The data is very straight forward.
The data isn't very straight forward, and its anything but simple and non-contradictory. Your personal impression based on your own beliefs and anecdotal reports may be very straight forward, but that isn't data, its just an impression. You might not trust the data, and think your personal impressions are more solid, but even if we consider that a reasonable view -
1 - Different people have different personal impressions.
and
2 - Your personal impressions being simple AND correct would still not mean that the data was straight forward.
There is a pie of wealth....at any given moment, that pie is only so big.
Wealth is created by the interactions of people over time, its not static like a pie, and redistributing it tends to make it grow slower (or at least reduce the rate of its growth). Wealth is created by the people you want to redistribute it from. They aren't taking it from others they are creating it. Take a lot of it from them and they have less incentive, and even less ability to continue to create it.
A company has a profit that equals a $100 million pie. The three principals decide to give themselves each a slice of the pie equally $33 million each. The pie is gone......the principals ate the pie themselves and did not share it with their workers. That means no pay increase for the workers.
Employee pay is before profits, to the extent it comes from a "pie" that pie is revenue (and slices of the pie go to all the other costs of doing business).
Are the principals in your hypothetical owners or executives?
Quite the opposite as much of the income of the wealthy is from productive work or productive investments, the existence of which help the not-rich.
Wealthy individuals don't generate jobs......corporations do.
Wealthy individuals create their own companies, or invest in companies, or lend out capital to companies (buying bonds, or depositing money that gets lent out).
Good highly compensated workers also create jobs, by creating wealth for the companies that higher them, and by effectively managing other employees who create wealth.
The Paris Hiltons aren't job magnets; they are dilettantes.
Paris Hilton isn't your typical wealthy person. You might hate her but that's not even a good reason to take her wealth, let alone a good reason to heavily tax and/or regulate wealthy people in general.
"Even the poorest of the poor, who don't have jobs received government transfers largely funded by the taxes on the income of the rich."
The vast majority of those transfers are on the back of the middle class who also are not participating in the eating of the wealth pie.
1 - The middle class is getting wealthier, and a large section of the middle class is also part of the investing class, so they directly participate in "the eating of the wealth pie", and they indirectly benefit from the increasing productivity over time increasing their total compensation.
2 - If you define wealthy as upper middle class on up, then they pay the majority of the tax income. The top 10%, and perhaps even the top 5% pay the majority of income taxes.
1999 data -
* The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
* The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.
allegromedia.com
2000 data
Top 5% pay over half of income taxes
Top 50% pay 96% of income taxes
opinionjournal.com
2004 data
Top 1% pay 35% of income taxes
newsbusters.org
You're working your butt off and you can't make ends meet. You don't think you would feel like you are getting screwed?
If there is nothing else to it, I probably wouldn't feel like I was getting screwed. Even if I did feel that way, it wouldn't change the fact that I wasn't getting screwed (again assuming there is nothing else to it, and no one is attacking me or defrauding me).
The piglets are getting rich at the expense of the poor.
Again, in general, there is no "at the expense of" involved.
2 - Being in a good situation doesn't mean you aren't getting screwed. If I was a billionaire, and someone bilked me out of $10mil, I'd still be incredibly wealthy, despite the fact that I was just "screwed". I "fall on the side of the rich" because people, including you are advocating screwing the rich, and also because the screwing would not just fall on the rich, but on the upper middle class, and indirectly on most people.
Ridiculous nonsense.
No its simple truth. If you take from the wealthy then your screwing them out of something. You can argue that its justified, you can argue that it makes things better for the country as a whole, but it still doesn't change the fact that your "screwing" them.
And in fact it won't make things better for the country as a whole. Higher taxes on and regulation of the wealthy helps keep the "pie" you want to divide from growing as fast as it otherwise would, and if taken to an extreme will shrink the pie.
You can say that over and over again but no one is buying it.
Your not buying it, but a fair number of people recognize the truth behind my points.
You never did answer my question -
"Why are you so concerned about difference in wealth and income rather then the levels of wealth and income, and living standards faced by each group?"
All your focus seems to be on disparities, or changes in disparities. Why focus there? |
