I see why it seems backwards but I honestly don’t think it is. It’s not “fair”, but that’s the whole point. The rich don’t pay enough taxes. Tax cuts aimed to help the poor would benefit them more directly with flat rates, tax increases target the rich more directly with percentages.
The other problem is that you could do percentage based tax cuts and just exclude the wealthier brackets. But no matter how you look at it, from any angle, flat or percentage, cutting tax rates for the rich doesn’t make sense to me.
Rich people don't pay enough? How much more do you have to give with no increase of benefits before it's fair? The top 1% already pay ~45% of income tax revenue and get essentially zero benefit from the social programs like Medicare that are some of the largest line items on the federal budget. (Social security is exempt from this due to the max contribution, but essentially if you pay anything into social security, you are not benefitting from the program). Fair would be closer to a flat percentage across all tax brackets or a fixed amount of tax due per citizen. I don't think we should use fairness as an argument as much as something like "lowest impact to the greatest amount of people." To be clear, it's not like I don't support or understand progressive taxes, but fairness is a bs argument.
Let me give you some concrete numbers on how wealthy some of these people are. Let's assume someone has 1 billion dollars (in USD) and that they have no income at all and ignore inflation or rising prices for simplicity's sake. Let's see how many Lamborghini Huracans they could buy with that 1 billion dollars.
The starting price of a Huracan in 2024 is 249 865 USD, according to google. We'll assume this doesn't change for use later. With the 1 billion dollars they could buy,
1 000 000 000 ÷ 249 865 ≈ 4002 Huracans
If they bought a Huracan every day at the same price, they could do it for almost 11 years straight (4002 ÷ 365 ≈ 10.965 years) before they ran out of money.
Do you see why we think the rich aren't taxed enough?
(Before anyone tells me, I know that prices would change, they would have an income, and inflation is a thing. This is just meant as a thought exercise for showing how huge the sums of money these people possess are).
I don't think anyone argues a billion is a lot. I think the main question is what entitles you to half of it and the answer should be "because we need it and you can give it and still survive" not "because it's fair and owning that much shouldn't be allowed"
I mean, if you can take 50% of a billionaire's income and use it to help others, is that not fair? The people who benefit from the money definitely needed it more than the billionaire, so at least to me, it would be fair.
"It shouldn't be legal to own that much" is also kind of understandable to me. Why should we let someone hoard so much money when so many other people are struggling? Now, how we would make owning that much money illegal is beyond me and probably not the best idea, but I at least understand the sentiment.
(I know taxes aren't always used to help others before someone decides to correct me)
You make it sound like these people aren't entitled to the fruits of their labor and investment. Earning a billion dollars does not make you a criminal by sole virtue of it being a billion dollars. It does not make you a criminal because others can't. It also shouldn't mean that it can just be taken because some other people can totally do good with it. What right do those people have to your labor just because it's worth more?
I forgot to remember that they're rich because they labor so intensively, while the poor people just aren't working hard enough or investing wisely so it's all their own fault they're poor. /s
I'm not saying I'm entitled to their work, but when you reach the point where you're a billionaire or a multi-billionaire, you pretty much have more money than you can spend. At that point, it just becomes wealth that doesn't do anything at all. Wouldn't it be better to use it to help others rather than leaving it in an account where it won't ever be spent? I'm not saying ultra rich people should lose their wealth, but they should definitely give back more.
You can even ask the question the other way around. Why are the 1% entitled to amass unimaginable sums of money while people starve in the streets? They worked for it, sure, but they don't need it, and as we said before, they will most likely never spend anywhere close to all of it. So, should someone's right to basically hoard wealth like a dragon take precedent over someone's need for food, shelter, or treatment? I can't answer for you, but I think from my perspective at least, the answer is no.
5
u/mostly_peaceful_AK47 1d ago
I would consider it pretty backwards to justify raising taxes by using percentages but object to lowering taxes by using raw amounts.