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Originally Posted by jb2000
But this is a misunderstanding that permeates the country. I recently saw a study that showed that 20% of Americans thought they were in the top 1% of the wealthiest! 60% thought they were in the to 20%!
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You're seeing that here: at least two people have claimed to be or closely related to someone in the top 1% bracket.
Their histories, however, demonstrate that they are very likely
not in that top bracket. No one in that top bracket works, first of all. They have billions of dollars in
assets not income. They
own a huge piece of the physical pie in the US--they don't have to
do anything with their capital. It runs by itself as our economy churns.
I don't know how any of us can make this part more clear: The reason someone in that upper strata owes "more" taxes is because we are supposed to pay taxes commensurate with our worth.
We have a yearly government bill (for the sake of example). A wealthy person owning X% of the capital in a given society owes X% of the tax bill at the end of the year. If you own a company and it uses freight trucks, you do more wear and tear to a public road system than the person working at the company. The police, courts, and penal system provide protection to you on a greater level than they provide to someone in the lower tax brackets with little to no assets needing protection--you use more physical resources.
That's one reason you owe more, outside of notions of fairness about quality of life, patriotic duty, and etc.