THE RICH DON’T PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE?

CRISIS came across this note on Facebook. Below is a condensed version of some responses

CRISIS RESPONDS

Not quite the end of story. In 2022, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 23.1 percent average rate, six times higher than the 3.7 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers. If this is unfair, what tax rates would you suggest?

ED REPSONDS

To those whom much is given, much is expected. Hmm. Why shouldn't those at the top pay more when they've benefited incredibly from an economy that has the bottom half of taxpayers struggling to pay for day-to-day expenses of food, energy, and housing, and who can only dream about medical coverage, retirement, or education for their kids?... Maybe, just maybe, if that 1% wasn't getting rich by making the average American poor, the tax rates would also be more fair and balanced, and tax revenue would increase.

CRISIS RESPONDS

I'll try to make this short.

The rich haven’t “benefitted from the economy.” They made the economy. They took advantage of the opportunities afforded them in a free-market.

The bottom half of taxpayers actually aren’t even taxpayers. Around fifty percent of Americans pay no taxes at all. Roughly half of those non-income taxpayers do so because they don't earn enough money, while the other half doesn't pay taxes because of special provisions in the tax code that benefit certain taxpayers, notably the elderly and working families with children.

The top 50 percent of all taxpayers in 2021 paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent.

To whom much is given? Some inherit money, however, in a free market economy, most weren’t given anything. We worked for it. My parents, their friends and everyone I knew in the Bronx, grew up in small one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments. Many of them went on to make a lot of money. Some became multi-millionaires. We were considered middle class back then. Today, the way we lived back then would be considered poverty level. There will always be poor people. Always. They are not poor because we worked hard and accumulated money. They are poor because of the unequal distribution of talents and attitudes in the human race. Forcing the rich to pay even more in taxes is another form of socialism.

The rich make the average American poor? Wealth is not a zero-sum game. The amount of money in existence is not limited. If, for a simple example, there is competition for $100 among five people, and one ends up with $80, the other four compete for the rest. That would be a zero-sum game in which the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. But goods and services and money are not finite. When the rich get richer, everyone else benefits. Visionaries like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and so on became wealthy, but they provided goods, services and employment for millions. The billions they make does not make me poor. Their products make our lives incredibly better. Their brilliance benefitted all of us.

The rich aren’t evil. The poor aren’t victims. This never-ending, tiresome, leftist Bernie Sanders argument is a Socialist Snoozer.

Sorry, I didn't make it short.