremental changes like this serve to placate the masses and enable the system to continue uninterrupted, if there was any threat of actual interruption, the proposed change would never have even been allowed to reach this point.
It is people like you buying in to the lie and willing to settle for droplets of piss instead of a steady stream that ensure that we'll never actually stop being pissed on.
This is such a juvenile take that I thankfully put down when I grew out of highschool. It's people like you that make any sort of discourse completely exhausting. You're suggesting a path that inevitably leads to full on bloody revolution which would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in armed conflicts across the country. That's not even getting into the likely tens of millions that would die due to supply lines of medicine being disrupted, the horrible toll it would take on geopolitics, the power vacuum that invites far worse than the GOP into power. It's this warped sense of thinking that lets fascists into office because people stop voting against them since they feel it's pointless when it's clearly not as this last midterm showed. Michigan is already leaps and bounds better than it was and that's from a single election cycle. We can change the system without revolution, because we're already doing it. Go outside, get involved with your local politics, and vote. The changes are already happening.
Then you also need to look at more than just “wealth cap” and “tax the rich”, because wealth inequality comes from more than just “the rich hoarding everything”. Both of those would help, and it’s a great start, but we need to look at other factors that contribute to the same issues - otherwise, all the money is just gonna stay in another rich crook’s pockets.
Take modern urban infrastructure. The reason there’s tons of urban sprawl, ghettos, and urban decay in the US, for example, is because of all the shitty laws the US has about parking minimums (the reason why malls need to have large parking lots) and how the auto industry abuses loopholes in environmental standards and laws to allow light trucks (SUVs and the giant pickup trucks) to… well, exist. The US also doesn’t really like doing mixed zoning despite the improved economic performance, and we tend to have huge streets that act like roads - so to basically reach a destination (a street), we have to drive there (like on a road). We can’t really walk or cycle or even use public transit in some areas.
And all of that is actively contributing to the wealth inequality because it gets incredibly expensive to live near where work is, and in order to afford something that is remotely in the same area, you tend to be pretty far away. Far away enough to require a car that you need to purchase in the first place, so you effectively need to somehow have money before you can consider driving to the place where you can make money. That’s just one tiny aspect of a very big and very problematic picture. Don’t just stop at “DAE THINK WE SHULD TAX DA RICH”, actually advocate to solve the underlying problems themselves so that we can tell our government what to do with all that money.
Lmfao, so many words to blame everything but capitalism.
Well, the underlying problem is capitalism, and our governments work for capitalism, so how will addressing a bunch of symptoms of capitalism but not capitalism itself, and continuing to allow our corrupt capitalistic governments to continue deciding how they spend our money (hint: it goes in their and their buddies pockets), going to solve anything???
You absolutely aren't as progressive as you like to think you are as long as you refuse to address the actual problem.
Lmao, so little to say outside of “le capitalism bad”.
The actual problem is how the US allowed corporate entities to become integrated into the governmental - that’s not capitalism, that’s fucking corruption. You want an actual good example of capitalism done right? Look at the Netherlands - they’re a socialist country, but do have a capitalist economy with a lot of laws to ensure that corporations can’t get away with the shit they can in the US. Their corporations aren’t tied into their governmental systems - whereas the US has unfortunately allowed corporations the power and influence to basically put in and keep people who can be easily bought in power. If you put rich corporate motherfuckers in power, well yeah you’re gonna end up with the shitshow that is the US today. I will say that I wished we re-instated Eisenhower’s income tax in addition to these wealth taxes to really put something on those fuckers.
So, once again: advocate to change the issues at their core, not just go “lmao eat da rich” because there’s much more nuance that you’re apparently not realizing.
Obligatory:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/