When do you consider someone "wealthy" or "rich"?

interesting to see a londoner who thinks of himself as european.

 

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Londoner does not equal Johnsonite, any more than New Yorker equals Trumpist.

 

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Why? The British Isles are part of the continent of Europe and our culture, including politics, is heavily influenced by what goes on on the continent. The UK may no longer be part of the European Union, but then the EU is far from synonymous with Europe.

The politics of class in Europe are influenced by the old division between aristocrats and landowners vs the rest. The unfairness of this history colours political ideas in Europe to this day. This has led to a social settlement that recognises the wealthy don’t always deserve to hang onto all they have accumulated, and they owe society some of it back.

My impression is that many in the US cherish the belief that their society does not suffer similar defects of inbuilt hereditary advantage, due to never having had a formal aristocracy. But it seems me the same defects are there, having arisen by a different route and that a similar social settlement is needed.

 

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Wealthy is to live the rest of life , very comfortably . Quality roof over your head , Quality Food , Natural Supplements that you need and 2 or more cars , trucks etc . Do much what you want and go where you want with no financial , second thoughts .

Rich is 100 million to 1 billion .

 

So people will invest more if their returns are taxed more heavily?

And through better economic performance while they are in office.

Exactly!

 

I'm not arguing against capital gains taxes although we would be better off without them altogether IMO. I'm arguing against those who want to do away with capital gains taxes in favor of taxing investment income as ordinary income.

Wealth disparity isn't a problem. Or rather it's a problem only in the sense that jealousy and envy are problems. We don't generally give in to or encourage people to embrace jealousy and envy. Those are bad traits afterall.

Everyone is better off and just because some at the top have much more, so what? That's how our system works. There is nothing wrong with fathers handing assets down to sons.

It takes nothing away from anyone else. The reason we have so much wealth in the first place is because of this system.

If one is upset that someone else has more wealth and the solution is to ask for government payouts then that does nothing to encourage personal savings/investments. Why bother, the government will be your retirement?

Again, this is punishing those who do invest because those who don't invest are jealous. It's not sustainable.

I do realize that we could take the European approach. It is another option. It's not my choice.

There is no large group of people with lives of leisure. Most people who accumulate that kind of wealth are good at asset allocation. That's why they are successful. Government isn't particularly good at that. Bill Gates is doing more with his billions than the government would do with those same billions.

The government didn't come up with Windows, Amazon, Costco, Apple, etc. The U.S. system isn't so bad.

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Actually I think wealth disparity does become a problem if it gets too extreme. It’s not just envy, it’s a lack of social solidarity when people’s lifestyles have zero in common. Also, money is power. You can see the effects of this in the terrible dysfunctional politics of the USA today. Democracy dies when the political parties are bought by plutocrats.
I’m the first to acknowledge the dynamism of US capitalism, but it seems to me this does not deliver for all its citizens.
The trickle down theory of wealth creation does not seem to work unless progressive taxation is applied by government, to ensure the benefits are actually shared. A society dependent on voluntary handouts from Gates is not what we should aspire to.

 

Gates is largely working in 3rd world countries. If the government had all of Gates wealth the military would spend it all in 2 months.

Look at the poorest citizens. They have shelter and food and some medical care. The homeless situation is mostly not about poverty. It's mental health and drug addiction and it's as bad in Europe as it is here.

 

That is a remarkable statement. Three remarkable statements for the price of one. Remarkable!

 

Compare the poor here with the poor elsewhere and look up the homeless statistics for much of Europe.

 

Remarkable observations regarding wealth.

 

Tell it to FDR.
The New Deal held, against ceaseless Republican attack, until Reagan collected the white bigot vote into one pile without getting caught and impeached. That did not have to happen.

You are only taxed on the additional fraction beyond what you were taxed on when you were paid. You did not "already" pay a tax on that fraction.
So those who earn their investment money via wage labor will be taxed less and benefit more than those who acquired their investment money without holding a job.
There seems to be little wrong with that.

The tax system from WWII until 1980 created the greatest prosperity among the ordinary white citizenry of the US that the world had ever seen among ordinary people in an agricultural society.
In 1981 and 1982 Reagan and the Republicans kicked the chair out from under, and the population of the US began strangling.

In the case of the US, lowering the tax rates on the rich so rapidly inflated the public debt that it almost wrecked the currency and economy of the richest and safest nation on earth. The effect was so quick and dramatic that even Reagan was forced to raise taxes on the rich, restoring part of the cuts. But he only restored the minimum necessary to forestall disaster for the rich - the long term damage to the prosperity of everyone else he was happy to tolerate, ignore, and if necessary deny.
- - - -

The year in which current trends predicted that the net worth of the median US black household would reach 0 was calculated to be 2053, before the plague. The net worth of the median black person was already negative, last I checked, iirc. The wages of the lower third of the US economy have not merely stagnated but declined, since Reagan. The net wages of the bottom two thirds of the economy have declined, as well - the reduction in Federal income taxes led to overcompensating increases in State and local taxes, fees, and net costs of necessities.

 

Irrelevant.
And misleading - some of the Europeans, unlike the current US government, keep accurate statistical track of such things. The US Republican Party can't even take an honest census.

Nonsense. (Why do these guys think everybody outside their Tribe envies the rich? Who in hell envies Donald Trump or Wilbur Ross or Charles Koch or Betsy Devoss or Lloyd Blankfein? Most people don't even envy Bill Gates - and he seems like a decent enough guy, with a shot at being genuinely happy).

Wealth disparity at the level of the US sharply reduces net productivity, reduces production efficiency, slows innovation and invention, slows the circulation of money (reducing the effective amount of money in the economy), and will choke any market or consumer economy. It's just not a good way to set up a market economy - you've centralized control of too much into too few hands, and like all economies run by a central few powerful men yours will get sluggish and inefficient and become dominated by bureaucrats in multilevel hierarchies of command and control.
The calculations of the damage to the US economy from the activities of hedge funds and financial speculators since deregulation - including a 4% or so reduction of economic growth - are not based on factors like envy or jealousy.

The term you need is not "jealousy" or "envy" - other people do not share your personal character traits, and they don't take down entire economies like America's . The terms you need are "suboptimal equilibrium", "opportunity cost", and the like. You might also check up on "lifespan", "median height", "chronic or crippling injury", "preventable disease", "age of first marriage", and so forth.

 

Also because they're able to move both financial assets and operations off shore; hide profits away in energy-guzzling digital accounts, and take work, property value and money out of the domestic economy. This leaves the burden of all infrastructure on governments, which, because of tax breaks for the money-drainers, and fear-spending on militaries, is chronically strapped for funds, which means that no local authority ever has enough to protect its citizens against inevitable emergencies, which means there is a lot more damage every time they get a storm, fire, flood or earthquake than there should have been, making everything ever more expensive to repair and rebuild. And it sure doesn't leave a lot over for hospitals and schools.

 

Why do these guys think anyone (outside their tribe) envies the rich person? It's the money they those guys seem to envy or they wouldn't be worrying about what someone else has and they wouldn't be focusing on taking it away.

 

Why do those guys (and their tribe) never consider that these taxes apply to them as well? You go to work, earn your money, pay taxes and now you invest it. Why should be government take anymore? They don't have to tax everything.

Regarding your logic of the wage earner paying less taxes than someone who wasn't a wage earner, that makes no sense. Why do guys in your tribe make no sense? They just can't help it I guess?

If you are a wage earner and invest and end up with capital gains you pay the same tax that a non-wager earner who invests pays.

Why do you want more money than you personally earned? Your tribe always wants someone else's money. Why is that?

Forget about Reagan, FDR and post WWII. That's cherry picking and it's history. What else do you guys have? You guys aren't very good at making money and yet you claim that you don't care about money. Your tribe is so silly. If you aren't good at making money and don't care about making money, farming is the place you want to be I guess.

 

They're focusing on trying to keep it from being taken away. The problem isn't what someone has; it's what everyone else therefore no longer has and can't get.

It doesn't. Until you make more money with it, and then it only takes a little bit of the more.
Anyway, most people have nothing to invest. They're having to borrow from the investing classes, just to live.

That's exactly what investment is!

 

That's not what investment is. All you value is whatever someone earns by going to a job. That's like a mule only thinking about the carrot that he gets at the end of the day. It's shortsighted.

The comment about most people not having money to invest is a problem as well. The arguments you make ensure that no one has money to invest instead of figuring out how everyone can invest.

No invest, no jobs.

 

Good! We should be about ready to stop organizing our societies on the master/servant model.

 

Let's face it, you're going to be the servant in any model.