The moment enough of us decide this has to change, it will.
Relink productivity and wages! 90% tax rate on all the cash you earn in a year after the first $10M Close corporate tax loopholes
We can solve this, we just need to decide.
Maybe a general strike is out and we should just start a quiet friday strike, and just start extending that back through the week. Productivity just keeps falling until the wealthy decide they don’t want to suffer with the rest of us and take the fucking haircut.
After the first $1MM. Ten million dollars in a single year would set me, and likely just about anyone else, up comfortably for life twice over.
Don’t tie it to a number.
Imagine if they did this back in the 60s, but using numbers.
“1 million??? Thats way too high! If I made 1 million in a year my grandkids could retire from that year. Better make it $100,000. 90% tax after $100,000.”
Today because of inflation I would say someone making $100,000 a year is comfortable in luxery, but still earning their pay.
Tie it to a percentage of the curve of what average americans make, and I think you deflate most of inflation. Because if their price for a good is $3.00, and it costs $1.25 worth of wages to make, they could raise that $3 to $5, and only give the workers $0.25 raise, which means now that item costs $1.50 to make, but sells for $5 instead of $3. This rewards ceo’s to raise prices disproportionally. Tie it to the curve, and if he raises the price to $5, now he has to pay workers $3.25. Suddenly it’s not the ceos getting rewarded for doing that. Suddenly random price hikes to please shareholders are GONE. Which means if you can’t stay profitable in a fair market, you cease to exist. You can’t just pull a short term band-aid fix to pop a stock price, and ignore consequences. Because now those consequences actually kill your company.
What we would be left with are CEOs who actually RUN their company, rather than just load the numbers. We’d have better products, better wages, and a better life.
But if we tie it to a number, our grandkids will be right back to where we are.
I like the cut of your jib.
Annual CoL adjustments. Done.
Take your current yearly salary, multiply it by however many years you expect to live after retirement + let’s say… 10% on top for inflation, + another 10 for medical expenses. Is that number above, or below, $10M? Retirement is fucking expensive and only going up in cost.
I’ve modeled it a bit more precisely considering actual expenditures as well as social security income, projected inflation and investment returns, etc. $5MM in my pocket right now should set me up just fine.
But 90% tax means that $10MM becomes $1MM.
Progressive tax brackets. This hypothetical tax is only on money earned over 10M/1M.
I was being as gracious as I could be to illustrate we could fix this if the wealthy in this country were not being SUCH FUCKERS.
You appear to have missed the word “after.”
Why does anyone need more than $10 million?
Not in our current tax bracket world.
Alright. You make good points. I agree with you. However there is a problem. Alex jones is a nutjob with no redeeming qualities. He has a base, and called on his base to blockade his house to prevent law officials from repossesing his house, his infowars platform, and anything else worth any monetary currency. Notice, I didn’t say “value” because let’s face it. It’s alex jones. What value could there possibly be with him.
Trump did the same thing with J6. Gets his base in a frenzy to do his dirty work, and uses them to attempt a coup. I fully believe the vast majority actually there on J6 didn’t even know thats what it was. They didn’t know where were attempting a coup. But they were fully prepared to follow daddy oranges commands.
My point is, yes we CAN take this country back from the rich. But we will have to fight a second civil war to do so. This civil war won’t be about racism. It will be 100% a class war. And the rich will 100% throw every brainwashed moron they can find into the front lines to die to protect their wealth.
So if we want to take the country back, we’re going to need to fight. Quite frankly, I’m looking forward to it. Either I die and stop suffering in poverty, or I get a better life. When you push the public down to the point that they have nothing to lose, don’t be surprised when death doesn’t scare them.
If you’re a Russian trying to fuck with us, fuck off.
Assuming you’re a legit US citizen: try talking to your fucking neighbors before you start to talk about shooting.
Everyone on the Internet seems like they’re arguing with strawmen.
Violence only in response to violence. We want to solve this without bloodshed. Only those who wish our country harm wish for a civil war.
All rights are won through violence
50% would be fine but it should apply to all income including investments, gifts, etc. maybe let inheritance be amoritized over 10 years or something.
100% death tax on all assets over $1m excluding a single house. That my final offer.
There’s no justification for a birth lottery that awards democracy-warping levels of wealth to whoever had the evilest parents.
I like this idea but it should be something like 5 to 40 million. Somewhere in there.
I certainly don’t expect things to turn around in my lifetime. The future I want would require radical, systemic changes, but most Americans don’t want anything to radically change. That doesn’t mean a majority of Americans are happy with things the way they are, not at all, but they don’t want to radically change anything, despite their unhappiness. The majority of Americans want things to get better without anything fundamentally changing. I believe that’s one of the definitions of insanity.
Not wanting to fight a civil war =/= not wanting radical change
I guarantee we’d have a very different nation if individual issues and policies were put to a vote, as they are in some European nations.
Given how your party system works in America I’m wondering what you think a realistic non violent alternative would be?
I’m simply saying the desire is there for most, just not enough to take up arms.
1/3 of humanity would kill another 1/3, while a 1/3 watches.
Thanks Werner Hertzog
If you’re struggling financially, you’re not “middle class”.
If you read the article, it’s defined purely in terms of income:
The poll, commissioned by the National True Cost of Living Coalition, found that around 65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle.
In a way, it kind of proves the point that we need to reevaluate what the actual cost of living is in the modern age. For a family of 4 to be considered middle class by this metric, they would have an income of $62,400/year or higher. For a single individual, it’s just $30,120/year. I don’t know anywhere in the US where making $15 an hour means you’re in the middle class, yet the federal government wants to keep acting like it’s the 1980s and you can live it up to an extent on such a meager income.
That being said, financial struggle doesn’t necessarily mean they’re one step away from being destitute. It could just be a struggle to maintain their current standard of life, where is used to be taken as a given that this would improve over time.
need to reevaluate
there will never be an administration that would sign off on adjusting the measurements such that millions of people would suddenly be categorized in a lower class than they are. that would make the people calling the shots look bad
Perhaps, but they could minimize the damage from that if it was paired with a comprehensive plan to improve living standards that people actually believed would get passed, and following through on that. Meanwhile, the longer they go on denying the reality voters are experiencing daily, the more they undermine their credibility. At best, they come across as out of touch or incompetent, at worst as outright malicious.
Nah it’s way easier to point the finger at minority groups and claim they are the cause of all our troubles. It’s been working great for years, why would the ruling class stop now?
Not necessarily. You can live outside your means at any income level.
Also, children are fucking expensive.
That’s not middle class…
I don’t know if it has its own name, but it’s like the Overton window in politics.
Average people assume that they’re average and middle class means average, so they’re “middle class” despite having three figures in saving, no home equity, and a retirement account that will never be enough to retire.
Prior generations at least built up home equity over a lifetime.
As one of these middle class fucks I don’t know how to refer to myself. I’m supporting myself and a dependent adult on barely six figures a year (plus some disability money).
I know I have it way fucking better than folks working in a warehouse or migrant agricultural workers so I don’t want to falsely describe myself as lower class when I’ve clearly got it better… but I’m also being fucking squeezed and each month I eat into my savings. I will say that I am not carrying debt because I aggressively saved early in my career but I am slowly whittling down what should be my retirement savings.
So, what the fuck am I?
Fucked.
So, what the fuck am I?
Scrapping by
People focus on income, income ain’t the whole picture, it’s wealth that’s important.
It used to be owning a home built wealth passively, as you lived and paid your mortgage, you gained equity.
If people cant afford to buy a home, it’s almost impossible to build wealth. You just flush more money away on rent as you earn more money.
It’s what happens when they charge as much as people can pay for something we all need.
Towards the end, Medicare/medicaid/whatever takes the house too if you don’t plan ahead, and no doubt they’ll close the “loopholes” for planning ahead too.
If you are struggling and you are not living above your means then you are not middle class you are lower class.
The “middle class” is currently defined by arbitrary income levels, not purchasing power. Considering the cost of living disparity across the US it’s an absolutely useless measure.
To be in the middle class 50 years ago, you were able to buy a reasonable family house on one income. To do that today if you’re in an area where the cost of living isn’t absolutely bottom of the barrel you’ve got to make what is currently considered “upper middle class” income or slightly above.
Middle class living is relegated to upper middle class incomes while middle and lower middle class have to rent that lifestyle.
upper middle class incomes
The middle class died the day they had to make the “upper middle class” a thing…
That’s the wealth distribution middle class was supposed to be. But it shrank down so much they had to make new class distinctions up.
In pre-revolution France, the bourgeois were the middle class.
99% in poverty.
O.99% bourgeois
0.01%, the aristocrats!
That distribution wasn’t sustainable back then, it’s not sustainable now.
As wealth concentrates at the top, there’s less for everyone else, and we’re all poor.
Yup. The traditional American middle class is essentially an endangered species
"65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle. "
That sounds more like a problem with the definition of the federal poverty level than it is a problem with the middle class.
If you’re struggling, you aren’t middle class.
Federal Poverty Level for 2024 is dependent on household size:
https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/federal-poverty-guidelines/
Oh, man, now I have to see if Lemmy can do tables… Hmmm nope!
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $15,060 - $30,120
2 - $20,440 - $40,880
3 - $25,820 - $51,640
4 - $31,200 - $62,400
5 - $36,580 - $73,160
6 - $41,960 - $83,920
7 - $47,340 - $94,680
8 - $52,720 - $105,440
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760So let’s take the prototypical nuclear family, 2 parents, 2 kids.
$62,400 is 200% poverty. I could see that being a struggle. I think maybe what we need is to re-define the poverty level.
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $31,200 - $62,400
2 - $36,580 - $73,160
3 - $41,960 - $83,920
4 - $47,340 - $94,680
5 - $52,720 - $105,440
6 - $58,100 - $116,200
7 - $63,480 - $126,960
8 - $68,860 - $137,720
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760To hell with the middle class, what about the working class? You know, the ones that get all the physical labor done so you can get your next day Amazon order before hitting the Starbucks.
We’ve really bastardized the terms middle class and working class. It’s feeding into the class warfare that is being used against us.
If you have to physically work for a living, you are working class. Let’s point our ire at the correct people here.
It’s not a “who is suffering more” contest. Bad things are bad things because they’re bad.
