Then you’ll need to educate yourself beyond what the government tells you.
Look up the ProPublica leaks. Someone is serving a very long jail time for leaking that out. It clearly shows how billionaires have very low taxable income, probably lower than yours.
To then say that you are upper class and Jeff Bezos is middle class is… Absurd.
The top 10% of income is not upper class. The error that people make, including you, is to focus on income.
People like Elon Musk have incomes smaller than $100K.
Upper class are the people who do not need to work and who live off of capital.
We need to shift our focus on wealth equality.
Look, the economy needs capital. If we want to be less dependent on the capital of rich people, then middle class people need to take over that role.
The people making $100-300K per year are key, because they can provide an alternative source of capital if their tax burden is lowered.
The people making $50K will not be able to provide large amounts of capital.
Yes, I fully agree.
So we need to find the right messaging.
I don’t know about Germany, but here in the Netherlands most people identify as middle class.
So “stop taxing the middle class” and “let the billionaires pay more” is a message that should resonate.
I’m optimistic and I believe we will get there. The level of equality we have today would be unfathomable for somebody living before 1945.
Which is why the tax system needs to be reformed.
The political right actually has one good point that we on the left don’t always appreciate: taxes on middle class people should be lower.
Specifically, very liberal tax exemptions on things like 401Ks, including the ability to transfer wealth across generations.
Combine that with higher taxes on the wealthy, and it will be possible to shift power to the middle class.
Consider the total market cap of the S&P 500, rounded up it’s about 50 trillion. Divide that among 130 million households and each household should own about $400K in stock on average.
Full equality is neither achievable nor desired by most people, so a good scheme would be to let every household hold up to $1M in wealth, tax exempt.
And then progressively tax everything above that.
For one, you can’t transfer a 401K to your kids.
You have to first cash it out, pay income tax and then you can transfer what remains.