dajo9 said:

---

Whenever wiaf goes on a rant about how it's impossible to improve America I start thinking about ways to evolve from America.

I bet wiaf's creative thinking would improve if the alternative wasn't the status quo.

---

I can't tell you what you don't want to hear. You have no original thoughts to add of your own, so you need to "evolve from America." In the words of a dead rock star: "One cannot evolve from one's robothood until one realizes how totally one has been robotized."

Blindly saying wealth tax or increase income taxes lacks the creative thinking that evolves from knowledge of the distinction between income inequality and wealth equality and how to address wealth inequality in a legal tax system. You fail to demonstrate a basic understanding of how the tax system functions, so you want to run some mystical place from America that doesn't exist. I can assure you that eliminating the step up in basis at death for example, will collect way more net tax revenues than the bizarro wealth taxes suggested in this thread. The problem is that when some of us try to tell you things that might actually work, you run back to that agenda where party elites want robots like you to go. So tell me, how do you tax a tech billionaire who take no salary, can borrow ten of millions against their stock of cash flow, and deduct the interest against their limited income and use some portion of their cash flow to donate millions to Democratic candidates and causes? Can you come up with specific items to tax this person?

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

bearister said:

---

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

---

And the numbers are total bullcrap. Tell me counselor:

How is total wealth for the US determined?

How is who is in the top 1% determined? Did you have Ms. Jenner on your list?

How is the total amount of wealth of the top 1% determined?

The problem is that there are no real sources. The IRS keeps records on taxable income limited amounts of non-taxable income. It didn't even keep track on non-taxable income years ago. I don't know if the numbers are to conservative or overstate the problem, just that the numbers you quote don't really exist in any data base.

Forbes Billionaires 2021: The Richest People in the World


https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/



Chart: The Top 10 Percent Own 70 Percent of U.S. Wealth | Statista


https://www.statista.com/chart/19635/wealth-distribution-percentiles-in-the-us/

bearister said:

---

Forbes Billionaires 2021: The Richest People in the World


https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/



Chart: The Top 10 Percent Own 70 Percent of U.S. Wealth | Statista


https://www.statista.com/chart/19635/wealth-distribution-percentiles-in-the-us/

---

No, see, it's all impossible to know. Impossible to change. No use even talking about it.

wifeisafurd said:

---

bearister said:

---

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

---

And the numbers are total bullcrap. Tell me counselor:

How is total wealth for the US determined?

How is who is in the top 1% determined? Did you have Ms. Jenner on your list?

How is the total amount of wealth of the top 1% determined?

The problem is that there are no real sources. The IRS keeps records on taxable income limited amounts of non-taxable income. It didn't even keep track on non-taxable income years ago. I don't know if the numbers are to conservative or overstate the problem, just that the numbers you quote don't really exist in any data base.

---

Typical Fox retort.
Just muddy it up, change the subject, don't address the point of the claim by arguing that the data is bad.
Barf !

I know the tactic well. It doesn't reflect well on you or your class, so just muck it up and don't answer to it.

I'd be more impressed if you added to discussion by sharing thoughts or projects designed to help others.

Go ahead, brag a little. It's allowed, for a good cause! As we've seen.

dajo9 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

concordtom said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

bearister said:

---

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

---

And the numbers are total bullcrap. Tell me counselor:

How is total wealth for the US determined?

How is who is in the top 1% determined? Did you have Ms. Jenner on your list?

How is the total amount of wealth of the top 1% determined?

The problem is that there are no real sources. The IRS keeps records on taxable income limited amounts of non-taxable income. It didn't even keep track on non-taxable income years ago. I don't know if the numbers are to conservative or overstate the problem, just that the numbers you quote don't really exist in any data base.

---

Typical Fox retort.
Just muddy it up, change the subject, don't address the point of the claim by arguing that the data is bad.
Barf !

I know the tactic well. It doesn't reflect well on you or your class, so just muck it up and don't answer to it.

I'd be more impressed if you added to discussion by sharing thoughts or projects designed to help others.

Go ahead, brag a little. It's allowed, for a good cause! As we've seen.

---

I think the point he might be making is that the composition of the people in the 1% changes over time. I bet if you check around on BI, most 1%ers are the first in their families to attain that status. Of course that's not the case everywhere but it's worth considering. You can't blame Zuckerberg for the Dubya Bush tax cuts, for example. Can you blame every first generation entrepreneur for wealth inequality when their parents often came over with just the clothes on their back and a dream?

We can take an informal poll. Who here is in a higher tax bracket than their parents? Who here has a net worth larger than their parents? Anyone 10x? 100x?

I've been in a higher tax bracket than my parents every year since I entered the workforce. My net worth exceeds theirs, although not by 10x yet. If you disregard real estate, I'm 10x but not 100x.

I have a number of friends who are well over 10x their parents' net worth and some probably 100x. I read these articles about how the wealth held by the 1% has grown over time, it always makes me wonder what the authors think about people like that.

---

There are some problems with your argument. First, inflation skews these intergenerational numbers badly. For example, sometime around 1970, my grandfather (Stanford grad) earned around $50k. Hard data is hard to find but I think that put him near the 1%, if not in it. But his wealth was not transformational (I never saw a dime). My grandfather's income put him in a 50% federal income tax bracket at the time - higher than me. Higher than everybody today.

The big problem with what you are saying is that being in the 1% all by itself is not an issue. The issue is the current 1% is so much more wealthy than prior generation 1%'s largely because of tax policy. Today we have transformational, intergenerational wealth. Democracy threatening wealth.

Howard Hughes was the most wealthy American in the 1960's and 1970's. He died in 1976 with $2.5 billion. That's about $12 billion today. On the Forbes 400 list today, that would put Hughes in a tie for #58 with Jeff Yass. Never heard of Jeff Yass? Me neither. So I looked him up.

Jeff Yass co-founded stock trading firm, Susquehanna International Group. He is on the executive advisory council of the libertarian Cato Institute. He donated over $2 million to Rand Paul's presidential campaign. He donated $20 million to the right wing Club for Growth, just in 2020. Turns out, Yass was one one of the top 10 political donors of 2020, giving $25 million to various Republican candidates. I get the feeling that if he were a Democrat, he would be famous because of attacks from right wing media. As it is, these are the people running our country, and we don't even know them.

Not content with just running America, Yass is also a major funder of the Kohelet Policy Forum. Never heard of the Kohelet Policy Forum? Me neither, so I looked it up. Linked below is an article from Haaretz calling them, "The right wing think tank that quietly "runs the Knesset".
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/israel-news/.premium-the-right-wing-think-tank-that-quietly-runs-the-knesset-1.6514722

I'm pretty confident t Yass would agree with wifeisafurd in this discussion.

---

Here we go again. Your assumption the rich pay income taxes is wrong. You just simply default to income taxes is the problem and let's raise them. I can't tell you what you don't want to hear. How would you tax Mrs. Jobs?

Telling me some righty doesn't want to pay income taxes does nothing for me, when the rich from all sides of the politics don't pay income taxes with a few exceptions, don't want to pay taxes and have not paid much in taxes since the inception of the income tax. So tell me how would you tax Mrs. Jobs (I'm assuming his wealth is tied up in stock and well)? The problem is you don't want to get in the weeds to discuss taxes because you don't know what you are talking about, as evidence by your reference to marginal tax rates.

And then we get to the total ignorance of citing marginal tax rates. Let's be clear we are taking about high income earners, not the wealthy. I was churning out tax returns at a Big 8 in the late 70s and there is no way the high income earners (not the rich who didn't pay taxes) were paying anywhere near the taxes they pay today. That was the day of the tax shelter, where you had things like 20 to 1 write-offs and were typically seen in real estate and oil gas investments. Every doctor had one. Most tax shelter investments of individuals during the late 1970's and the 1980's were carried out through partnerships and S corps. Per the IRS, the total amount of net losses reported grew 525.8% between 1975 and 1986, much faster than the 136.9% increase in the total amount of net income reported. The growth in losses is consistent with an increase in tax shelter activity during that period. The doctor invested $10K and assumed say $100K in non-recourse debt and the shelter threw off early losses due to up front costs. So the doctor wrote off $110K and saved $55K. if the doctor's investment his a dry well, he walked away from his non-recourse debt, and under then tax law that lasted for decades that allowed negative tax basis and did not result in relief of non-recourse debt being taxable, there was no tax hit. If the investment hit oil, the doctor simply bought more shelters.Between 1979 and 1986, the annual number of tax shelter returns under examination by the IRS more than doubled from 182,731 to 426,634. I.R.S. 1980 ANNUAL REPORT. And that is just the audit. It was presumed over a million individual taxpayers were using tax shelters annually. Id. Odds are your grandfather was one of them.

The irony is these tax shelters are usually created by the government to promote a certain desirable behavior, usually a long-term investment, to help the economy or for some social reason often under the premise that this generates even more tax revenue (sound familiar?) So for example, starting in the 1950s, to encourage the investment in mining and oil, the US government allows the exploration and up from costs funded by borrowing to be distributed as deductions to investors. Think of it as todays tax credits for solar or low income housing. But as long as you do this you distort the tax system for the benefit of the high income earner and sometimes the wealthy. Do you want to give those credits up Mr. Liberal?


Since then, with a drop in marginal tax rates during the Bush Sr. Presidency came many changes to the substantive tax law, including significant tightening of the depreciation recapture rules, revision of the partnership special allocation rules, enactment of the add-on and alternative minimum taxes, the limitations on investment interest and prepaid interest, the at-risk rules (can't deduct beyond a negative basis which was huge), the straddle rules, the OID rules, and the passive activity loss rules. This meant that high earners effectively now actually pay the highest marginal rates. So congrats, we now have the successful working professionals now funding government.

For the real high earners (CEOs) today there and corps there are off-shoring, and financing arrangements, which are quite prevalent in tech and there are some retirement plan plays, but the day of tax shelters are gone, and there is not a tax accountant or attorney still alive that doesn't break out into laughter when people like you start talking about how much more taxes people paid back in the day.


Last time I looked Rand Paul was not able to ever make tax policy. I guess Biden and Congress doesn't feel your mandate.

I will let you address inflation with Unit 2.

The reality is that there are no real numbers on wealth distribution today, and in a capitalistic system there has always been winners and losers since a capitalistic system rewards those who Unit 2 was talking about. We do that in this country because we believe in the long run incentivizing people matters to the economy and the greater good (see the discussion above on governmental acton) and is more efficient, causes more innovative action, better consumer choice, etc. There is a reason why the American economy is the largest economy in the world. The idea is that the losers get some level of assistance, the level of which is debated. The problem is not taxation, but the ability to pass on wealth to future generations. Capitalists argue that a capitalist society is fair because you gain the rewards of your hard work. But, often people are rich, simply because they inherit wealth or are born into a privileged class. So when Unit 2 and I start talking about things like estate taxes and changing tax basis that is where we are coming from. So once again I ask you how would you tax Mrs. Jobs?

wifeisafurd said:

---

concordtom said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

bearister said:

---

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

---

And the numbers are total bullcrap. Tell me counselor:

How is total wealth for the US determined?

How is who is in the top 1% determined? Did you have Ms. Jenner on your list?

How is the total amount of wealth of the top 1% determined?

The problem is that there are no real sources. The IRS keeps records on taxable income limited amounts of non-taxable income. It didn't even keep track on non-taxable income years ago. I don't know if the numbers are to conservative or overstate the problem, just that the numbers you quote don't really exist in any data base.

---

Typical Fox retort.
Just muddy it up, change the subject, don't address the point of the claim by arguing that the data is bad.
Barf !

---

Tom, in your case it is a matter of you not being able to keep up

---

As I said before:

"I'd be more impressed if you added to discussion by sharing thoughts or projects designed to help others."

dajo9 said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

dajo9 said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

dajo9 said:

---

bearister said:

---

Forbes Billionaires 2021: The Richest People in the World


https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/



Chart: The Top 10 Percent Own 70 Percent of U.S. Wealth | Statista


https://www.statista.com/chart/19635/wealth-distribution-percentiles-in-the-us/

---

No, see, it's all impossible to know. Impossible to change. No use even talking about it.

---

Still waiting for those tax specifics.

---

bearister already provided that in a link on the first page of this thread. I'm sorry you can't keep up. In the future I hope you get a chance to tell your case to the jury. I doubt they buy it.

---

So how would you tax Mrs. Jobs?

---

I would have Mrs. Jobs self report her net worth and I would tax it. There would be audits and financial punishments for underreporting.

---

In a stunning move today, the federal government determined that Cal will play in the NCAA championship football game against Rice on April 1. Once President Biden had asked both teams to self report what their football records should be, both teams had projected undefeated records, clearing a path to the championship game. When asked if there should be complicated guidelines to determine football records, President Biden declared "there will be audits and financial punishments based on the absolute judgment of a division of armed auditors." Biden added that he wanted to "avoid making complicated rules that would be subject to legal challenges, and result in the abandonment of his new championship process, as had happened with prior attempts to determine national championships."

When asked about constitutional challenges to his orders, Biden responded that while his chief advisor, someone named Dajo, said "resolution of these issues within the framework of the Constitution is almost impossible to imagine" he, Biden, "wanted to consider his actions as a way to 'evolve from America' and to do so was the necessary to stop the ever greater concentration of the same teams fighting for the football national championship." Biden added he has a mandate from America to have Cal and Rice in the Championship game and therefore the Constitution really didn't matter. "As my advisor Dajo says: 'we are still stuck with their policies of football inequality... because our Constitution is designed to prevent change'."

When asked if football championships over the last fifty years went generally to the same teams, President Biden declared he relied on a Vanity Fair article that said that college football is now controlled by 1% of the top teams 98% more than at some other random time he might pick on a whim. Biden also said he wanted to tax all football programs that attended mediocre bowl games on their net proceeds because Elizabeth Warren's tax plan wanted to provide income taxes on programs at that income level, even though programs that went to "major" bowl games would continue to avoid taxes.

dajo9 said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

dajo9 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

concordtom said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

bearister said:

---

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

---

And the numbers are total bullcrap. Tell me counselor:

How is total wealth for the US determined?

How is who is in the top 1% determined? Did you have Ms. Jenner on your list?

How is the total amount of wealth of the top 1% determined?

The problem is that there are no real sources. The IRS keeps records on taxable income limited amounts of non-taxable income. It didn't even keep track on non-taxable income years ago. I don't know if the numbers are to conservative or overstate the problem, just that the numbers you quote don't really exist in any data base.

---

Typical Fox retort.
Just muddy it up, change the subject, don't address the point of the claim by arguing that the data is bad.
Barf !

I know the tactic well. It doesn't reflect well on you or your class, so just muck it up and don't answer to it.

I'd be more impressed if you added to discussion by sharing thoughts or projects designed to help others.

Go ahead, brag a little. It's allowed, for a good cause! As we've seen.

---

I think the point he might be making is that the composition of the people in the 1% changes over time. I bet if you check around on BI, most 1%ers are the first in their families to attain that status. Of course that's not the case everywhere but it's worth considering. You can't blame Zuckerberg for the Dubya Bush tax cuts, for example. Can you blame every first generation entrepreneur for wealth inequality when their parents often came over with just the clothes on their back and a dream?

We can take an informal poll. Who here is in a higher tax bracket than their parents? Who here has a net worth larger than their parents? Anyone 10x? 100x?

I've been in a higher tax bracket than my parents every year since I entered the workforce. My net worth exceeds theirs, although not by 10x yet. If you disregard real estate, I'm 10x but not 100x.

I have a number of friends who are well over 10x their parents' net worth and some probably 100x. I read these articles about how the wealth held by the 1% has grown over time, it always makes me wonder what the authors think about people like that.

---

There are some problems with your argument. First, inflation skews these intergenerational numbers badly. For example, sometime around 1970, my grandfather (Stanford grad) earned around $50k. Hard data is hard to find but I think that put him near the 1%, if not in it. But his wealth was not transformational (I never saw a dime). My grandfather's income put him in a 50% federal income tax bracket at the time - higher than me. Higher than everybody today.

The big problem with what you are saying is that being in the 1% all by itself is not an issue. The issue is the current 1% is so much more wealthy than prior generation 1%'s largely because of tax policy. Today we have transformational, intergenerational wealth. Democracy threatening wealth.

Howard Hughes was the most wealthy American in the 1960's and 1970's. He died in 1976 with $2.5 billion. That's about $12 billion today. On the Forbes 400 list today, that would put Hughes in a tie for #58 with Jeff Yass. Never heard of Jeff Yass? Me neither. So I looked him up.

Jeff Yass co-founded stock trading firm, Susquehanna International Group. He is on the executive advisory council of the libertarian Cato Institute. He donated over $2 million to Rand Paul's presidential campaign. He donated $20 million to the right wing Club for Growth, just in 2020. Turns out, Yass was one one of the top 10 political donors of 2020, giving $25 million to various Republican candidates. I get the feeling that if he were a Democrat, he would be famous because of attacks from right wing media. As it is, these are the people running our country, and we don't even know them.

Not content with just running America, Yass is also a major funder of the Kohelet Policy Forum. Never heard of the Kohelet Policy Forum? Me neither, so I looked it up. Linked below is an article from Haaretz calling them, "The right wing think tank that quietly "runs the Knesset".
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/israel-news/.premium-the-right-wing-think-tank-that-quietly-runs-the-knesset-1.6514722

I'm pretty confident t Yass would agree with wifeisafurd in this discussion.

---

Here we go again. Your assumption the rich pay income taxes is wrong. You just simply default to income taxes is the problem and let's raise them. I can't tell you what you don't want to hear. How would you tax Mrs. Jobs?

Telling me some righty doesn't want to pay income taxes does nothing for me, when the rich from all sides of the politics don't pay income taxes with a few exceptions, don't want to pay taxes and have not paid much in taxes since the inception of the income tax. So tell me how would you tax Mrs. Jobs (I'm assuming his wealth is tied up in stock and well)? The problem is you don't want to get in the weeds to discuss taxes because you don't know what you are talking about, as evidence by your reference to marginal tax rates.

And then we get to the total ignorance of citing marginal tax rates. Let's be clear we are taking about high income earners, not the wealthy. I was churning out tax returns at a Big 8 in the late 70s and there is no way the high income earners (not the rich who didn't pay taxes) were paying anywhere near the taxes they pay today. That was the day of the tax shelter, where you had things like 20 to 1 write-offs and were typically seen in real estate and oil gas investments. Every doctor had one. Most tax shelter investments of individuals during the late 1970's and the 1980's were carried out through partnerships and S corps. Per the IRS, the total amount of net losses reported grew 525.8% between 1975 and 1986, much faster than the 136.9% increase in the total amount of net income reported. The growth in losses is consistent with an increase in tax shelter activity during that period. The doctor invested $10K and assumed say $100K in non-recourse debt and the shelter threw off early losses due to up front costs. So the doctor wrote off $110K and saved $55K. if the doctor's investment his a dry well, he walked away from his non-recourse debt, and under then tax law that lasted for decades that allowed negative tax basis and did not result in relief of non-recourse debt being taxable, there was no tax hit. If the investment hit oil, the doctor simply bought more shelters.Between 1979 and 1986, the annual number of tax shelter returns under examination by the IRS more than doubled from 182,731 to 426,634. I.R.S. 1980 ANNUAL REPORT. And that is just the audit. It was presumed over a million individual taxpayers were using tax shelters annually. Id. Odds are your grandfather was one of them.

The irony is these tax shelters are usually created by the government to promote a certain desirable behavior, usually a long-term investment, to help the economy or for some social reason often under the premise that this generates even more tax revenue (sound familiar?) So for example, starting in the 1950s, to encourage the investment in mining and oil, the US government allows the exploration and up from costs funded by borrowing to be distributed as deductions to investors. Think of it as todays tax credits for solar or low income housing. But as long as you do this you distort the tax system for the benefit of the high income earner and sometimes the wealthy. Do you want to give those credits up Mr. Liberal?


Since then, with a drop in marginal tax rates during the Bush Sr. Presidency came many changes to the substantive tax law, including significant tightening of the depreciation recapture rules, revision of the partnership special allocation rules, enactment of the add-on and alternative minimum taxes, the limitations on investment interest and prepaid interest, the at-risk rules (can't deduct beyond a negative basis which was huge), the straddle rules, the OID rules, and the passive activity loss rules. This meant that high earners effectively now actually pay the highest marginal rates. So congrats, we now have the successful working professionals now funding government.

For the real high earners (CEOs) today there and corps there are off-shoring, and financing arrangements, which are quite prevalent in tech and there are some retirement plan plays, but the day of tax shelters are gone, and there is not a tax accountant or attorney still alive that doesn't break out into laughter when people like you start talking about how much more taxes people paid back in the day.


Last time I looked Rand Paul was not able to ever make tax policy. I guess Biden and Congress doesn't feel your mandate.

I will let you address inflation with Unit 2.

The reality is that there are no real numbers on wealth distribution today, and in a capitalistic system there has always been winners and losers since a capitalistic system rewards those who Unit 2 was talking about. We do that in this country because we believe in the long run incentivizing people matters to the economy and the greater good (see the discussion above on governmental acton) and is more efficient, causes more innovative action, better consumer choice, etc. There is a reason why the American economy is the largest economy in the world. The idea is that the losers get some level of assistance, the level of which is debated. The problem is not taxation, but the ability to pass on wealth to future generations. Capitalists argue that a capitalist society is fair because you gain the rewards of your hard work. But, often people are rich, simply because they inherit wealth or are born into a privileged class. So when Unit 2 and I start talking about things like estate taxes and changing tax basis that is where we are coming from. So once again I ask you how would you tax Mrs. Jobs?

---

tl;dr again. But I did read some of the beginning before I got bored with your poor reading comprehension.

Where did I say we should raise income taxes?

Also, the question unit2 asked was what bracket people are in compared to previous generations. That is a question about marginal tax rates.

So much typing by you for nothing.

---

Where did I say we should raise income taxes?

in this thread: Warren plan , etc. Also repeatedly in threads on this forum. Perhaps in you case its selective memory loss? There was then the point to be made about your grandfathers' 50% tax rate, which I responded to.

Also, the question unit2 asked was what bracket people are in compared to previous generations. That is a question about marginal tax rates.

I suggest you reread Unit 2 thread in terms of reading comprehension. It is about how who now is a billionaire is changing, and the number of them.

You have become known as Mr.. Deflection because you can't respond to arguments, but only with pity comments to deflect your lack of substance. Or you become bored with things you don't understand or like. Your response is a primary example of that.

dajo9 said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

dajo9 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

concordtom said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

bearister said:

---

10 years later, the disparity is much worse:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"The top 1% percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

---

And the numbers are total bullcrap. Tell me counselor:

How is total wealth for the US determined?

How is who is in the top 1% determined? Did you have Ms. Jenner on your list?

How is the total amount of wealth of the top 1% determined?

The problem is that there are no real sources. The IRS keeps records on taxable income limited amounts of non-taxable income. It didn't even keep track on non-taxable income years ago. I don't know if the numbers are to conservative or overstate the problem, just that the numbers you quote don't really exist in any data base.

---

Typical Fox retort.
Just muddy it up, change the subject, don't address the point of the claim by arguing that the data is bad.
Barf !

I know the tactic well. It doesn't reflect well on you or your class, so just muck it up and don't answer to it.

I'd be more impressed if you added to discussion by sharing thoughts or projects designed to help others.

Go ahead, brag a little. It's allowed, for a good cause! As we've seen.

---

I think the point he might be making is that the composition of the people in the 1% changes over time. I bet if you check around on BI, most 1%ers are the first in their families to attain that status. Of course that's not the case everywhere but it's worth considering. You can't blame Zuckerberg for the Dubya Bush tax cuts, for example. Can you blame every first generation entrepreneur for wealth inequality when their parents often came over with just the clothes on their back and a dream?

We can take an informal poll. Who here is in a higher tax bracket than their parents? Who here has a net worth larger than their parents? Anyone 10x? 100x?

I've been in a higher tax bracket than my parents every year since I entered the workforce. My net worth exceeds theirs, although not by 10x yet. If you disregard real estate, I'm 10x but not 100x.

I have a number of friends who are well over 10x their parents' net worth and some probably 100x. I read these articles about how the wealth held by the 1% has grown over time, it always makes me wonder what the authors think about people like that.

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There are some problems with your argument. First, inflation skews these intergenerational numbers badly. For example, sometime around 1970, my grandfather (Stanford grad) earned around $50k. Hard data is hard to find but I think that put him near the 1%, if not in it. But his wealth was not transformational (I never saw a dime). My grandfather's income put him in a 50% federal income tax bracket at the time - higher than me. Higher than everybody today.

The big problem with what you are saying is that being in the 1% all by itself is not an issue. The issue is the current 1% is so much more wealthy than prior generation 1%'s largely because of tax policy. Today we have transformational, intergenerational wealth. Democracy threatening wealth.

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Also, the question unit2 asked was what bracket people are in compared to previous generations. That is a question about marginal tax rates.

So much typing by you for nothing.

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I think your response is a bit evasive. My point is that most wealthy people (eg 1%ers) are self-made so when we make these decade long comparisons, it creates the inaccurate impression that there is far more continuity among that class than their actually is. Comparing marginal rates is irrelevant to this conversation. For the most part if you aren't in the top federal bracket, you aren't that wealthy. If you are so wealthy that you don't pay any taxes, lol, then it's pretty obvious and the children are less likely to surpass their parents (although I still know some of those outcomes as well).

With few obvious exceptions, people aren't creating true intergenerational wealth (9 figure net worth) by making a nice salary. They're doing it through the value of equity and always have been. They pay capital gains taxes (or none at all) but they don't pay income tax. WIAF spoke to that so I won't belabor it.

I think inflation is largely irrelevant to the discussion of wealth accumulation in the past 4 decades because asset inflation has exceeded "inflation" over the period. Boomers have tons of money and haven't been harmed by inflation.

And just want to +1 to everything WIAF said above about taxes. Not everyone might agree with his commentary (I generally do on tax), but he knows what he's talking about as an experienced practitioner. I think people generally have an understand that there are a lot of different ways people can legally avoid creating taxable income, but they don't really understand how it works or how ill-equipped our government is to address it. Making small tweaks to the tax code and focusing on income tax will never really address the problem of wealth inequality.

wifeisafurd said:

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You have become known as Mr.. Deflection because you can't respond to arguments, but only with pity comments to deflect your lack of substance. Or you become bored with things you don't understand or like. Your response is a primary example of that.

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THIS ^^^ has been my experience as well.

His knowledge base is pretty poor and more often than not, he's unable to focus on a topic because his partisan "pom-poms" get in the way of having a genuinely objective conversation. Thats why he winds up constantly deflecting.

A prime example of this is highlighting Jeff Yass (the head of market-making firm Susquehanna) as the poster child for using money to influence people like Rand Paul, and, what is wrong with America in general. But as you so accurately pointed out, Paul literally has nothing to do with income tax policy.

Dajo has no interest in learning anything.
His "tldr" reply to your post about tax policy and the generation of tax shelters pretty much says it all.

He has it all figured out.
He's not here to learn anything.
He's too busy "evolving from America"

And calling people like me (who voted for Obama, Clinton, and Biden), and have had money at RISK in the financial markets... an Establishment Conservative.