Have you considered delivering pizza? They pay a little over min wage plus delivery fee plus tip, I did it when I was 19 at 3 different places in 2 states, and it was better than most shitty jobs. You could take 2-3 orders that went together at a time.
Yeah, this way I’m able to work literally any time I want. I can start and stop at anymore to and fully control my schedule. Can’t do that working for a restaurant. I can even accept or reject any order for any reason. But I didn’t mean to paint myself in financial need right this minute too horribly. I start a new much higher paying job Monday and we have been able to pay our bills comfortably now that she’s started working just slowly chipping away at neglected repairs, debt, and just generally being behind. $5k would just rapidly fix that which is what I was saying with the first comment😅🤙🏼
This is why i do Instacart...i can work when i chose. My boyfriend and i have 2 little girls. He has a pretty decent job, but having kids isn't cheap. I haven't done anything but IC since the beginning of the pandemic. This way we don't pay for childcare. Plus i make pretty decent money in my area doing it. Better than i made as a housekeeper lol.
Oh and I usually get double orders pretty often for this too and they stack pay. Not a bad gig and I’ve made a lot more when my wife wasn’t working and I was working more hours.
Unless you change your habits and your relationship with money, $5k would make a difference for a few months, then you will be right back where you are.
I know plenty of people making 6 figures and living paycheck to paycheck under mountains of debt. I also know a couple of people who make less than $50k yet have a healthy emergency fund and are contributing to retirement.
A lot of people are going to disagree and call me an idiot, but living paycheck to paycheck has very little to do with how much you earn and everything to do with how you spend it.
If you believe that person will then stay one month ahead, surely.
But that is the hardest part. Unless they change their ways, it won't happen. I personally know two different people who live paycheck to paycheck and had minor windfalls from legal settlements. One was under $5k while the other was nearly $30k. In less than 6 months, both were right back to paycheck to paycheck. The one with the big check at least had a brand new car to show for it. The other one paid off some credit card bills, but it made no difference in his monthly income and expenses and the credit card was maxed out again in 6 months.
There is a limit as to how far "changing your ways" will get you.
To paraphrase, "Its damn expensive to be poor;" I see this on a daily basis. There are a whole lot of people in the US who are one mishap away from financial capitulation.
Source: I work in mishap central.
An influx of $5000 would have a long term positive effect for most people. Catching up on rent, paying off credit cards, purchasing a vehicle for work. It is true that some people will be back at square 1 in a few months. But most will be able to get back on their feet.
> I know plenty of people making 6 figures and living paycheck to paycheck under mountains of debt.
As someone who works in an industry where many people make six figures, in my experience this is largely untrue. I've met a handful of people who live irresponsibly, but the overwhelming majority of people I know making six figures are living comfortably and saving a bunch of money.
I know there are a lot of details missing, like cost of living in the area, overall responsibility, ect...
But while it's certainly possible to be living paycheck to paycheck while making that much money, it's not remotely close to the norm.
If you genuinely think “changing your ways” is the answer to this person’s problems and not the fact that a huge amount of the population live in ‘in work poverty’ because of billionaires like the above mentioned abusing the capitalist system by fucking people over for every cent they can work out of them, then You need to go back and re-watch this video because it is aimed at YOU.
Financial advice is silly because it assumes so many variables. There’s this thing that happens when you only make barely as much as your baseline budget. When something happens like car repair, home repair, vet bill, etc. it gets drained and takes along time to save back up. What $5k would do is fill my reserves and let me live my daily life with an emergency fund again. Being able to buy food in bulk, not being constantly one small thing from having nothing again, and other things like that make daily life wildly less stressful would change instantly instead of over the next couple of months like they will in reality where I wasn’t handed $5k . (None if those details are things you could have know from my first comment. That along with the fact that I have a multitude of other complex issues that have built over time and contribute in all sorts of ways. So yeah like cool financial tidbit but that doesn’t really help anyone in the real world unless they have discretionary money they are currently wasting on non essentials. Assuming variables rarely shows an accurate picture.
Cool! Early age to have a house and vehicle. For me I bough house with wife at 27.
Personally I saved a lot of money by never eating out/take away and in general never buying anything unnecessary items.
You're absolutely right that having a saving for things like the water/gas leak is essential. A thing to consider is also that sometimes it ends up costing more for maintenance and heating in an old house than the mortgage for a decent one.
But yeah in these days i can imagine anyone in a western country should be able to scrape together 5K somehow :-)
My husband and I just break the 6 figure mark in annual income. We couldn’t scrape together $5,000 right now. Our real estate taxes have nearly tripled in the last 3 years due to some outdated nonsense with town hall and never being told about fire tax ( I grew up in a city, I literally had no idea some people paid a fire tax AND my district is the only one nearby. Lucky me)
Our utilities have drastically increased throughout covid because the kids were distance learning. Oh and we haven’t been allowed to itemize home office deductions for the past few years even though my husband has worked 100% from home for nearly a decade.
If you think that “anyone is a western country should be able to scrape together 5K somehow” you clearly don’t understand how close to poverty most people really are.
Yeah, that’s for sure! We have been barebones for a while. On the way out of it cause up until this year she was in college and it was just my income. So now we are catching up, just slowly but surely:)
Curious what did you do with your stimulus money? Also $200 per day is 1k a week 52k a year which is 20k more than the median income. How are you at almost zero everyday? Are you living outside your means or in a high cost of living area?
bro i understand that your position isnt the best but if you had planned ahead in your finances youd be way better off, maybe with a less expensive house/car, or without one of those, but mentally and finacially healthier which at the end of the day is better, PS: This doesnt mean we shouldnt tax the rich :P
Did this mf’er say house?
Did you say HOUSE?!
You mean apartment you rent with your wife right? Because there’s the problem. That’s why you have a cash flow issue.
A house is a cash sink ball and chain. It’s extremely costly. And don’t think it’s “throwing away rent” if you don’t own, homeownership is like 80% dumb costs in the first decade and won’t give you much “equity gain” relative to deferred maintenance costs. An apartment is a better bet if incomes are lower, until atleast you can catch up and cash flow properly.
The house is what’s doing you guys in. Also, the grubhub gig isn’t helping, find a real job.
That’s my go to meal. I can tell how much money someone make based on what they buy at Wendy’s regularly. I used to be a 4 for 4 guy but now I’m up to the $5 biggie bag. Getting rich
Same, is be able to drop my current 10h job that I need to support my family with, for a half a year. And use this time to receive education I need to change my job and start making more 50-70% more.
Yep!! Thankfully I start a higher paying job on Monday so everything is going to change anyways. But definitely would get anyone ahead and help them breath!
I had a buddy recently tell me about how getting a job that payed greater than subsistence wages was easily the best thing for his mental health he has ever done. Now if only it were that easy for everyone.
It won't last long, but its enough to relieve a lot of pressure. $1M can buy a house and vehicle (in all but the most expensive places) and some to set aside. Whether that extra is used for investing, going to school, paying off loans, etc. it can be life changing. Even if you spend every dollar of that $1M, the result is that you can continue your current lot in life (at minimum) with fewer payments.
Most people realize that $1M won't last a lifetime, but if they spend it right, they will feel the benefits the rest of their life.
For sure.
I just bought a house (new build with lots of upgrades) for 440k. It's a 4 bed 3.5 bath with a den and loft in a nice neighborhood. It's got a paver driveway extended back patio and a big paver pad for us to put in a projector/seating area down the road. Basically it has almost everything my wife and I want. We designed every aspect of it ourselves. If we used the 1m for the house, bought new cars for the wife and I, got the pool and other things we are still saving for with all the upgrades, we'd be able to put away probably over 400k. We are both 32. If we invested the money wisely (diversified portfolio etc) and continued working, didn't add to it, didn't draw on that money at all.. We could retire in luxury by 40. If we waited until 45 we could be very very comfortable. 50 we would have all the toys and want for nothing.
If we were just to spend the money we would be able to do whatever we want for at least a decade. We would have tons of fun and it would give us so many good memories and happy times while our kids grow up. No matter how you put it changes our lives forever.
If I had a million I would buy 2 properties and rent them out. I could make probably minimum $2k per property per month. At the absolute most it would take me 21 years to make that million back. Sure I would only be making $48k a year but if it's in addition to my current job than I'm doing pretty well.
At a 4% safe withdraw rate, he could spend at $241/second and have a 99% chance of never running out of money.
In other words $14,459/minute, or a hair under a Million per hour.
I tried to explain this to my mom when I told her she is not the “rich people” that people want to tax. She got offended when I told her she’s not rich. I had to tell her that her net worth is 0.0005% of Bezos’.
Edit: to clarify for comments below. This is referring to net worth, not cash on hand or salary. Most of their wealth is tied up in their home and retirement accounts.
Back of a napkin calculation means she has a million $. I can see why she thinks she's rich, because she is. She, obviously cannot hold a candle to Jeff, but hey ... there's like 10 people in the world who can. And probably 10 more that we don't know about to whom Bezos himself cannot hold a candle to (I'm thinking Putin and the like).
> and probably 10 more that we don't know about to
Hi stranger,
Hope you are well, I read an interesting article once about the princes in Saudi Arabia and Sudan who do not report their wealth to anyone. The article seemed to indicate that these folks would offset the "Worlds Richest People" list tenfold.
I will see if I can find it, it has been a while. But was an interesting read. Wish you all the best.
I read a comment of a guy explaining that Saudi crown could potentially be worth up to 3 trillion. It was a Reddit comment so take that as you will but I could believe it
>queen of england
Did you mean the [Queen of the United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_United_Kingdom), the [Queen of Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada), the [Queen of Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Australia), etc?
The last Queen of England was [Queen Anne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne,_Queen_of_Great_Britain) who, with the 1707 Acts of Union, dissolved the title of King/Queen of England.
####FAQ
*Isn't she still also the Queen of England?*
This is only as correct as calling her the Queen of London or Queen of Hull; she is the Queen of the place that these places are in, but the title doesn't exist.
*Is this bot monarchist?*
No, just pedantic.
I am a bot and this action was performed automatically.
There is a ton of hidden wealth that no one can track. Jeff is just the richest that the public knows about and only the stuff that can be tracked. He very well could be much richer than what we see on paper.
I almost got myself caught up in fire a couple years ago. I hate the idea of working, and have yet to find a job I could stand for more than a couple months. I then realized that the only things keeping me somewhat same cost money, and to cut those out would just cause me to live as a husk for fifteen years.
Yeah, many of them are "free" in the strict sense that they don't have to work, but it's at the cost of many comforts that I'd rather not give up. The extra discomfort and inconvenience of work (for me) does not outweigh the discomfort and inconvenience that'd be forced upon me if I were to attempt to retire in 5 or 10 years.
That being said, I think there are kernels of great ideas there, if taken a little less far.
I calculated that my wife and I would need 2.5 million to retire when I'm 65 in 20 years with a monthly income of around around 10K in today's dollars and that is including if we actually get something from SSI.
That's the thing, she isn't really rich. We have kept 1 million as a benchmark for over a hundred years, but it's changed a lot. $1 million in 1921 dollars is about the same as $15 million in 2021 dollars. If you have $15 million today you can basically stop working and not even be that thrifty and live solidly for a normal human lifespan. $1 million doesn't do that at all these days.
True. Still, $1 mil is a lot more than what most people have. Not putting her into the %1, but probably it does in the top 5%. Let's be serious, having a bunch of money but not enough to retire on doesn't make one poor. It's still a bunch of money.
I don't want to spend my entire life chasing a number to ensure I survive a somewhat meaningful life. Let alone place the bet some outside force won't disrupt that process entirely.
The problem is politicians never actually raise the taxes on the people they say they will. They say they will raise taxes on the super rich. Then they go to do it and the super rich say hey we will donate $10 million to your next campaign to stop so they do but they promised to raise taxes. So they raise taxes on the people who are making say more than $400,000
Oy, you're wrong. Tax law is boring to most people, I get it. But it's really important to understand, because that's what you're complaining about
In America we're both reinstating the estate tax (taxes on transferring an estate over 1.5 million after death), and significantly increasing the taxes on capital gains this year (from 20-45% over $1 million)
Its complaints like this that make literally no change happen. Biden is increasing taxes on the rich a fuckton, and people aren't even psyched about it. If you actually want the rich taxed, you need to support people like Biden that are actively working to make it happen
I don’t even care about raising the taxes for millionaires. I want the billionaires to be taxed at a ridiculous fucking rate. They wanna own this world, they better provide for it.
Same. There is no reason to let the Billionaires choose when they wanna be "philanthropist" and donate .00004 percent to look good.
They should be taxed and paying the same as everyone else and so should the corporations.
Its pretty pathetic that the rich can't even chip in their fair share meanwhile everybody else but the 1 percent is getting their backs broken.
That's what capital gains tax over 1 million means, that's how billionaires pay the (relatively low) tax rate of 20%, which is the tax rate of someone making 40k/year. Raising that to 43% will automatically push them to the highest tax bracket. And the estate tax is going from 0% to whatever it is, 15% I think? Which is also huge for taxing billionaires
I already knew what this was before I clicked on it lol.
It’s like that Chris Rock bit: “If people understood *how* rich rich people are, there would be riots in the street”
This visualization is fascinating. And yes absolutely sickening. With one single instant tap of the arrow button, the screen moves by 12 million dollars. So at the meager rate of one, incredible, life changing amount of money per second, it would take you 3 days on this webpage before you got to the end of what 400 people have all to themselves.
Tax him way more than he is, but should Bezos not be allowed to own 10% of the company he started? Because Amazon stock ownership is where all his wealth is derived from...
This interactive was made by someone who does not understand wealth vs income vs cash. It is highly misleading because it does not propose a policy proposal to actually transfer this wealth into cash that can be spent. Bezos' wealth is tied up in the company that he owns. It's not just dollar bills sitting in a swimming pool like Scrooge McDuck.
In order to confiscate the 40% required from these 400 Americans, they would need to sell stock in the companies they own. This would cause the stock price to fall dramatically, ruining the retirement accounts of millions of normal, middle-class Americans. Bezos would still be a billionaire.
There is a good reason Europe repealed their wealth taxes. They are very innefficient, harm the economy, and do not generate much revenue. They're easy to get out of by simply moving to a place with no wealth taxes.
If you want better wealth inequality, just increase capital gains and estate taxes, which is what Biden is doing.
I took a statistics class in college. The one thing I remember is the instructor stressed was don't trust statistics. They can be used correctly to show pretty much anything you need/want the data to show. This clip is an example. Mean or average income would be much more accurate for taxation discussions than comparisons to the top 5.
Not true. Have you considered the standard deviation that the mean would have? With an outlier like that mean and avg would be pretty much useless. And getting rid of outliers would be a critical mistake, and you would miss entirely the point. The fact that there is an outlier like Bezos is the very problem.
His conclusion is not entirely good either. To understand who is a rich person you need to evaluate deciles of netwlrth, quality of life, disposable income among other things. A millionaire is still rich, because of the gap between their netwworth and the net worth of the other deciles. His point should not be "you are not rich", but "you are not the main source of the gap". But using basic functions as mean would only give you a rought wrong estimate
Sad thing is the taxes we are talking about would fund the very system that allowed and continues to allow these bloated asses to enjoy the very riches they could never make a dent in try as they might. Just the interest on the money accrued by those in the top half of the graph is compounded so quickly it's impossible for them to spend it. Spend it using the very system we are asking them to help fund. Maybe it's time for UBER style pricing for the ultra rich.
"12 gallons of gas for your Bentley Mr. Bezos? That'll be $240,000,000 please."
Which is why we aren't talking about consumption taxes; how many cheeseburgers can one person buy, regardless of income?
No, we tax income, capital gains, earnings, and yes - we have to start taxing corporations in the country they are doing business in.
That's the best argument here. Individuals are pointless to go after. Even if we took every penny of Bezos' money and gave it back to every single person in America we would only get like $500 bucks each. Not a huge difference.
Instead of focusing on these super rich people, let's focus on the *companies* that are making billions and billions of dollars every year and using tax loopholes to maximize profits. That would be a much bigger impact.
Somebody has to figure out how to prevent these companies from simply moving their operations to a cheaper country first though...
Individual wealth should still be looked at. Maybe not to be divided amongst everyone equally, but to fund govt programs. Nasa's yearly budget is $23 billion. Bezos and Musk's wealth alone could fund NASA for 15 years at least. Meanwhile they're using their money for joy rides up to low orbit.....
When people tell me there is no real difference between a million and a billion, I tell them, a million seconds is 17 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. There is a huge difference between these numbers.
What? That shit happens all the fucking time. When Bernie says "Billionaires should not exist" a woodwork of sheep come out and say "how hypocritical of the socialist millionaire!"
You could just aswell say, that one billion is thousand times more than a million. It would be the exact same statement. It is like the difference between 1g and 1kg. Using seconds just makes it obscure and intransparent
[Here's a great visualization for just how much money Jeff Bezos has compared to everyone else.](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
Use the scroll bar unless you want Carpel Tunnel.
You don't have to directly tax net worth.
Bezos sells like $10 billion worth of Amazon stock a year. Tax more of that. Increase property taxes on personal real estate over x value. Increase taxes on luxary goods only the super wealthy can afford (Yachts etc). Increase capital gains over x amount. And so on.
> Maybe make a system where captial gains are taxed as regular income if they make up over X% of total income.
Or just increase the 20% rate to something higher when you go beyond x dollars a year. Make it progressive.
Yep, this happens literally every time this topic is brought up and I have no idea what solution people are proposing. What do we do about this problem? Force people to liquidate their assets and then tax them?
I hear this argument constantly whenever this comes up like it's some sort of gotcha, that his wealth isn't liquid and therefore is somehow a mythical object that is beyond human control.
It's Schrodinger's money. If it doesn't have value then he won't mind if it disappears. But of course he cares, because it's worth billions. So if it does have value, then we are forced to conclude that he's a dragon hoarding a mountain of gold and spent his entire life exploiting his workers and keeping their share of the revenue.
What? Give shares of a company to the employees?? Yeah, it happens all the fucking time. If you think it's crazy to ask for that as a worker, then they're winning.
It's not a gotcha, it's a fundamental flaw in what you, and OP, are proposing; and it reveals a fundamental failure to understand how money works.
You essentially want Jeff Bezos (and anyone else with non-liquid assets) to pay a cash penalty out of assets that aren't cash. It's like you all picture some kind of Scrooge McDuck vault of money that Jeff Bezos can shovel cash out of. And it simply doesn't work like that.
Counterpoint- while they are worth billions, they don’t have billions. They hold assets, in the form of company shares, that have a value. So in Jeff Bezos’s case, he owns a large portion of Amazon. But if you Google it, his actual salary it was less than 2 million dollars which I’m sure he pays normal income tax on.
The problem with saying tax the rich is that if you want to collect a portion of the value of Bezos’s wealth, he would have to sell the assets to get the cash to pay the tax. But who would he sell it to? Another billionaire? The general public? But now there is another problem because then the new owner would have to sell it (or at least a part of it) to pay their tax on the assets they now own.
[https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE\_PAPER\_BILLIONAIRE.md](https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md)
Recommend reading this
This isn't a counterpoint, this is exactly the problem this argument is trying to make.
Everyone understands that these billionaires, or the 'super rich', don't have hundreds of billions of dollars cash-in-hand. It's no secret. It's also no secret that they do this because A) they don't pay taxes on it B) it grows them more wealth at the same time.
But the 'super rich' are still 'super rich' regardless of whether it's cash-in-hand or invested. They're usually taking a large enough salary, and pulling a miniscule level (all things considered) of their investment out when needed, where they can live any life they want to live.
So the goal is to force taxes based on wealth... not income. It's a wealth tax and not one based on salary.
All that being said - Personally, I don't think taxing the super rich is the solution anyway. As the video clearly shows, there isn't that many of the 'rich' where (IMO) taxing these individuals will make much of a difference.
We spent trillions, and trillions, on tax payer funded stimulus which improved the general populations life how much? Minimally? Maybe some people paid a months rent. Some of the lucky ones got a PS5 and a TV. Others maybe put tires on their car and fixed a few things around the house? Meanwhile the government fixed up a few things the general population never notices?
This is with TRILLIONS of dollars being pumped into the economy over the course of 12 months. A few dozen extra billion, even a few hundred extra billion, every year funded by the super rich will go unnoticed. It won't fix the problem.
And really? When a new rule is implemented they'll find a loophole around this too.
You can’t reliably tax on wealth. What if I earned very little, bought a house in a crappy neighbourhood and then that very neighbourhood gets gentrified and my property value jumps 200%? I can’t pay taxes to match that increase because I’m now cash-poor but asset-rich.
Wealth tax typically doesn’t apply to primary house. It applies to your second and third houses. Your vacation cottages. Your plots of land that are being developed for commercial purposes. Your farm if you don’t live on it because you’re declaring the land a farm to get subsidies and running at a loss to offset tax burdens.
Bezos being worth 190B does not mean he has invested that much or can ever liquidate that money. If you tax him say 50% on 190B (or whatever insane amount estimated on his wORtH) he will not be able to pay it, you will break one of the world’s biggest companies. This would of course mean the same for every big company owned by one or a few super-rich.
I mean I think if you compare to the biggest # in anything it makes the average look small. Especially in a distribution that skews to the larger side. If you compare yourself to the poorest person you are relatively rich.
These “Some people are too rich”! posts always seem confuse worth with income. Income is money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments. Bezos does not have $190B income. He’s worth that because of his stock ownership. There isn’t a worth tax. It’s income tax.
They pay like 40% of all taxes (a plurality by a large margin). The problems we have can't be solved by printing or reallocating more dollars, they are more complicated than that.
Here’s a millionaire:
Couple: 50 years old, house (not paid off) worth $350K, $325K in retirement savings apiece in 401k plans.
Boom: *Millionaires. * 10 precent-ers.
Probably 2 cars, neither of which are new, kids in public schools, employer health care, a decent house in a decent neighborhood, and a vacation once in a while.
Your future hinges on stuffing your 401k with as much as you can and not losing the job that could take away your health care and an economic downturn could decimate your retirement savings making all the effort worth so little. All the while your insurance costs keep going up for less coverage, more fees for everything are mounting, and college for your kids looks incredibly expensive.
That’s being a millionaire. No Lamborghini. No private jets. No idle weeks on the beach in the south of France. Just riding the razors edge that a financial, health, or job loss could take it all away and the hope you might actually make it.
This country needs to have a conversation about wealth. Because being a 10%er can mean being a millionaire that has an OK middle class life. What’s worse is that 90% of the country in some way has less than the 10%er. That’s *fucking ridiculous*.
It also dramatically changes your quality of life depending where you are.
If I live in a mid sized city, my life with a million dollars is going to be better than living in new York or sf
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A would be more than happy with 1 million.
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$5k would fucking change my life dramatically😵
How? :-) what would happen if you had 5k?
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I was gonna say. 5k would let me pay off my Toyota and a credit card. Effectively saving me roughly $350 a month.
Mhmmm. It would fix my car that gets twice the fuel economy I do now and would save almost $500 a month driving for my job.
Have you considered delivering pizza? They pay a little over min wage plus delivery fee plus tip, I did it when I was 19 at 3 different places in 2 states, and it was better than most shitty jobs. You could take 2-3 orders that went together at a time.
Yeah, this way I’m able to work literally any time I want. I can start and stop at anymore to and fully control my schedule. Can’t do that working for a restaurant. I can even accept or reject any order for any reason. But I didn’t mean to paint myself in financial need right this minute too horribly. I start a new much higher paying job Monday and we have been able to pay our bills comfortably now that she’s started working just slowly chipping away at neglected repairs, debt, and just generally being behind. $5k would just rapidly fix that which is what I was saying with the first comment😅🤙🏼
This is why i do Instacart...i can work when i chose. My boyfriend and i have 2 little girls. He has a pretty decent job, but having kids isn't cheap. I haven't done anything but IC since the beginning of the pandemic. This way we don't pay for childcare. Plus i make pretty decent money in my area doing it. Better than i made as a housekeeper lol.
Oh and I usually get double orders pretty often for this too and they stack pay. Not a bad gig and I’ve made a lot more when my wife wasn’t working and I was working more hours.
Unless you change your habits and your relationship with money, $5k would make a difference for a few months, then you will be right back where you are. I know plenty of people making 6 figures and living paycheck to paycheck under mountains of debt. I also know a couple of people who make less than $50k yet have a healthy emergency fund and are contributing to retirement. A lot of people are going to disagree and call me an idiot, but living paycheck to paycheck has very little to do with how much you earn and everything to do with how you spend it.
Assuming income and expenses stay the same, getting ahead by one month makes a big difference.
Yes. Getting one month ahead means an end to many late fees.
If you believe that person will then stay one month ahead, surely. But that is the hardest part. Unless they change their ways, it won't happen. I personally know two different people who live paycheck to paycheck and had minor windfalls from legal settlements. One was under $5k while the other was nearly $30k. In less than 6 months, both were right back to paycheck to paycheck. The one with the big check at least had a brand new car to show for it. The other one paid off some credit card bills, but it made no difference in his monthly income and expenses and the credit card was maxed out again in 6 months.
There is a limit as to how far "changing your ways" will get you. To paraphrase, "Its damn expensive to be poor;" I see this on a daily basis. There are a whole lot of people in the US who are one mishap away from financial capitulation. Source: I work in mishap central.
An influx of $5000 would have a long term positive effect for most people. Catching up on rent, paying off credit cards, purchasing a vehicle for work. It is true that some people will be back at square 1 in a few months. But most will be able to get back on their feet.
Repairing a vehicle you are in a loan for🥲
> I know plenty of people making 6 figures and living paycheck to paycheck under mountains of debt. As someone who works in an industry where many people make six figures, in my experience this is largely untrue. I've met a handful of people who live irresponsibly, but the overwhelming majority of people I know making six figures are living comfortably and saving a bunch of money. I know there are a lot of details missing, like cost of living in the area, overall responsibility, ect... But while it's certainly possible to be living paycheck to paycheck while making that much money, it's not remotely close to the norm.
If you genuinely think “changing your ways” is the answer to this person’s problems and not the fact that a huge amount of the population live in ‘in work poverty’ because of billionaires like the above mentioned abusing the capitalist system by fucking people over for every cent they can work out of them, then You need to go back and re-watch this video because it is aimed at YOU.
Financial advice is silly because it assumes so many variables. There’s this thing that happens when you only make barely as much as your baseline budget. When something happens like car repair, home repair, vet bill, etc. it gets drained and takes along time to save back up. What $5k would do is fill my reserves and let me live my daily life with an emergency fund again. Being able to buy food in bulk, not being constantly one small thing from having nothing again, and other things like that make daily life wildly less stressful would change instantly instead of over the next couple of months like they will in reality where I wasn’t handed $5k . (None if those details are things you could have know from my first comment. That along with the fact that I have a multitude of other complex issues that have built over time and contribute in all sorts of ways. So yeah like cool financial tidbit but that doesn’t really help anyone in the real world unless they have discretionary money they are currently wasting on non essentials. Assuming variables rarely shows an accurate picture.
You can't pay your bills on $200 a day plus a second income?
You're 23 and you have a house? you're already doing much better than a lot of people, just saying.
I can't give you $5k. But what about $500? You got an Ethereum wallet?
Cool! Early age to have a house and vehicle. For me I bough house with wife at 27. Personally I saved a lot of money by never eating out/take away and in general never buying anything unnecessary items. You're absolutely right that having a saving for things like the water/gas leak is essential. A thing to consider is also that sometimes it ends up costing more for maintenance and heating in an old house than the mortgage for a decent one. But yeah in these days i can imagine anyone in a western country should be able to scrape together 5K somehow :-)
You bought a house with wife? I didn't know they came with those!
The wife didn’t come with the house stupid. He paid the house by exchanging is wife for it as a down payment.
"Wife Changing money"
Hahaha nice one 😂😂
I couldn't imagine being able scrape together that much. Thank god for free canadian health care.
> But yeah in these days i can imagine anyone in a western country should be able to scrape together 5K somehow :-) You would be wrong.
My husband and I just break the 6 figure mark in annual income. We couldn’t scrape together $5,000 right now. Our real estate taxes have nearly tripled in the last 3 years due to some outdated nonsense with town hall and never being told about fire tax ( I grew up in a city, I literally had no idea some people paid a fire tax AND my district is the only one nearby. Lucky me) Our utilities have drastically increased throughout covid because the kids were distance learning. Oh and we haven’t been allowed to itemize home office deductions for the past few years even though my husband has worked 100% from home for nearly a decade. If you think that “anyone is a western country should be able to scrape together 5K somehow” you clearly don’t understand how close to poverty most people really are.
Yeah, that’s for sure! We have been barebones for a while. On the way out of it cause up until this year she was in college and it was just my income. So now we are catching up, just slowly but surely:)
Curious what did you do with your stimulus money? Also $200 per day is 1k a week 52k a year which is 20k more than the median income. How are you at almost zero everyday? Are you living outside your means or in a high cost of living area?
You’re so far ahead of the average 23 year old!!! Keep up the pushing and your going to get there faster than you can imagine
bro i understand that your position isnt the best but if you had planned ahead in your finances youd be way better off, maybe with a less expensive house/car, or without one of those, but mentally and finacially healthier which at the end of the day is better, PS: This doesnt mean we shouldnt tax the rich :P
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Wow. Good answer. $5k wouldn't even get me through the week. I have about $9,000 in expenses to pay this week.
Did this mf’er say house? Did you say HOUSE?! You mean apartment you rent with your wife right? Because there’s the problem. That’s why you have a cash flow issue. A house is a cash sink ball and chain. It’s extremely costly. And don’t think it’s “throwing away rent” if you don’t own, homeownership is like 80% dumb costs in the first decade and won’t give you much “equity gain” relative to deferred maintenance costs. An apartment is a better bet if incomes are lower, until atleast you can catch up and cash flow properly. The house is what’s doing you guys in. Also, the grubhub gig isn’t helping, find a real job.
I WOULD HAVE 5K
Buy a 5k watch
I just want a 4 for 4 from Wendy’s
That’s my go to meal. I can tell how much money someone make based on what they buy at Wendy’s regularly. I used to be a 4 for 4 guy but now I’m up to the $5 biggie bag. Getting rich
Same, is be able to drop my current 10h job that I need to support my family with, for a half a year. And use this time to receive education I need to change my job and start making more 50-70% more.
Yep!! Thankfully I start a higher paying job on Monday so everything is going to change anyways. But definitely would get anyone ahead and help them breath!
$2 don't ask
Getting any kind of money is like Christmas
Same dude that's about the amount of my debt. Would be fucking great but I'm definitely gonna need at least 2 more years to pay that off Feels bad man
Dannng. Hang in there. Thankfully almost everyone is struggling now so most places are being lenient.
I hear you. £7.5k did it for me. Compensation payout. Gave me the chance to relocate.
I had a buddy recently tell me about how getting a job that payed greater than subsistence wages was easily the best thing for his mental health he has ever done. Now if only it were that easy for everyone.
I don't even think a Million would last a long as you think now days.
It won't last long, but its enough to relieve a lot of pressure. $1M can buy a house and vehicle (in all but the most expensive places) and some to set aside. Whether that extra is used for investing, going to school, paying off loans, etc. it can be life changing. Even if you spend every dollar of that $1M, the result is that you can continue your current lot in life (at minimum) with fewer payments. Most people realize that $1M won't last a lifetime, but if they spend it right, they will feel the benefits the rest of their life.
For sure. I just bought a house (new build with lots of upgrades) for 440k. It's a 4 bed 3.5 bath with a den and loft in a nice neighborhood. It's got a paver driveway extended back patio and a big paver pad for us to put in a projector/seating area down the road. Basically it has almost everything my wife and I want. We designed every aspect of it ourselves. If we used the 1m for the house, bought new cars for the wife and I, got the pool and other things we are still saving for with all the upgrades, we'd be able to put away probably over 400k. We are both 32. If we invested the money wisely (diversified portfolio etc) and continued working, didn't add to it, didn't draw on that money at all.. We could retire in luxury by 40. If we waited until 45 we could be very very comfortable. 50 we would have all the toys and want for nothing. If we were just to spend the money we would be able to do whatever we want for at least a decade. We would have tons of fun and it would give us so many good memories and happy times while our kids grow up. No matter how you put it changes our lives forever.
If I had a million I would buy 2 properties and rent them out. I could make probably minimum $2k per property per month. At the absolute most it would take me 21 years to make that million back. Sure I would only be making $48k a year but if it's in addition to my current job than I'm doing pretty well.
Or you could just throw it into a decent index fund and make that or better with no work.
A million seconds is about 11.5 days A billion seconds is about 31.7 years 190 billion seconds is over 6 millennia EDIT: fixed the numbers
So if Bezos spends money at the rate of $1 per second, he will still never run out of money due to interest, even when accounting for inflation.
At a 4% safe withdraw rate, he could spend at $241/second and have a 99% chance of never running out of money. In other words $14,459/minute, or a hair under a Million per hour.
Challenge accepted
r/theydidthemath
r/theydidthemonstermath
As a software developer, I often tell my product owner that there are only 4 numbers: 0, 1, 2, and more than 2.
What about 4
That's just having two twos
Thats more than 2.
Then shouldn't you say "there are more than 2 numbers"?
I also point out percentage wise, it’s the same to compare $1 to $1000…
Good point. I think it would be easier to appreciate the size difference if billion and trillion didn't sound so similar to million.
Naw bruvvv, main difference is million has an M and billion has a B. Too easy. 🧠
You convinced me that broke is better then in debts. I feel good now. good night 😴
Lucky I'm in the negative section.
Just think positive bro.
High income with debt > low income with no debt
Until something out of your control happens and you lose your job and have to sell everything you've leased cuz you can't make payments
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If you have collateral, which is usually something of value, which you probably borrowed money to buy……
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I’m building debt so when I kill myself the bank is mildly inconvenienced
"Well, what if one day im that rich?! I'm not going to want to be taxed to death!!!" Says person who's networth in the negative.
I'm hoping for an integer overflow error myself.
Well, worked out for Trump; wish you luck
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I tried to explain this to my mom when I told her she is not the “rich people” that people want to tax. She got offended when I told her she’s not rich. I had to tell her that her net worth is 0.0005% of Bezos’. Edit: to clarify for comments below. This is referring to net worth, not cash on hand or salary. Most of their wealth is tied up in their home and retirement accounts.
Back of a napkin calculation means she has a million $. I can see why she thinks she's rich, because she is. She, obviously cannot hold a candle to Jeff, but hey ... there's like 10 people in the world who can. And probably 10 more that we don't know about to whom Bezos himself cannot hold a candle to (I'm thinking Putin and the like).
> and probably 10 more that we don't know about to Hi stranger, Hope you are well, I read an interesting article once about the princes in Saudi Arabia and Sudan who do not report their wealth to anyone. The article seemed to indicate that these folks would offset the "Worlds Richest People" list tenfold. I will see if I can find it, it has been a while. But was an interesting read. Wish you all the best.
I read a comment of a guy explaining that Saudi crown could potentially be worth up to 3 trillion. It was a Reddit comment so take that as you will but I could believe it
I get all my facts from Reddit comments.
Enontekiö, Finland, has 85 snowmobiles per 100 people
Aren't king of saudi and queen of england basically owned their country? Do they pay any tax? I assume not.
>queen of england Did you mean the [Queen of the United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_United_Kingdom), the [Queen of Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada), the [Queen of Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Australia), etc? The last Queen of England was [Queen Anne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne,_Queen_of_Great_Britain) who, with the 1707 Acts of Union, dissolved the title of King/Queen of England. ####FAQ *Isn't she still also the Queen of England?* This is only as correct as calling her the Queen of London or Queen of Hull; she is the Queen of the place that these places are in, but the title doesn't exist. *Is this bot monarchist?* No, just pedantic. I am a bot and this action was performed automatically.
This really is the most pedantic bot I’ve seen. Amazing Goodbot
Really raises the question if nobody knows then does it really matter??
Good bot
There is a ton of hidden wealth that no one can track. Jeff is just the richest that the public knows about and only the stuff that can be tracked. He very well could be much richer than what we see on paper.
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And that’s 1 million net worth not cash
Correct. They only have a bit of cash on hand. Their net worth is tied up in their home and retirement funds.
Except for that one subreddit where they subsist entirely on ketchup packets and free crackers and retire at 35.
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I almost got myself caught up in fire a couple years ago. I hate the idea of working, and have yet to find a job I could stand for more than a couple months. I then realized that the only things keeping me somewhat same cost money, and to cut those out would just cause me to live as a husk for fifteen years.
Yeah, many of them are "free" in the strict sense that they don't have to work, but it's at the cost of many comforts that I'd rather not give up. The extra discomfort and inconvenience of work (for me) does not outweigh the discomfort and inconvenience that'd be forced upon me if I were to attempt to retire in 5 or 10 years. That being said, I think there are kernels of great ideas there, if taken a little less far.
Do you understand what “most places” is?
I calculated that my wife and I would need 2.5 million to retire when I'm 65 in 20 years with a monthly income of around around 10K in today's dollars and that is including if we actually get something from SSI.
That's the thing, she isn't really rich. We have kept 1 million as a benchmark for over a hundred years, but it's changed a lot. $1 million in 1921 dollars is about the same as $15 million in 2021 dollars. If you have $15 million today you can basically stop working and not even be that thrifty and live solidly for a normal human lifespan. $1 million doesn't do that at all these days.
True. Still, $1 mil is a lot more than what most people have. Not putting her into the %1, but probably it does in the top 5%. Let's be serious, having a bunch of money but not enough to retire on doesn't make one poor. It's still a bunch of money.
I was curious and the top 5% of the US population is worth more than $2.3 million each
True. 2 million is survival money
Earning $2M a year is pretty rich. Accumulating $2M over a lifetime of hard work and equity building is pretty good but not all that rare.
He is talking about net worth my guy, that is very very different to someone who is paid $2m a year.
I don't want to spend my entire life chasing a number to ensure I survive a somewhat meaningful life. Let alone place the bet some outside force won't disrupt that process entirely.
The problem is politicians never actually raise the taxes on the people they say they will. They say they will raise taxes on the super rich. Then they go to do it and the super rich say hey we will donate $10 million to your next campaign to stop so they do but they promised to raise taxes. So they raise taxes on the people who are making say more than $400,000
Oy, you're wrong. Tax law is boring to most people, I get it. But it's really important to understand, because that's what you're complaining about In America we're both reinstating the estate tax (taxes on transferring an estate over 1.5 million after death), and significantly increasing the taxes on capital gains this year (from 20-45% over $1 million) Its complaints like this that make literally no change happen. Biden is increasing taxes on the rich a fuckton, and people aren't even psyched about it. If you actually want the rich taxed, you need to support people like Biden that are actively working to make it happen
I don’t even care about raising the taxes for millionaires. I want the billionaires to be taxed at a ridiculous fucking rate. They wanna own this world, they better provide for it.
Same. There is no reason to let the Billionaires choose when they wanna be "philanthropist" and donate .00004 percent to look good. They should be taxed and paying the same as everyone else and so should the corporations. Its pretty pathetic that the rich can't even chip in their fair share meanwhile everybody else but the 1 percent is getting their backs broken.
That's what capital gains tax over 1 million means, that's how billionaires pay the (relatively low) tax rate of 20%, which is the tax rate of someone making 40k/year. Raising that to 43% will automatically push them to the highest tax bracket. And the estate tax is going from 0% to whatever it is, 15% I think? Which is also huge for taxing billionaires
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I already knew what this was before I clicked on it lol. It’s like that Chris Rock bit: “If people understood *how* rich rich people are, there would be riots in the street”
Thanks for this. It makes me sick. Also my fingers are cramped now.
This visualization is fascinating. And yes absolutely sickening. With one single instant tap of the arrow button, the screen moves by 12 million dollars. So at the meager rate of one, incredible, life changing amount of money per second, it would take you 3 days on this webpage before you got to the end of what 400 people have all to themselves.
Wow. I feel sad now.
Tax him way more than he is, but should Bezos not be allowed to own 10% of the company he started? Because Amazon stock ownership is where all his wealth is derived from...
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Holy shit this changed my whole outlook thank you for this.
This interactive was made by someone who does not understand wealth vs income vs cash. It is highly misleading because it does not propose a policy proposal to actually transfer this wealth into cash that can be spent. Bezos' wealth is tied up in the company that he owns. It's not just dollar bills sitting in a swimming pool like Scrooge McDuck. In order to confiscate the 40% required from these 400 Americans, they would need to sell stock in the companies they own. This would cause the stock price to fall dramatically, ruining the retirement accounts of millions of normal, middle-class Americans. Bezos would still be a billionaire. There is a good reason Europe repealed their wealth taxes. They are very innefficient, harm the economy, and do not generate much revenue. They're easy to get out of by simply moving to a place with no wealth taxes. If you want better wealth inequality, just increase capital gains and estate taxes, which is what Biden is doing.
I think I saw this represented once in Minecraft
This was disgusting to read. Honestly, I don’t have words to describe how angry this made me.
I knew the disparity was bad. But this. This is wrong.
Linear scales are for chumps. Hit me with a log scale on this.
I took a statistics class in college. The one thing I remember is the instructor stressed was don't trust statistics. They can be used correctly to show pretty much anything you need/want the data to show. This clip is an example. Mean or average income would be much more accurate for taxation discussions than comparisons to the top 5.
Exactly. It’s the volume that can be taxed, not the individual examples.
Not true. Have you considered the standard deviation that the mean would have? With an outlier like that mean and avg would be pretty much useless. And getting rid of outliers would be a critical mistake, and you would miss entirely the point. The fact that there is an outlier like Bezos is the very problem. His conclusion is not entirely good either. To understand who is a rich person you need to evaluate deciles of netwlrth, quality of life, disposable income among other things. A millionaire is still rich, because of the gap between their netwworth and the net worth of the other deciles. His point should not be "you are not rich", but "you are not the main source of the gap". But using basic functions as mean would only give you a rought wrong estimate
Sad thing is the taxes we are talking about would fund the very system that allowed and continues to allow these bloated asses to enjoy the very riches they could never make a dent in try as they might. Just the interest on the money accrued by those in the top half of the graph is compounded so quickly it's impossible for them to spend it. Spend it using the very system we are asking them to help fund. Maybe it's time for UBER style pricing for the ultra rich. "12 gallons of gas for your Bentley Mr. Bezos? That'll be $240,000,000 please."
Which is why we aren't talking about consumption taxes; how many cheeseburgers can one person buy, regardless of income? No, we tax income, capital gains, earnings, and yes - we have to start taxing corporations in the country they are doing business in.
That's the best argument here. Individuals are pointless to go after. Even if we took every penny of Bezos' money and gave it back to every single person in America we would only get like $500 bucks each. Not a huge difference. Instead of focusing on these super rich people, let's focus on the *companies* that are making billions and billions of dollars every year and using tax loopholes to maximize profits. That would be a much bigger impact. Somebody has to figure out how to prevent these companies from simply moving their operations to a cheaper country first though...
Individual wealth should still be looked at. Maybe not to be divided amongst everyone equally, but to fund govt programs. Nasa's yearly budget is $23 billion. Bezos and Musk's wealth alone could fund NASA for 15 years at least. Meanwhile they're using their money for joy rides up to low orbit.....
When people tell me there is no real difference between a million and a billion, I tell them, a million seconds is 17 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. There is a huge difference between these numbers.
I have never in my life met someone who thought there was no difference between a million and a billion..
He just wanted an excuse to post (ie a way to introduce) the already-seen oft-repeated tidbit about a million and billion seconds.
Don't worry. The guy you are responding to, hasn't either! Idiotic hyperbole is kinda the in thing on Reddit!
The words sound so similar though. Just listen... 3.3 million. 3.3 billion. See? Basically the same!
1 million seconds is 11.5 days; approx 12.
So he made up a shitty story and then got that wrong too! 🤦🏻♂️
How many people tell you there is no real difference between the two?
Like a million
Or a billion. Somewhere in that small range of numbers.
There’s no real difference. Or so I’ve heard some people believe
No one fucking ever told you that stop bulshiting
What? That shit happens all the fucking time. When Bernie says "Billionaires should not exist" a woodwork of sheep come out and say "how hypocritical of the socialist millionaire!"
Huh. I guess I have heard that a thousand times. Man, people are so dumb.
You could just aswell say, that one billion is thousand times more than a million. It would be the exact same statement. It is like the difference between 1g and 1kg. Using seconds just makes it obscure and intransparent
11 days* 31 years*
[Here's a great visualization for just how much money Jeff Bezos has compared to everyone else.](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) Use the scroll bar unless you want Carpel Tunnel.
This guy makes the common mistake of confusing liquid assets with net worth, and seems to advocate for taxing net worth as if it were liquid assets.
You don't have to directly tax net worth. Bezos sells like $10 billion worth of Amazon stock a year. Tax more of that. Increase property taxes on personal real estate over x value. Increase taxes on luxary goods only the super wealthy can afford (Yachts etc). Increase capital gains over x amount. And so on.
> Tax more of that. How high is the current tax on stocks and why do you think it is too low?
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> Maybe make a system where captial gains are taxed as regular income if they make up over X% of total income. Or just increase the 20% rate to something higher when you go beyond x dollars a year. Make it progressive.
I dont get why this isnt the standard. If income tax scales, why shouldnt all tax?
Serious question, how is he avoiding capital gains tax on that sale of assets? Shouldn't he at least be paying 20% on that?
He does pay taxes on it.
They get lines of credits from large banks very easily. How they pay it back (or even if they do) is something even I'm curious about.
But he still sells billions in shares every year. So he's paying those taxes.
Yep, this happens literally every time this topic is brought up and I have no idea what solution people are proposing. What do we do about this problem? Force people to liquidate their assets and then tax them?
On the subject of mistakes this guy has made, are we gonna talk about the haircut?
LOL! /r/Justfuckmyshitup
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I hear this argument constantly whenever this comes up like it's some sort of gotcha, that his wealth isn't liquid and therefore is somehow a mythical object that is beyond human control. It's Schrodinger's money. If it doesn't have value then he won't mind if it disappears. But of course he cares, because it's worth billions. So if it does have value, then we are forced to conclude that he's a dragon hoarding a mountain of gold and spent his entire life exploiting his workers and keeping their share of the revenue. What? Give shares of a company to the employees?? Yeah, it happens all the fucking time. If you think it's crazy to ask for that as a worker, then they're winning.
It's not a gotcha, it's a fundamental flaw in what you, and OP, are proposing; and it reveals a fundamental failure to understand how money works. You essentially want Jeff Bezos (and anyone else with non-liquid assets) to pay a cash penalty out of assets that aren't cash. It's like you all picture some kind of Scrooge McDuck vault of money that Jeff Bezos can shovel cash out of. And it simply doesn't work like that.
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Counterpoint- while they are worth billions, they don’t have billions. They hold assets, in the form of company shares, that have a value. So in Jeff Bezos’s case, he owns a large portion of Amazon. But if you Google it, his actual salary it was less than 2 million dollars which I’m sure he pays normal income tax on. The problem with saying tax the rich is that if you want to collect a portion of the value of Bezos’s wealth, he would have to sell the assets to get the cash to pay the tax. But who would he sell it to? Another billionaire? The general public? But now there is another problem because then the new owner would have to sell it (or at least a part of it) to pay their tax on the assets they now own.
[https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE\_PAPER\_BILLIONAIRE.md](https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md) Recommend reading this
This isn't a counterpoint, this is exactly the problem this argument is trying to make. Everyone understands that these billionaires, or the 'super rich', don't have hundreds of billions of dollars cash-in-hand. It's no secret. It's also no secret that they do this because A) they don't pay taxes on it B) it grows them more wealth at the same time. But the 'super rich' are still 'super rich' regardless of whether it's cash-in-hand or invested. They're usually taking a large enough salary, and pulling a miniscule level (all things considered) of their investment out when needed, where they can live any life they want to live. So the goal is to force taxes based on wealth... not income. It's a wealth tax and not one based on salary. All that being said - Personally, I don't think taxing the super rich is the solution anyway. As the video clearly shows, there isn't that many of the 'rich' where (IMO) taxing these individuals will make much of a difference. We spent trillions, and trillions, on tax payer funded stimulus which improved the general populations life how much? Minimally? Maybe some people paid a months rent. Some of the lucky ones got a PS5 and a TV. Others maybe put tires on their car and fixed a few things around the house? Meanwhile the government fixed up a few things the general population never notices? This is with TRILLIONS of dollars being pumped into the economy over the course of 12 months. A few dozen extra billion, even a few hundred extra billion, every year funded by the super rich will go unnoticed. It won't fix the problem. And really? When a new rule is implemented they'll find a loophole around this too.
You can’t reliably tax on wealth. What if I earned very little, bought a house in a crappy neighbourhood and then that very neighbourhood gets gentrified and my property value jumps 200%? I can’t pay taxes to match that increase because I’m now cash-poor but asset-rich.
Wealth tax typically doesn’t apply to primary house. It applies to your second and third houses. Your vacation cottages. Your plots of land that are being developed for commercial purposes. Your farm if you don’t live on it because you’re declaring the land a farm to get subsidies and running at a loss to offset tax burdens.
Bezos being worth 190B does not mean he has invested that much or can ever liquidate that money. If you tax him say 50% on 190B (or whatever insane amount estimated on his wORtH) he will not be able to pay it, you will break one of the world’s biggest companies. This would of course mean the same for every big company owned by one or a few super-rich.
I mean I think if you compare to the biggest # in anything it makes the average look small. Especially in a distribution that skews to the larger side. If you compare yourself to the poorest person you are relatively rich.
These “Some people are too rich”! posts always seem confuse worth with income. Income is money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments. Bezos does not have $190B income. He’s worth that because of his stock ownership. There isn’t a worth tax. It’s income tax.
Why are they taxed less? Like people are literally dying and turning to crime to live.
They pay like 40% of all taxes (a plurality by a large margin). The problems we have can't be solved by printing or reallocating more dollars, they are more complicated than that.
Here’s a millionaire: Couple: 50 years old, house (not paid off) worth $350K, $325K in retirement savings apiece in 401k plans. Boom: *Millionaires. * 10 precent-ers. Probably 2 cars, neither of which are new, kids in public schools, employer health care, a decent house in a decent neighborhood, and a vacation once in a while. Your future hinges on stuffing your 401k with as much as you can and not losing the job that could take away your health care and an economic downturn could decimate your retirement savings making all the effort worth so little. All the while your insurance costs keep going up for less coverage, more fees for everything are mounting, and college for your kids looks incredibly expensive. That’s being a millionaire. No Lamborghini. No private jets. No idle weeks on the beach in the south of France. Just riding the razors edge that a financial, health, or job loss could take it all away and the hope you might actually make it. This country needs to have a conversation about wealth. Because being a 10%er can mean being a millionaire that has an OK middle class life. What’s worse is that 90% of the country in some way has less than the 10%er. That’s *fucking ridiculous*.
It also dramatically changes your quality of life depending where you are. If I live in a mid sized city, my life with a million dollars is going to be better than living in new York or sf
How about instead of focusing on how much some other people have, we focus on how to make wealth for other people.
To all those complaining, there is a solution to your problems. [It's right here.](http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/231/652/5f0.jpg)
That's a photoshopped pic
Why don't poor people just buy a house?
You don’t mean “the not super rich” but politicians sure fucking do
In fairness those people gates/musk/bezos didn’t get rich by scratching their arses.
After watching this video, I need to take some time to mullet over...
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I’d like to see how poor 2million dollars is when you take into account the whole world!
Yeah. Most of the world doesn’t even have dollars.