And you want us to believe billionaires make no money ?? No millions a year ,,no interest on those billions ?
Most billionaires do not have "earned taxable income" subject to US income tax. Their wealth does generate income but it's usually in the form of investment income which is simply rolled back into more investment and not realized as income earned. They will pay a tax on it when it is received as income but they could elect to take small disbursements subject to minimal taxation.
Again.... The top marginal income tax rate is applied to earned income, not wealth. I could literally be $10 million in debt and have income exceeding $1 million for the year.... I'm not wealthy, I'm $10 million in debt. My wealth has nothing to do with my income.
What you are falling for is class warfare rhetoric from Socialists. They need for you to believe that people with wealth are evil and deserve to have their wealth taken away by the power of the state. They need you to believe the system unfairly gives them advantages you don't get. They depend on you being jealous and envious of what you don't have that someone else does. And mostly, they want you to believe that punishing those evil wealthy bastards somehow benefits you in the long run. None of this is true.
Boss I completely understand what you say about income I'm far from jealous or envious of others being quite wealthy myself.....but when folks are starving even while working a couple of jobs something is wrong with the system Can you at least agree the wealth of those million and billionaires have increased greatly while the rest of the "suckers" stay in the same place?
ME making money on wise investments has zip zero ******* zilch to do with jack and jill dropping out of HS and working min wage jobs to support their kids on...
That is the difference between /wise decisions/ vs /stupid decisions/ nothing more:
The /wise/ decision is to wait to have a kid until you can pay for it's diapers and food.
The /stupid/ decision is to be impatient and get saddled with massive rent, a car payment (or two), a big cell phone bill (or two), and then toss in a kid or two while you're working min wage jobs.
Simple shit, but ya'll conflate this logic with "feels" - problem is that feels ain't so bright, in fact that's typically how you end up with kids when you can't afford them...
In a capitalistic economy there are always workers with the fewest skills, and there are jobs that require few skills. And there is no way one can define "good" choices without there also being "bad" choices. But if people are willing to work and try to support their families, America has stood for making sure jobs pay enough for families to believe children can have better lives.
it seems to me the question is whether Trump represents something new in terms of "expectations."
No. America has always stood for 'opportunity' - that is not the same as just handing people a "good life."
Look, I agree to a point; I didn't want "better" for my kids, but I wanted them to have a "good life" - so I taught them to stay in school, to wait to have children, to pursue "wealth" not specifically "money" itself but a "comfortable" financial standing [stuff like budgeting, when to buy a house or car, investing, financial independence, retirement, etc.] I instilled within them a "drive" for "betterment" in their finances/their 'status' (apartment to house, being able to get cars, snow machines, boats, saving for their kids expenses and college, etc.)
I also told them about reality; that /they/ were responsible for achieving /all/ of that stuff for themselves and their wives and kids because it wasn't anyone else's responsibility. And the second part of that "reality" is that if you /do/ let (or expect) others to 'provide' for you, then you'll /never/ achieve shit; you'll have the bare minimum for survival (if you're lucky) because there are more hands looking for freebies then there will ever be money given out - hard facts of life. My kids, unlike the recent socialist crops out there, know damn well that if they want a "good life" they have to work for it, they know it's not going to just land in their lap, they know it's probably going to take some time and effort, they understand /patience/ - turtle and the hare kind of shit. My eldest sons, in their early 20s, are all well on their way to being wealthy, or at a minimum very comfortably happy, already. Not one of them has kids, not even the 30 year old daughter, they're /all/ waiting until they've got their own shit straight before they drag kids into it.
It has /nothing/ to do with how much /I/ (the wealthy) make, it has to do with the individual's drive to succeed, where they are putting their efforts - if you're more concerned about social media/partying/showing up your friends (new car, phone, whatever)/or even playing at political activism, than you are about advancing your own life (through your career and financial status) then your priorities are not going to give you a "good life" - they'll give you the bare minimum (if you're lucky) - because that's what level of /effort/ you're putting into your financial standing and your own future. Again, wise decisions vs stupid decisions.
That's the rub you bleeding heart SJW's need to understand; you cannot /make/ someone put in effort to better their own lives, only they can do that. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at a "user" they are not going to magically turn into an "achiever" until /they/ decide to. All you do by handing out "free" money (welfare) is prolong the time these types can "use" instead of "achieving" for themselves.
When you raise the min wage, businesses will /not/ eat the cost, never will, they pass those costs onto consumers period. Businesses have "rules" too, like not living pay check to pay check - they cannot ever do that, ever - which is why they have built in "profit margins" that they will /always/ meet, because not doing so means they go bankrupt - seriously. So, if you raise the minimum wage, so the cost of their employees goes up, they have exactly two choices. 1) they lay employees off, stop hiring, etc. or 2) they increase prices to cover that cost. Typically you'll see 2, and especially at the end of a recession like we've been in, because businesses have already streamlined their employee numbers as much as they can. So they raise the prices, which means, the cost of living goes up and wipes out the min wage increase. It's a cycle and there is /nothing/ you can do about it. Whining about being "fair" isn't going to change the hard reality that businesses MUST have a certain profit margin or they go under, it is not going to change the fact that businesses are going to "reallocate" the new "expenses" of employee wage increases.
No matter how much sympathy you want to have for "poor folk" who "need help" a business is /not/ there to help, they are there to make money, period. You cannot change that, the best you can do is harness that known reality - unleash the dogs and let them grow so they hire more people; more jobs, more upward mobility for the employees, the more upward mobility for the employees there is, the more folks are getting financially "comfortable" That is the best you can hope for from businesses when it comes down to it.
