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sc94597 on 07 September 2025
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Chrkeller said:
sc94597 said:

I know that. I paid $55,000 in taxes last year. 

I was defending the current system of the rich paying higher rates than the poor at the margins. 

I make about 5 times as much as my siblings (who make a median wage), but I don't benefit 5 times as much. I benefit a lot more than that. Over the course of my life-time I probably will be able to save an order of magnitude as much compared to them. And that is without progressive taxation. 

The system we live in today was constructed by the rich to benefit the rich. The idea that they are allowing the poor to steal from them is ridiculous given that. 

Liberal-"democracies" aren't proletarian states where the poor are fleecing the rich. They're designed to allow for the wealthy to get wealthy and in so much as there are social programs it is so that the system remains relatively stable and secure. 

All I know is people are leaving California and going to Texas and Florida.  Population dictates Electoral votes and number of house representatives...  tax high income earners even more isn't going to play out well in the long run.  

And the point of letting people be wealthy is to drive motivation that leads to innovation.  The US has 8 out of the top 10 companies in the world.  Nvidia is worth something like France + Germany  + UK stock market combined.... 

Just my 2 cents.  Take it or leave it.  To each their own and all that.  

This has more to do with urban planning policies than tax rates. Many southern states have very progressive income tax rates they inherited from the New Deal era. 

Like I said, I live in a purple state with a flat income tax at the state and local levels. Taxes are lower here. But because it is a rust-belt state it has historically had a population decline. It borders high tax states (New York and New Jersey.) If it were just about income and property taxes people would be fleeing here and not to Georgia and South Carolina, where income taxes are much higher.

The topic wasn't about whether people should be disproportionately wealthy (that is a different discussion), but rather whether or not it is stealing from the rich to have progressive income taxation. Given that the system we have is designed for the rich it is certainly not. Progressive income taxation was a solution to "save capitalism from itself" when the working class was calling for much more radical solutions.