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Originally Posted by smooth
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.
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I truly believe 1 thing needs clarified in your post. I am not flaming I am showing the difference between what you consider the top 1% (which in reality is probably actually .01% of the country) and the true top 1%.
We are a country of 250+ million (rounded for easy math). the top 1% would then be a number of 2.5 million US citizens. I maybe wrong but I seriously doubt we as a country have some 2.5 million millionaires that don't work and live on assets.
LINK:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/results....sultsStart=376
That is a link to Forbes' 400 richest for 2003. The "poorest" is at 600 million. That still leaves 2,499,600 for the top 1%.
But there are those (and they are the majority) in the "bottom tier" of that 1% that that do work, and while they have assets on paper they still need to make money to live and most of their "assets" are in savings for retirements or their small businesses. People see the very elite and think that is how all the rich live, it's not. Most millionaires drive older (5 year) cars, work at least 50 hours, own decent houses but not million dollar mansions, wear clothes off the rack, take 1 maybe 2 vacations a year and don't try to draw attention to themselves.These people are very much in the top 1%.
Those who make a few 100,000 (the "yuppies", "neauveaux riche"... whatever the term is today for them) usually drive the newer import luxury cars and are flashy and usually have maxed out credit where if they miss a paycheck or 2 or the market drops they lose their arses. People, (the other 99%) see that and believe those people to be worth far more than they are, because that is the image those people want seen. Most of these are also in the top 1%, because of yearly income and what assets they may have).
I agree with everything else in your post, but to claim "everyone in the top 1% are billionaires", when we don't even have 400 "billionaires" (Forbes list stops billionaires at #262 (actually 19 tied at #243) in the country is ridiculous and is as far off the mark as those in the bottom tier 1% claiming, (they should pay lower taxes because it's not fair to them).
I am someone who will fight for my convictions and I try to respect everyone's view (sometimes I fail but I am human), but I also believe that you need to keep centered and make concessions when need be.
Yes, the very ELITE are the ones you described as not having to work and having their money in assets, they own a huge piece (if not the vast majority) of the pie and blah blah blah. But the rest are just hard working folk who worked their arses off to get there, had a few good breaks, and deserve respect.... not grouped into an elite segment.
It's like saying all Dems are lefty liberal whackos or all GOP are right winged pro business screw the little guy people. Yes, those statements are true about the VISIBLE and VOCAL minorities but the rest of the 90+% who don't fall into those groups don't need labelled because of those minorities.