Right. If you’re a senior associate in BigLaw you make like $500k, for which you work truly ridiculous hours and are on call at all hours. You pay a marginal combined tax rate of about 50% on each additional dollar of income.
Meanwhile the private equity and hedge fund bigshots you represent have all established Florida residency and pay none of the state and local taxes that you pay, and furthermore pay only long term capital gains tax to the federal government, at a marginal rate that is about half yours.
It’s not just that the system is so unfair, it’s that the unfairness is super salient to the upper middle class because they largely work for and with the truly rich and see up close that they aren’t paying any fucking taxes. Not hard to see them jumping ship on Democrats when they don’t fix it - many will understandably say “they’re all the same, may as well get mine.”
Even though Barack Obama began his presidency with high personal approval ratings, his policies never had strong public support. Public approval for Joe Biden’s policies, by contrast, is almost surreally high. Why?
What’s the secret of Biden’s success?
Part of the answer, surely, is identity politics. Let’s be blunt here: The modern version of “only Nixon could go to China” may be “only an old white guy can sell a new New Deal.”
I mean, like maybe also fucking collect all the taxes currently owed by those people before asking the doctors and lawyers and accountants to pay more.
I agree with all of this and what mosdef said, we of course need to fix how the wealthy are taxed. The Trump tax cuts were particularly insidious because we are going to need to tax much of the populace more and those tax cuts made it more untenable.
Biden’s proposal is a big step forward on this front, lets see how much gets implemented.
We have to eventually be able to sell higher levels taxes on the broader populace though. Taxing millionaires is necessary but not sufficient.
I think Warren’s plan to introduce a small wealth tax on the super wealthy was good. Once that door is open, it will be same experience as with income tax where it start off as OMG BIG GOVERNMENT OVERREACH and then it just becomes a fact of life.
I’m not wading in to the discussion you all were having, so as a tangent I’m cosigning this and adding a I-feel-like-I’m-taking-crazy-pills. It puts me in a weird spot because some of the posters I respect the absolute most over the years have been hard on the “this is just talking on The Internet it’s not Real Life” line. Like, do you know what USA#1 used to do to two commies talking in a room, virtual or otherwise? It’s mind-blowing.
Then again it might just be the 4081st time the space aliens observing us have had their minds blown.
“Wow, so they invented An Internet, that’s extraordinarily impressive! They won’t be hindered by vast distances and especially natural disasters, like, say, pandemics.”
I really feel the “this doesn’t matter line” is a defence mechanism almost always employed when the person has run out of good evidence and still doesn’t want to admit they may have been wrong.
I only ever see it used as a response to people saying we have to be careful or precise in our criticisms of Biden here. The people saying that use it as a way to try and stiffle criticism of Biden.
I’m probably an outlier, but the time I’ve spent rubbing elbows with the truly wealthy has only pushed me further to the left. I don’t make anywhere near $500k/year, though, and probably never will.
Me too, and it’s just astounding how out of touch they are.
The first thing you notice is how much they complain. About fucking everything. They are perpetually angry and resentful. Almost without exception, they are some of the least thoughtful, most self absorbed people imaginable. But what really strikes me is the banality. They’re plundering the planet and for what, they aren’t even happy.
The issue I have with this, and specifically this class of people, making $500k/year serving the wealthiest people, is that they are the ones who enable these policies to get this way. They are lobbying on behalf of the ultra wealthy, they are filing the lawsuits against regulations on behalf of powerful corporations etc. I see it all the time in Florida. I don’t know what the solution is. People with all the money hold the keys to the kingdom as far as setting people up to be financially secure for the rest of their lives and that gives them an immense amount of power and influence when most smart capable people are forced to enter into massive amounts of debt to prove they have the skills required to tackle hard/complex problems. This puts them in a position where they are forced to grind out a poverty existence for decades or go on board helping these rich people further entrench their power and wealth.
Yep. Good illustration, in Florida there was a big push to consolidate wetlands permitting under the State’s authority. Finally it happened, and now it’s the wealthy land owners who pushed to make it happen who are complaining the loudest.
They have no friends. You can tell because if Mark Zuckerberg had any friends, they’d tell him to get a new hairstyle. But all he has are sycophants around him and they’ll never tell him the truth.
Then he has no friends to tell him that is a really moronic werido thing to do. You need people in your life to affectionately rip on you. The better friends you are with someone the more easily you can point out what a bellend they are being.
Surrounding yourself with sycophants is a terrible way to live. Look at the Zappos guy, or Donald fucking Trump, or every trust fund kid living in the Hollywood Hills.
Right. So then these guys end up around exclusively people they pay and other mega-assholes. There is no corrective force, it’s all downhill from there. You’ll often see these guys hold it together until a divorce.