I often wonder what would happen if there were no wealthy, you know, the top 5% of Americans available to tax??
Wonder who whould be paying the lions share of taxes then??
if the middle class had more money then they would pick up the difference imo.... I don't think taxes would just stop flowing in if the wealthiest among us had less of their wealth, and the middle class workers had a little more of the wealth to be had.
But I agree with you on the concept....the successful, the generous wealthy are needed to give charity, to help out those with the least...they are an important part of keeping society together and the poorest among us fed and clothed...
If everyone were poor and there were no generous wealthy, we'd ALL be crap out of luck!
Yes.
This is the part that I think is being missed in what appears to be political tunnel vision.
Some seem to think that the bottom 40% somehow DESERVE what the top 5% have. At least they seem to think that they deserve to have what those in the top 5% who acquired it through commerce and industry and investment have. (They don't seem to resent the multi millions made by prominent Hollywood, TV, and Sports figures.)
But it is from those top 5% that we get patrons of the arts, foundations, grant and scholarship funds, hospital wings, museum expansions and exhibits, new chemistry labs or new buildings for universities, not to mention great corporations who hire and train tens of thousands of employees and who provide at least part of the underpinning of capital, expansion, and market for thousands of small businesses.
The miracle of America is that every natural born and immigrant citizen has opportunity to aspire to be in that top 5%. And no matter how disadvantaged they might have been starting out, those with the ability and ambition to get there, get there.
The reason that the bottom 40% and the middle 55% should be contributing proportionately as much as the top 5% is not because we need their money. Government is already taking in way more money than it needs to do its constitutional responsibilities. It is because the bottom 40% need to have a stake and investment in the process and they need to experience the consequences of what government ordains for everybody else. Otherwise they have absolutely no incentive to make the process more fair, equitable, or better. They have EVERY incentive to keep themselves free of consequence and responsibility and even to keep themselves less prosperous. That can be a very unhealthy and corrupting thing.