Billionaires paid lower tax rate than working class for first time in US history: study - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15040558
Billionaires paid less in taxes than the working class last year for the first time in U.S. history, a study found.

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found in their book-length study "The Triumph of Injustice" that the average tax rate paid by the richest 400 families in the country was lower than the rate paid by the bottom half of American households in 2018, The Washington Post reported.

The wealthiest 400 families had a 23 percent tax rate, compared to the bottom half of households, which had a 24.2 percent tax rate.

The richest 400 families had a 47 percent tax rate in 1980 and a 56 percent tax rate in 1960, while the working class's tax rate has remained relatively stable, according to the Post.

Saez and Zucman, economists at the University of California at Berkeley, analyzed Americans' effective tax rates since the 1960s, including federal income taxes, corporate taxes, state and local taxes, and "indirect taxes," which refer to licenses for businesses and motor vehicles, the Post reported.

The economists decided to examine the top 400 families because they have more money than the bottom 60 percent of households.

The wealthy's taxes have declined over time from various actions by lawmakers, but the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act significantly lowered taxes for this group.


https://thehill.com/policy/finance/dome ... -for-first

I'd point out these other things too:

CEO pay has increased 1,008% between 1978 and 2018, while typical worker pay has edged up 12%......

Left-leaning economists, politicians, and other commentators frequently use the soaring CEO-to-worker pay ratio as an example of why capitalism is inherently flawed and always leads to the rich getting richer, but my research has found that it is a byproduct of central banking and fiat (i.e., “paper”) currency rather than capitalism. To make a long story short, the Federal Reserve has excessively inflated the financial markets in its attempt to create an economic recovery from the Great Recession. This excessive asset price inflation has pushed U.S. household wealth far out of line with its historic relationship to the GDP, as the chart below shows. The wealthy have been the greatest beneficiaries of this asset price inflation because they own a disproportionate share of the assets that have been inflated by the Fed, which are stocks, bonds, and high-end real estate.


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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes ... -much/amp/

An excerpt from Keynes' 'general theory':

“For my own part, I believe there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth, but not for such large disparities as exist today. There are valuable human activities which require the motive of money-making and the environment of private wealth-ownership for their full fruition. Moreover, dangerous human proclivities can be canalised into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunities for money-making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandisement. It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens; and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative. But it is not necessary for the stimulation of these activities and the satisfaction of these proclivities that the game should be played for such high stakes as at present.”

Somewhat Related: Friedman, Hayek believed in a 'UBI'. Apparently, Nixon did too..
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#15040562
Presvias wrote:CEO pay has increased 1,008% between 1978 and 2018, while typical worker pay has edged up 12%...


So, to be clear, you're making the argument that someone who made $250 a week in 1978 only makes $280 a week now?
#15040567
^ Forbes seem to think so, seeing as I was copying and pasting lines from their article after all (!).

ITEOTD, Keynes, Friedman, the OECD, IMF, EU and even Thatcher in an interview with Larry King in 1993; they all decried excess greed & inequality and said the system needs significant reform.

(shrug)

What else can one say? Even silicon valley billionaires are warning about the imminent choruses of 'smelo my v boj pojdiom' if the status quo isn't sorted..sharpish.
#15040569
Godstud wrote:@BigSteve That might very well be the case when you figure in rising inflation, and stagnating wages.


But that's not what he said.

The comment is that CEO's have seen their pay rise 1,008% while the typical worker bee has only seen a rise of 12%. Inflation needn't be factored in.

I don't believe that...
#15040573
BigSteve wrote:But that's not what he said.

The comment is that CEO's have seen their pay rise 1,008% while the typical worker bee has only seen a rise of 12%. Inflation needn't be factored in.

I don't believe that...


https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

(shrug)

It's not what I said, it's what Forbes reposted from this 'economic policy institute'.
#15040580
I was 16 in 1978. I worked 20 hours a week as a busboy (at a high-end Greek restaurant that had a German Maitre' D and was owned by the Lucchese crime family). I made $2.60 an hour, plus I got 10% of one of the waitresses tips each night.

But my pay was only $52 a week before taxes (which, if I recall, knocked my take home pay down to about forty bucks). Had I been working 40 hours a week (which my Mom wouldn't allow) I'd have made $104 a week before taxes.

My cousin's kid, 17 years old, is a busboy in a high-end restaurant, also on Long Island. Over the summer the kid was making $14.00 an hour and got 15% of the waitresses tips.

My math may be a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure that's a shit-ton more than 12% more than I made for doing the same job in 1978...
Last edited by BigSteve on 09 Oct 2019 07:11, edited 1 time in total.
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BigSteve wrote:But that's not what he said.

The comment is that CEO's have seen their pay rise 1,008% while the typical worker bee has only seen a rise of 12%. Inflation needn't be factored in.

I don't believe that...

They are surely talking about real wages (which include inflation). It didn't explicitly state that which it ought to have, but I'm quite sure these are real figures not nominal.

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