Re:Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship
by trainsplanes on Thursday August 05, 2021 @09:40AM
(#28073590)
What percent of wealth does the top 1% possess vs the bottom 90 percent combined?
Wikipedia says the top 1% possesses precisely 38.5% of the country's wealth, so it's more than reasonable that they shoulder at least 38.5% of the taxes. [1] This stat is also from 2016. That divide has grown immensely these past few years.
The stat the Tax Foundation presents is made to make us sympathetic towards people who control basically the entire nation's wealth and pay, frankly, very little. There's a reason they're not putting their wealth in the EU or developed Asian countries--they'd be paying more.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
Re:Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship
by Aunche on Thursday August 05, 2021 @09:49AM
(#28073704)
Income and this income taxes are first derivatives of wealth. It doesn't make sense to directly compare the two. The wealthy spend relatively little of their wealth on discretionary spending.
Re:Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship
by sobellian on Thursday August 05, 2021 @10:08AM
(#28073926)
Ordinary income is not the first derivative of wealth, capital gains also contribute.
Re:Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship
by trainsplanes on Thursday August 05, 2021 @10:26PM
(#28082623)
>The wealthy spend relatively little of their wealth on discretionary spending.
So they have unnecessary wealth just sitting around that they don't need.
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...
>The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (38.5 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.9 percent).
IMO, this is one of this is why the American government seems so bad at spending money. It's not their money, so there's little incentive to care if it's misappropriated.