Welcome To The Era Of Oligarchs | Heather Digby Parton | TMR
Welcome To The Era Of Oligarchs | Heather Digby Parton | TMR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2POuJemaHg
Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Welcome To The Era Of Oligarchs | Heather Digby Parton | TMR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2POuJemaHg
“Capitalists create new wealth. They don’t take a big slice of the pie and leave us a sliver. If they get rich, it’s because they find ways to bake lots of new pies.
That’s what’s happened in America. Its why today, even poor Americans have access to things European kings only dreamed about.
Capitalists can get rich only by making all of us better off.
Actual economist Dan Mitchell explains, “Billionaires only kept 2.2 percent of the additional wealth they generated….The rest of us captured almost 98 percent of the benefits.””
https://reason.com/2024/09/25/robert-reich-is-wrong-about-billionaires-and-almost-everything-else/
Sam proposes a 90% marginal tax rate on income over three million.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cavfvhY7PN4
Republicans like Vance and Trump use populist and pro-worker rhetoric, but their policy is pro-business and helps the wealthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrJgWsj7Qhw
Why Wyoming is so Weirdly Wealthy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQE_zNs5HOU
How The Wealthy Gaslight America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iifU7rF0hVc
IRS COMING FOR THE RICH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEwGgtZHa8
“Do you want to pay less taxes? Great. Step one, be a rich person. Then, buy a yacht. Or a sports team. Give a lot to charity. Lose some money in the stock market. Above all, make sure most of your money exists in the form of assets, not cash — stocks, real estate, a Dutch master painting, fine jewelry, or whatever else strikes your fancy.
They say that money is a universal language, but it speaks at different volumes. When you have a fathomless bounty of wealth, money doesn’t quite register as an expense until you add a lot of zeros to the end — so spending a lot to save a lot is a no brainer. It’s why the mega-rich often hire expensive tax lawyers, wealth managers, or even set up a whole office dedicated to tax strategy. “It’s not just preparing the return,” says Paul Wieseneck, a tax accountant and director of the Fuoco Group. “There’s so much more involved in planning, in accumulating, offsetting, and trying to mitigate the taxes as best as possible.””
…
“Jeff Bezos, when he was still Amazon CEO, had a base salary of around $80,000 a year. Elon Musk doesn’t take a salary at all at Tesla. Apple CEO Tim Cook does get a $3 million salary, but it’s a small slice of the $63 million he received overall last year. Most wealthy entrepreneurs are paid in bountiful stock rewards; Musk is currently fighting to keep his record-breaking Tesla pay package, made up of a bunch of stock options and now valued at almost $56 billion. ProPublica found that, because their income fell below the threshold, at least 18 billionaires got a Covid-19 stimulus check.
Paul Kiel, a ProPublica reporter who was an integral part of the newsroom’s billionaire tax return stories, says the income versus wealth divide was crucial in helping the public understand how differently the wealthy operate. “If you can avoid income as it’s defined in our system, and still get richer, that’s the best route,” he tells Vox.
Stocks aren’t taxed until they’re sold — and even then, what’s taxed is the profit on the sale, called a capital gains tax. Billionaires (usually) don’t sell valuable stock. So how do they afford the daily expenses of life, whether it’s a new pleasure boat or a social media company? They borrow against their stock. This revolving door of credit allows them to buy what they want without incurring a capital gains tax. Though the “buy, borrow, die” strategy isn’t quite as sweet right now because interest rates are high, a Wall Street Journal piece from 2021 notes that those with $100 million or more could get interest rates as low as 0.87 percent at Merrill Lynch. The taxable value of a stock also resets when it’s passed on to an heir, so that if a wealthy scion chooses to sell their inherited stock, they’d only pay a tax on the increase in value since the original owner’s death.”
…
““We’ve talked to a lot of former IRS agents, and they would often hear the line that for wealthy taxpayers, their tax return is like an opening offer,” says Kiel.”
https://www.vox.com/money/2024/3/13/24086102/billionaires-wealthy-tax-avoidance-loopholes
Fiscal Policy – The Economic Lowdown Podcast Series Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcast-series/episode-21-fiscal-policy How Can Fiscal Policy Help Reduce Inflation? Peter G. Peterson Foundation. 2023 3 7. https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/03/how-can-fiscal-policy-help-reduce-inflation US history lesson: Taxes on rich people helped to beat inflation (and