eli5 what do people mean when they say billionaires dont get taxed
In: 9253
We mostly tax income rather than wealth.
The Americans with the highest tax burden (as a % of overall wealth), are the middle to upper middle class.
Billionaires not only pay significantly less taxes (as a % of overall wealth) than the middle class, but sometimes pay significantly less than people who are living in poverty. Once you’re wealthy enough to be earning money from just owning assets and wealth, instead of income, your tax burden drops very significantly.
This is part of why the middle class in the US is shrinking year over year and has been for a long time. We are redistributing wealth from the middle/upper middle class to the billionaires and multi-millioniares.
The sad thing is that the average American is still so mathematically and financially illiterate that they see a doctor making $200k/year in INCOME and a CEO who’s worth $200 million in WEALTH AND ASSESTS both as “rich people”, and fail to realize just how drastically different the two are. I truly think this is intentional because it keeps the broader “income earning class” (i.e. the proletariat in commie speak) infighting amongst themselves instead of banding together against their oppressors.
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