Unfortunately that's not always the case. Living in Germany, I've heard and read (good example /de/ subreddit) loads of hate against middle and upper-middle class people. People who are nowhere near close to being rich. This is also a group that's being taxed as much as the actual rich, or in practice even more, because the rich can afford to "optimise" their taxes.
There's a sizeable group of people that just cannot stand someone working hard and reaping the fruits. Again I'm not talking about Lambo-driving, yacht owners but an average doctor, small business owner or an engineer for that matter.
Per the old meme, success breeds jealousy, but unfortunately recently it breeds hate and violence.
Doctors' trade group actively lobbies to keep the supply of physicians below demand so as to inflate their guilds' average salary.
Critiques of the merely well-off can sometimes be more indicative of the major problems facing America, since there are so many more in this category. For example, by critiquing this 1% class you also get into very interesting questions about land use in California.
Lots of people "work hard", and almost none of them are rich. So obviously it's not "working hard" that gives you that money.
At some point very early on, your money starts making money and you cease to do "work" to make that number grow. It seems inappropriate to equivocate capital gains with gainful employment.
Indeed, and for many of us, it's not just our money that makes money, but our education, which is largely a form of wealth passed from one generation to the next. I would be nowhere without the education that my parents paid for, out of the money that they made from their education.
The answer I think depends on where their allegiances lie. The reason why the reactionary “PMC” [0] has become something of a meme is because you’ll often encounter people at this level of affluence who defend the ultrawealthy and their predation of the poor through things like the private healthcare system in the US.
From a material perspective, it makes sense that they behave this way (the ultrawealthy are more likely to sign their paychecks and they’re less exposed to many of the harms present further down the income chain), but does allow for a politics of resentment to develop around the position they occupy in society. Most working class people are unlikely to encounter a billionaire in their lifetimes, but will come across many upper income individuals who will tell them (either directly or indirectly) that they deserve their low station or that nothing can really be done to improve their material standing.
Friend of mine has no particular family wealth. But with 20 years under his belt is a mid level manager. Sends his kid to a private school. Says the other parents at his private school are all upper class. And assume he is too. The things they casually say makes him hate them.
On the contrary: you always target exactly "the guy earning 250k/y". Because people earning a lot of money but still earning through work are the easiest to target, since they can not just move somewhere else easily.
In germany it is even worse. The tax rate is highly progressive, topping off at 50,5%. But the additional social security and penson payments are capped, so above a certain wage you actually pay less in total for social security, pension and taxes. There is a big hump which you need to overcome to become really wealthy.
Of course once you are so wealthy that the majority of your income is passive income from e.g. stock market gains, the capital gains tax is at 25%.
The situation is so bad that in relation to what your employer pays for you (Arbeitgeberbrutto), you get much less than 50%.
Yeah, I really don’t understand why the bracket of “extreme wealth” is $250k? I’d be all for adding some bracket for earners over $1MM or over a certain amount of capital gains tax. However, a lot of people rely on capital gains for their retirement, so a tax on that money would negatively affect anyone who puts money in the stock market for retirement...
Taxing the super rich is a great idea, but at the end of the day the govt just needs to spend less money on programs that don’t work or aren’t needed.
>Taxing the super rich is a great idea, but at the end of the day the govt just needs to spend less money on programs that don’t work or aren’t needed.
Translation:
>You could recover some of the wealth that is systemically siphoned (by inflation)/withheld (via wage suppression) from everyone, but you really should look at that whole wealth redistribution mechanism working against centralization of capital in private hands. That's the problem.
Not really buying it. The fact you're pushing these systems off as not working leads me to conclude you've not met the level of understanding to safely do away with Chesterton's fence. There is tons of room for improvement in the execution of these safety nets; but the Market doesn't want people feeling safe. Risk aversion from guaranteed stability makes exploitative employment/compensation schemes more difficult to sustain.
> However, a lot of people rely on capital gains for their retirement, so a tax on that money would negatively affect anyone who puts money in the stock market for retirement...
That's pretty much already solved with 401ks and IRAs which are retirement investment accounts with tax advantages.
Yes. Call it "The Millionth", which would include the 300ish wealthiest Americans. Everyone in the Forbes 400 has a net worth of over two billion. Even though within that group there is a wide gap between the top and bottom of the list, it's nothing compared to be difference between the top and bottom of the 1%.
The real issue should be the multiplier on CEO pay and boards. 300x or more is pretty obviously ridiculous. Hard work should be rewarding, but is anyone really working 300 times harder than the delivery guy? I could believe 10x I guess.
You're just describing our psuedo free market society. Why stop there? It's who you know, it's luck, it's timing, it's who you're paying off, it's who you're lobbying, it's how much money you already have, etc.
What's the value of the delivery guy's network? The CEO's presumably lets him achieve results that others can't. He can broker better deals, hire better talent, push for more favorable laws. That's value to the firm, to shareholders, hence better pay.
The difference between a good and a bad CEO might only change the value of a company by 1%. But it turns out that 1% of 100 billion dollars, is 1 billion dollars.
The reason why CEOs get paid so much is not because of how hard they work, it is because the effect of their actions is massive, and eaking out that extra 1% is worth it.
It’s the handful of people who control 90% of all wealth. “1%” was a catchy soundbite but it was always the 0.0001%