It is understandable that you want these issues fixed. But do you think those who don’t use these services should be burdened with the cost of fixing them?

In Europe, social costs are borne by the middle class to provide a safety net for the middle class. In the USA, we expect the wealthy to provide for all of society. It is highly irrational.

> But do you think those who don’t use these services should be burdened with the cost of fixing them?

Yes. In /most/ cases, the wealthy are only wealthy because they have (directly or indirectly) profited from the middle class. The wealthy should be paying a fair share of taxes in return, for upkeep of the public services the middle class use, and which the wealthy are perfectly entitled to also use.

The middle class should pay their fair share of taxes as well, of course, but for the most part, they do. They pay less taxes than the wealthy, because a significant fraction of their income does go toward basic necessities, whereas for the wealthy, basic necessities is a negligible fraction of income.

The middle classes are getting goods and services in return. The jobs for the middle class is also being provided by the big companies. Thereby creating a tax base for a govt whose only job is to maintain law and order, build infrastructure and maintain public utilities while conducting fair elections.

But we see so much bloat that they can’t ever get out of a deficit. That only keeps growing. A hungry maw that never shuts without ever solving any problem.

If 350 million dollars spent over 12 months can’t solve homelessness in SF. How much will it take? 600 million? 1 billion? 1.5 billion? What’s that “magic” number?

In a capitalist economy, we create Capital. It is capital that funds industry. You can’t take capital and make it spending money.

What do you think the wealthy spend their money on other than ‘basic necessities’? Why would anyone be wealthy and only spend on basic necessities? They spend on luxury. They spend on high living and expensive things.

So there are resorts. And staff that work in resorts. There are sports cars and people who work in those factories and mechanics who specialize in fixing them. There are private planes. And so pilots, stewardess, fancy cheese plates and catering services. If the wealthy aren’t allowed to be wealthy, we won’t have a whole swath of jobs.

If we want a healthy middle class, we should stop guilting the wealthy. We should allow them to spend their millions. It’s their money. Let’s hope and pray that they spend it and spend it well and spend it in all the stupid and obscene and wasteful ways. Because that would create a healthy working middle class.

Just allow CA zillionaires BE zilloinaires and watch the job markets flourish. Equality doesn’t mean everyone is equal, it simply means that everyone in their category is equal to each other. If we had economic equality for all, we’d be Cuba, not CA.

Instead of punishing the wealthy with higher taxes that go into Big Govt’s Maw, if we let them actually spend it...we’d have more circulation of money in the economy. Inequality of wealth occurs because there isn’t enough circulation.

Most money that wealthy people have is not spent on consumer goods. It is plowed into more investment.

Who spends more of their income? A paycheck-to-paycheck worker, or a wealthy person? The wealthy person puts most of their money into retirement accounts, college accounts, real estate equity, investment accounts, trusts, tax havens, shell companies... If you have 5 million paycheck-to-paycheck workers they will spend every cent; while if you have a single billionaire making exactly the same amount, almost none of it will be recirculated.

Once there's enough of it, it turns into political power. Which has a tendency to benefit the wealthy class, almost always at the expense of everyone else. At the other end of every single massive failure of government there is a very wealthy person reaping the benefits of the power their wealth has enabled: healthcare, military, housing, transportation, education... etc etc.

Just praying that they'll spend their money on charity or something that benefits everyone is not enough.

Let's also not forget that many wealthy people only pay at most 15% on taxes because the tax structure has more or less been lobbied by the wealthy in favor of the wealthy. Most middle class people pay 25-35%, and have neither time nor resources to lobby otherwise.

15% on a million net is more than taxes from middle class wage which actually goes towards negative tax if one takes the benefits of a living in an incorporated city and if there are children using public schools etc.

Money taxed from capital gains isn’t really the same as taxes levied on wages. This is very fundamental tax logic. Would you like me to explain why?

[..] The justification for a lower tax rate on capital gains relative to ordinary income is threefold: it is not indexed for inflation, it is a double tax, and it encourages present consumption over future consumption. ... Finally, a capital gains tax, like nearly all of the federal tax code, is a tax on future consumption.[..]

Investment does benefit other people. That's the primary point of investment.

Of course, it’s plowed back into investment. The prime directive of a capitalistic system is to create CAPITAL. Capital creates industry and jobs and money circulation. Taxes are the bloat in the beast called Big Govt. it sits there like inside the belly of a constipated beached whale.

Even pension funds and unions invest in the companies that make the profit. Chicago Teachers Union, iirc, has over 45k shares of AMZN. They also took a guillotine outside a Jeff Bezos building to make a ‘point’. It’s just hypocrisy if one believes it and ignorance if one parrots the ‘eat the rich’ line.

So when exactly do people start becoming responsible for their own lives? Social net is for those who genuinely need help. The weak, unfortunate, disabled and for those who need a helping hand. Society cannot shoulder the responsibility to take care of individuals whose are supposed to know better.

Political power does not benefit the wealthy class at all. This is absolutely untrue, but is often parroted over and over without people questioning the meaning of it.

A lot of the attitude comes from people without looking into the homes of people who have means and wondering why they can’t have what someone else does..what they don’t see is the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice and time away from family and other things that people take for granted. Why do they do it? To be wealthy is one of the goals. It is absolutely cruel to punish people for chasing their dreams. Taxes on the wealthy is punitive because they have to pay the troll under the bridge to cross it.

When I see someone railing against millionaires about the drug addicts and homeless on SF, I want to ask if they ever asked the parents of these model citizens? Their blood relatives? Their so called friends? Their community? Their high school friends?

If everyone took care of 1. Themselves 2. Their immediate family 3. Their extended family 4. Their friends 5. Their community 6. Their extended community FIRST, we wouldn’t have to knock on the doors of millionaires. Who cares how the rich live...most of us should look at how we ourselves live and how our loved ones and those we care about live.

It’s like watching a child in a park watching a rich kid hack into an obscenely large cake. Another parent who is feeding his own kid a modest snack drags the starving kid to the rich kid’s parents and demands that they share their big fat cake with the starving kid. Hey! Isn’t it always easier to make plans for how others should generously share their wealth?

The problem is not ‘the wealthy’. The problem is lack of healthy community and healthy supportive families. No amount of wealth sharing or stealing from the rich or taxes or plain old money will fix it.