[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

"Income for the top 20 is 9 Trillion, I'm not looking for the defined numbers"

Check your math. Those numbers are wrong. Nobody has income of $450 billion, which is what your math implies. There aren't 20 people whose combined *income* is $9 trillion.

Oh, You thought 20 people not percent. That would have worked better for you

"The overwhelming majority of realized capital gains go to the highest income households. "

No, because they can take compensation as stock options, etc instead of wages

Duh! Because they have the most money to invest. Would you pass a law setting a cap for how much someone can invest? If Jeff Bezos invests in the stock market, does that harm you somehow? If those wealthy people took all their money out of the stock market and buried it in their backyards, who would be better off? No one. Absolutely no one. So why do you care?

You're fixated on a small number of uber wealthy people whose wealth may not ne equitable, but it isn't hurting anybody.

I notice that you ALWAYS post how big of a piece of the pie is owned by those at the top, but you NEVER post the share of the total tax burden currently paid by them. Why is that? Answer - the truth doesn't fully support your narrative that they are freeloaders who aren't paying their fair share.

"the tax rate on realized capital gains is lower than the tax rate on wages"

And there's a darn good reason for that...investing involves risk. Lots of risk, many different kinds of risk. It's good if we incentivize people to invest.

I posted a link showing that the top 1% had 20% of the total income, but paid 40% of the total tax. In total, we have a progressive tax system. We can talk about tweaking the rates to make it work better, but we don't have a regressive tax system, not even close. You never, ever include that part. Because you ignore everything which doesn't serve the liberal Narrative.

Because you use the figure for income, not total compensation and it skews the numbers. It's done on purpose so you think the tax rate is more progressive than it is.

I don't like the idea of billionaires living near people who can't afford medical care, I hate that. We spend 50% more per capita than anyone else who has universal care, and who gets that money? But the math could not be more clear, you can't help large numbers of people by taking more from a small number of zillionaires. Re-distribution is part of the solution obviously, but you also need to give more people at the bottom the tools and the incentive, to lift themselves up. Liberals tend to purposely ignore that part. It's not that hard to do in most cases. A strong family with great parents is 95% of what's needed. Liberals won't admit that, either.

Conservatives haven't found a way to legislate that yet and plenty of the people they promote aren't great examples.

If a man had five children by three different baby mamas, would that be ok?

Or Rep. Cawthorn who now calls for holy war: “It’s time for us to stand up and declare boldly that, as men & women of faith, we have a duty to stand against tyranny .. It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows .. (against) people who hate the things we believe in.” (He's got a couple of closets also)