But, the "rates", "brackets", etc. are mere guidelines. You can be in the highest of all tax "brackets" and pay little or nothing as a percent of your actual personal income! The super-wealthy have armies of tax lawyers and tax accountants who pore through all the fine print of the miserably unfair, wholly-corrupted U. S. Tax Code and find PILES of tax-writeoffs in the form of ample loopholes, tax "shelters", exemptions, exclusions, deductions, and, a good one they really love -- 'carried interest'.... Trump promised that he would get rid of 'carried-interest' in his new tax reform package, but didn't do it. Why didn't he...? (Yeah, don't misunderstand me -- I'm going to vote for Trump, but only because the alternative is so unbelievably, gut-bucket HORRIBLE!) Lastly, you ask the question concerning to oft-heard claim that the "top 1% pays 40% of income taxes"... but how do we even know that's true? Is that assumption based on what they would pay 'in theory, because of the hypothetical "bracket" they're in, or, in actuality?! Only their tax lawyers know for sure....
If it was just income then we should not have standards that disqualify people from going to certain colleges, living in certain neighborhoods, access to government programs, rules about how a person lives on his property etc. Surely you have heard that "that is a middle class neighborhood". What defines that? Harvard's for the elite? Elite what? The person getting the spot is more than likely a child who's parents are rich. (Inherited or privilege wealth). It's a nice neighborhood but you don't want to live there because they are not our kind of people. If the average wage is $ 27,000 across the whole country then what class would that wage earner be in California, Kansas, New Mexico, Mississippi, New Jersey?
Funny you mentioned that. I just sold a house and the hot water heater was 30 years old and the refrigerator (Amana) 28 years old. The people who bought the house are replacing the both of them. Guess they just didn't know how to love them.
I was wrong. The super rich are doing it tough and do pay a larger proportion of tax albeit at a lower rate. “The Triumph of Injustice," by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley, presents a first-of-its kind analysis of Americans' effective tax rates since the 1960s. It finds that in 2018 the average effective tax rate paid by the richest 400 families in the country was 23 per cent, a full percentage point lower than the 24.2 per cent rate paid by the bottom half of American households. In 1980, by contrast, the 400 richest had an effective tax rate of 47 per cent. In 1960, their tax rate was as high as 56 per cent. The effective tax rate paid by the bottom 50 per cent, by contrast, has changed little over time....... The relatively small tax burden of the super-rich is the product of decades of choices made by American politicians, some deliberate, others the result of indecisiveness or inertia, Saez and Zucman say. Congress has repeatedly slashed top income tax rates, for instance, and cut taxes on capital gains and estates. Politicians have also failed to provide adequate funding for IRS enforcement efforts and allowed multinational companies to shelter their profits in low-tax countries.” https://www.smh.com.au/business/the...er-tax-rate-than-workers-20191009-p52yx4.html
False again And you are citing a book filled with errors and false assumptions such as "...Let’s start with government transfers. Saez and Zucman do not include such transfers (with the exception of Social Security) in income. In addition, they do not include refundable tax credits in their calculation of total taxes paid. These are very important when it comes to computing the sales-taxes component of a person’s total tax liability. To understand why, consider an individual who earned $10,000 in income and received $10,000 in transfers from the government. Their total post-transfer income is $20,000. Suppose that they consumed this entire amount and paid a sales tax rate of 5 percent. They would pay sales taxes totaling $1,000, which is 5 percent of their consumption and 5 percent of their post-transfer income. However, according to Saez and Zucman’s methodology, this individual’s tax rate would be 10 percent (1,000/10,000), because transfer income would be eliminated from the denominator. In other words, what Saez and Zucman are doing is using post-transfer consumption data and pre-transfer income to calculate the share of income paid in consumption taxes. .... ...The book’s misuse of statistics is also quite telling. For example, in setting the stage for their argument, Saez and Zucman write, “Let’s start with the working class, the 122 million adults in the lower half of the income pyramid. For them, the average income is $18,500 before taxes and transfers in 2019. Yes, you are reading this correctly: half of the U.S. adult population lives on an annual income of $18,500.” That’s quite the statistical trick. Median income in the U.S. is approximately $33,000 per year. What Saez and Zucman are doing is taking the average of the people below this median and declaring that every one of those people lives on that level of income — an obvious falsehood...." https://www.nationalreview.com/2019...-misleading-arguments-about-inequality-taxes/ And in fact if you included the EITC those rates above for the to lower income groups become negative numbers, IOW they MAKE money off the tax system.
Yes we know it is true in actuality, the two lower income groups pay virtually nothing as far as income taxes and in fact make money off the tax system with their deductions and credits.
It's an economic measure and yes historically you had to have a LOT of money to go to an ivy league school and those without it went to community colleges. Yes we have neighborhoods with such classifications based on the income levels of those neighborhoods. And yes if you have some black trash drug dealing family making LOTS of money and living in Beverly Hills they would be upper class economically. There are morally decrepit upper class people and morally outstanding upper class people, there are morally decrepit lower class people and morally outstanding lower class people. There are upper class people with high intelligence and with low intelligence, there are lower class people with high intelligence and with low intelligence. The defining factor is economic situation.
They can’t be that bad. “The data here come from the most important book on government policy that I’ve read in a long time — called “The Triumph of Injustice,” to be released next week. The authors are Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both professors at the University of California, Berkeley, who have done pathbreaking work on taxes. Saez has won the award that goes to the top academic economist under age 40, and Zucman was recently profiled on the cover of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine as “the wealth detective.”” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html
Why do you feel prices would go up to match? The manufacturers actually would be paying less in matching contributions, a savings to the company, not a cost that normally would drive inflation. As to the 'no retirement', perhaps a savings account would come in handy for those who would actually consider retirement.
I know you are in a land far, far away, but have you tried to find someone willing to fix a toaster? A Refrigerator? They are few and far between, and if you yourself aren't skilled in it, the cost of paying someone else to repair, if you do find someone, is quite often equal to the cost of buying new, or close to it if you amortize the cost of the repair of the extended post-repair lifespan of the appliance.
inflation always happens, but wages stall when people have extra money that is why now both parents need to work, vs it being optional
That would be a very, very small part of it. Some people still can't tell the difference between need and want, and keeping up with the Joneses is a lifetime endeavor.
$600 is a bit rich! I was thinking more the $200-$300 range Stove kettles are great in winter but less so in summer, as gas/electric stove puts heat into room. Handy if you heat with a wood stove for half the year, just plonk her on!
In my country income has nothing to do with it. Our best universities are public, and they acquire their ranking via standard of education and outcomes.
I can remember a time I said "no wife of mine will have to work". It wasn't long that reality set in and one realizes that to own a home, a car, decent furniture and be able to pay utilities required two incomes. As more and more woman came into the work force the builders would start raising prices or real estate agents would qualify you for more house. Like someone said earlier, most of us were raised in small houses, and the houses we live in now would have been high end. I remember my first job out of the Navy was the shipyard in Vallejo Cal. and I made $3.12 a hour and A friend I worked with wanted me to buy a home in Napa for $33,000. That was in 1965.
It's similar to our immigration policies .. which are considered horribly tough by bleeding heart Americans and Europeans.
Well that's just not true. Homes come in all sizes and price tags, furniture doesn't have to be 'decent' (if that means new), it just has to be stylish, and cars come in all shapes and price tags. Utilities can be drastically reduced, or removed altogether (off grid). There are many ways to skin a cat that don't involve the wage slavery of both parents.
Monetary distinctions among classes also have a regional aspect. In areas of the country with a high cost of living, an income considered middle class elsewhere may put someone in the lower class, commonly known as “working class.” The middle class in the United States continues to lose ground, while the number of Americans in the lower and upper classes has grown. https://finance.zacks.com/lower-middle-upper-class-income-levels-9877.html
You've explained your second sentence, in your first. The middle class is not losing ground .. at all. All that's happened is the middle class has being priced out of a few big cities. The same process is happening all over the Western World, not just America. Within a generation or two, those cities will be strictly for the new migrant and/or the very rich. Which is absolutely fine, because change is normal and inevitable. Why anyone would expect those cities (and life within them) to remain exactly as they were in 1950 or whatever, is a mystery that can only be answered by people who expect it.
If one earns a middle class wage where they are, it doesn't really matter what it would be considered elsewhere. That would only make a difference if that person moved. Very likely they would also make a middle class wage for the area to which they moved.
Trump must have heard about it because that is what he is trying to do. Democrat politicians don't want any part of it. They want open borders. Not sure how Democrat voters feel.
What you say is true , to a point. Eventually supply and demand come into play. There are always a certain amount of small houses but very little profit for builders. So when they come into short supply the cost goes up. One could say "I'll wait for the next batch of houses to come out". The builder may build more houses of the type and size but you can no longer buy them at the cheaper price. Anyone familiar with tract homes knows this. You can actually get a luxury car for little more than what it costs to make if you can afford it than a pick up truck which is more in demand but has a high mark up. You can point that out to a salesman and he can tell you "take it or leave it". I know some of us can put on our dungaree overalls and go hunt and fish and grow our own vegetable's and raise some hogs, cows, and chickens but it limits our options of what type of lady companionship we can attract.
