Remember if you make under $400k you are poor.
If you rely on a wage whatsoever, you’re closer to a peasant than a Capitalist
Why stop at 1%, though?
I agree, the top 5% would be individuals with incomes of 290k a year and higher.
Wtf 5 out of 100 people make 200k??
I need to immigrate asap.
Cancelled by all the money spent on private services that are public elsewhere. The grass isn’t greener when you look at the big picture.
Sure… half the country also makes less than 75k a year. I guess it depends on what industry you’re in.
Median income is 38k (edit: around 40k depending on source) in the US, not 75k
https://smartasset.com/data-studies/top-1-percent-income-2024
First sentence.
That’s the household median income
Oh wow, that is incredibly low.
Engineering. But I just realized the cost of living is similarly insane XD
Well this is where mean vs median becomes important…
But what if I become a top-5%-er?
It’s also important to note than depending on how we define “income”, many of the richest have no “income” or a misleading small income (Zukerburg has, like, a 1$ salary or something) because they don’t their money from a wage… they get it from returns on investment. This is also why income tax is a misguided policy goal a lot of the time. We need to tax the investment income of the rich, not their salary.
Because the top 1% really isn’t that high and they hold 99% of the wealth. The other 99% of people hold 1% of the wealth. What do you think the annual income to be in the 1% is?
I’ll put the rest of my response in a spoiler so you can think about it for a second, or comment it if you want, out of curiosity.
spoiler
Most people think the top 1% make millions of dollars annually from the conversations and surveys I’ve seen. The actual threshold for 1% varies by state, but in 2023, the national average was $652,657. While it is much higher than the average income of ~$37,500, it is not as high as most people think.
If there is anyone who thinks that an income of nearly $700k per year doesn’t make someone wealthy, you’re insane.
We’re not talking just “wealthy”, we’re talking the top 1% of all income.
Most Americans would probably say people making $100k/yr are “wealthy”. That’s because the average income is less than $40k. There’s a difference between just “wealthy” and the top 1% for most people.
Even then, that depends a lot on where you live. $100k/year in California is a lot different than $100k/year in Mississippi.
That’s edging toward muddying the point. You could also bring heritage (aka “race”) into the argument, or age, or disability, et al, and risk doing the same. No one’s debating granular data per geophysical location, etc., as this is a median national income bifurcation topic.
They might also use that term because they confuse it with “rich”, and that’s a whole other issue: intentionally sub-par (mis)education to maintain the socioeconomic divide.
A third of the wealth in 2021, that didn’t increase to 99% since
The top 1% have about 42% of the wealth.
Speaking in broad volumetric terms and then switching to simply stating (see: spoiler) the per annum floor for said 1% is sloppy and misleading. Please include the range that the 1% encompasses, earnings wise, to keep your modeling consistent.
Because 1% hold 99% of the wealth. If you tax 2%, half of that would just be average joes.
The top 1% have about 42% of the wealth. And in terms of income, which the tax would be based on, the top 2% would still be people making over $400,000 a year.
Start with the 1%, and gauge response. Repeat with the 2% and add guillotines as set pieces, guage response. Lather, rinse, repeat until shit gets better. 🤘🏼
We desperately need tax on wealth.
Yes. All 1%ers have no income to tax.
The own billions, and pay nothing!
A tax cut for me is just a tax cut for me, but a tax cut for the rich could make anything happen – maybe even a tax cut for me!
Liar.
It’s a rewrite of the family guy joke
Can’t tax income they don’t have
Your house is taxed… why are stock portfolios not taxed each year against their value on Jan 1st? Or median value over the year or something?
If a person was to get taxed against the value of stocks every year and that person holds onto those stocks for multiple years, they’re getting taxed multiple times for that same value. The idea of taxing unrealized gains is probably the most ignorant thing to ever come out of her mouth.
Just like real estate tax? If a portfolio can be used as collateral then it should be taxed. The percentage at which it should be taxed is open for conversation but keep in mind there are people holding billions in assets like this.
Edit: this is also an easy way to exclude stuff like Roth ira’s and other retirement plans. Just don’t allow them to be leveraged/used as collateral… If this was at all possible. This protects normal pension savings etc.
