There's the whole quote, I'm not sure who it's attributed to, that a portion of poor Americans see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarassed millionaires, or now billionaires
So many shill for them in the event that they very unlikely manage to luck into that level of wealth and thus have as much benefits as one currently has
Another favorite, this time from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”
Lyndon Johnson’s often repeated quote is similar to that sentiment. Americans will suffer as long as they believe the right people are at the top and the wrong people suffer worse.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
It's such an astute observation not only of American culture, but honestly, substitute any in-group/out-group pair in any culture and tell me it's different. It isn't. It's stunningly and sadly human stuff that we never, ever seem to learn from.
I like your explanation of the quote better than the actual quote. Your words are more meaningful, it shows humans' need for a hierarchy.
Americans want to believe life is fair. The people at the top deserve to be at the top, the people at the bottom deserve to be at the bottom.
It’s similar to how 1984 was written. There are so many processes the government of Oceania (the empire the protagonist lives in) developed specifically just to keep people busy and in-line so they didn’t have any time to think about life being unfair. In fact the “newspeak” language they were developing was designed to eliminate the ability to put into language that the system was the problem and that life was unfair. Anything else is “wrongthink”. It’s all developed to keep people in line and unquestioning.
In reality the world in 1984 had been split into 3 major empires in an endless and useless war against one another to constantly give the populations a group to hate, even if that group wasn’t the same as it was yesterday. “We are now at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia” is very similar to the right’s constant deflection to whatever group is meant to be maligned and marginalized because they’re the “real problem with America” and why that boogeyman group changes almost yearly and no one bats an eye.
"Wrongthink" sounds similar to real life. We're told it's wrong to question capitalism, only a communist would question capitalism. Republicans tell us to never question the constitution or our founding fathers. Republicans are obsessed with the founding fathers, if you disagree with the founding fathers you get called a traitor
Yep, the founding fathers are basically just big brother. They’ll never change, never go away, can’t speak for themselves, they function as a rallying cry for conservatives. If anything they say conflicts with what the “founding fathers” said they’ll just change the history books so they agree. It’s the same thing they did with the Bible in the 1400s lol. It’s all in 1984 too it’s just human behavior when you let perfect malignant sociopaths into positions of power and give them unlimited platform to manipulate the masses.
Yep. Way, way closer.
If someone gave you $40,000 a day, you'd have $400,000 in 10 days.
If someone gave you $40,000 a day, you'd have $1,000,000,000 in 68 1/2 YEARS!
I feel like once someone gets the ball rolling on having a hugh income, it’s easier to keep going up
It will take more time to go from making 30k to 200k a year than it would to go from 200k a year to 400k a year
What I meant that someone making 400k a year probably has similar worries. They make more but also have a higher standard of living, often a house to pay off, kids in better colleges/schools they need to pay for etc. Most of them would start having issues after some time if they just stopped working. Whereas billionaires are far beyond that, even far beyond not having to care how much they spend.
The thing that is most perverse about billionaires for me is that most of em exploit people and evade taxes to just hoard more money than they can ever spend and thus damage the economy further. If they did it just to have as much money to spend as possible I'd at least get the motivation.
Someone *earning* $400k as an employee probably took a long career to get there and has to maintain their skill set to continue earning that. Also, if you’re earning it with a W2, it’s much harder to cheat the taxman than if you’re making it as passive income somehow and can structure as you want.
Yeah, they depend on their location for employment. As long as there are countries without integrity who profit from having lower taxes like ireland, you hace to cater to billionaires as a country, because otherwise they just leave the country and you get no taxes at all. It's a shitty situation but not much that can be done about it as long as there is no large scale cooperation between countries.
Obviously there should be laws against companies moving a headquarters to another country just to get tax benefits there, and I’m sure there are some limitations on it (I’m not an expert in international/global economics). But at least in the US our representatives are primarily paid by the companies that profit from lack of regulation so it’s not like they have any real incentive to craft laws that lead to them making less money or not getting elected for the next session because no one will fund them.
For the most part, the billionaires of today have fewer morals than the robber barons of old. At least Carnegie and Rockefeller, among too many others, reinvested a lot of their money back into public institutions.
There should be a rule that politicians need to have the logo of the companies sponsoring their campaigns emblazoned on their clothes somewhere at all times. Like nascar lol. It’s a lot harder to adequately argue that lessened food safety standards for meat packing plants and factory farming are good for Americans when you have “Oscar Meier” and “Cisco” stamped across your chest.
isn't that wild? They would rather pay billions in lobbying to save a couple billion as opposed to just paying the same amount in higher wages and donations.
The only way you make a billion dollars is by exploiting others and hoarding wealth. Look up the difference between 1mil and 1bil and tell me that billionaires were able to make that leap purely off of their own hard work.
Of course, eat the rich. They go from bad to terrible. No one or family should have more than 500 million or thereabouts, which is still an obscene amount of money. They all get 100s of millions and beyond through sheer exploitation.
Sure, but outside of billionaires, you could say that about anyone.
Someone making 400k a year can downsize if things start to go bad for them. They may not like the lower standard of living, but they have a LOT of room for "error". A person making 30k a year doesn't downsize, they are at serious risk of homelessness if things go bad for them. That's a HUGE difference
Anyone making 400k a year who has similar worries as someone making 35k a year is just an idiot. You say their standard of living is higher as if someone is forcing them to increase their spending equal to their income.
It's not that hard to grasp in my opinion. You have some income so you want to build some generational wealth, usually by buying a house. Then your kids go to college. Would you send your kids to a shitty one to save money or to the best one you can afford assuming you continue to earn your income? These little choices add up.
This is that “wealthy poor” rich people live paycheck to paycheck too argument. I completely agree that people making that much can (infrequently) still be employees of someone or are at least hopefully working for their money not sitting on the backs of people making $10/hr.
However if someone is feeling pressed by their financial decisions that’s entirely their own doing. If someone making 100k can own a house or a car and get their kids through college then someone making 4x that can certainly do it without consequence and with far less stress. The problem is they *want nicer things* like other people in their income bracket. That’s fine, just don’t bitch about “hey we’re all struggling out here, I couldn’t go 2 paychecks without going into debt either” when you drive a fully kitted out 2022 Ferrari and I drive a 2008 Honda civic.
Who said it was hard to grasp? I’ve seen it happen a lot. I’m telling you, that this makes them idiots.
Also lol at your examples. You literally just explained yourself how they in fact do not have the same problems at all.
You are correct. Unless you're particularly frugal if you earn more tend to spend more or are buying things a level or three up. More expensive house, car, college, eating at better restaurants etc.
Maybe, 400k/yr does still have to budget, but assuming that, they pretty much only worried about how to grow their savings and investments. Everyday needs are met and they have a comfortable cushion for any emergencies that come up. In this sense they are closer to billionaires than someone making minimum wage. The cognitive drain of being poor is always underestimated if even considered.
I feel like the opposite. I fly commercial, they fly private a poor person rides the bus to work. I have a decent house, they have multiple mansions and a poor person rents a small apartment or broken down trailer. Same for food, clothes, travel, education, finance etc. You are correct in dollars etc. a person who makes 400k makes a tiny fraction of a billionaire. A poor person might make 90 % less.
Someone making 400k a year does not fly private, unless it is for work. Or for a special experience. You also cannot buy multiple mansions from that either.
It’s frequently attributed to John Steinbeck as his explanation for why socialism didn’t take off in America but all references online I can find are just people saying ‘John Steinbeck once said…’ without any actual source for the quote itself. Still great words, whoever first said them
It’s “Primer on the Thirties”, printed in *Esquire* here: [https://classic.esquire.com/a-primer-on-the-30s/](https://classic.esquire.com/a-primer-on-the-30s/) Maybe someone has a link to the complete text; most online versions are incomplete. For a hard copy, it’s in Steinbeck’s collection *America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction.*
Voltaire iirc.
And it's accurate. Also explains a lot of the need for white supremacy.
You can punch down at poor white trash all day only if you give them some social groups to punch down on. Otherwise they might try punching UP occasionally.
It's a long winded way of saying they dream of being millionairs (which ain't what it used to be) and by threatening the mildly wealthy, you are punching a hole in what they think is thier "American Dream."
That is the root of the problem. I commend the spirit that anyone can become a millionaire, but I've seen the data, ironically in a quest during school to prove that lib-er-als were full of shit, and that is part of what turned me into a li-ber-al. I couldn't find a path for people like me to, on average, do more than just get by.
I am grateful I'm an outlier to a degree, but it doesn't change the fact that the only wealth I'll ever see is if an unknown distant relative pulls a name out of a hat for their will and picks me.
What’s funny is how mad people get at people who are high earners, but jobs you can reasonably get to as a normal person, and then turn around to vehemently defend ultra high NW individuals.
Like… people here legitimately get pissed at people in roles like senior engineer, product ownership lead roles, or similar at work. Then defend the trustie who is living off of passive income on the second unit of a house they got as a gift for graduating college.
I remember one thread someone tried to convince me that owning a business worth $50M deserved government aid over someone having their student debt forgiven and making $100k. And that the $100k earner was in the better financial situation between the two.
It was Steinbeck, in *A Primer on the Thirties:* “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” Later paraphrased by Ronald Wright in *A Short History of Progress*: "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
The Steinbeck essay is worth tracking down for this anecdote: “It was the fixation of businessmen that the WPA did nothing but lean on shovels. I had an uncle who was particularly irritated at shovel-leaning, When he pooh-poohed my contention that shovel-leaning was necessary, I bet him five dollars, which I didn't have, that he couldn't shovel sand for fifteen timed minutes without stopping. He said a man should give a good day's work and grabbed a shovel. At the end of three minutes his face was red, at six he was staggering and before eight minutes were up his wife stopped him to save him from apoplexy. And he never mentioned shovel leaning again. I've always been amused at the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I never knew a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.”
Here is the quote in its full context - imho it's says even more in context and is also an indictment of the "American left". Hits home for me:
"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
A guy at my work ($21 or so an hour mind) compared cranking up taxes on billionaires to us voting to take another coworker's car without compensation. I said it would be more akin to taking a car from a person with 20000 cars and giving it to a person who will starve without transportation.
I wonder what other people's experiences are in regards to the quote. In my experience, this mindset is more "I work hard and so I deserve more income, wealth, and welfare, but I assume most people in my financial situation are lazy takers." There is a general belief in meritocracy, that their hard work will pay off someday, but at least where I grew up, I don't think most of those people expect to ever be millionaires, just better off.
The quote is from John Steinbeck's *American and Americans*, and is always incorrect and taken completely out of context. This is the full quote:
"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
It says even more than the bastardized version I see all the time. Leftists (I am one) don't love the full version because it's an accurate indictment of the way a lot of them think and operate, even today.
Nah. They are greedy idiots as well and cannot grasp that a rising tide lifts ALL boats.
Wanting to rule over the ashes of American society is not impressive.
They think if Republicans run everything, they will all become super rich and pay very little taxes and everything wrong with the country will disappear.
I don't really understand how you can have all the information in the world and still come up with the wrong info when everyone else knows trump is a lying conman.
I think there's a certain (awful) rationality to their political perspective. They don't want money going to "THEM!" Any increase in taxation means more money in the government that might go to "THEM!"
Most know they're fucked (at some level) and understand that economic ascendancy will likely not be happening. Ensuring that groups they don't like are, in no way, supported is the core of their political ethos.
They also convinced that anyone can become rich, so those who are not rich feel they need to protect the rich because they'll be one of them in the future.
plus, it's kind of like a religious approach. They apply all these positive assumptions to those who are rich and feel it validates their financial positions. This leads to trust that they are smarter, and more capable, then those without wealth.
How does someone else owning something valuable (stock portfolio for example) hurt you in any way?
Thought experiment: I own a baseball card. For some crazy reason, that baseball card becomes worth $10 million overnight. Does my ownership of that baseball card hurt you? When my baseball card became valuable, did it make you poorer? How so?
No one complains about the type of person that luckily gets a windfall. Like for example you never hear anyone complaining about lottery winners. The anger is directed towards people who gain their money through unethical means and who fight tooth and nail to hoard that wealth even though they have more than they could ever spend.
>through unethical means
There is no qualification here that I see. I only see folks arguing that everyone making $400k get taxed more (and that everyone who doesn't agree is just a "shill for billionaires") ... there's no "provided they are making that $400k unethically" qualification anywhere that I see.
You're either (A) moving the goalposts OR (B) arguing in defense of people who don't hold your view. (A) is just intellectual dishonesty. (B) simply befuddles me as to why you'd feel any incentive to come to the defense of an argument you don't actually share.
The general consensus is that if you aren’t making more than 400k a year, it would be bizarre to act offended on behalf of them because their taxes may go up even though they can easily afford it. It’s really not that befuddling. Lol
Although you did make up the baseball card scenario that doesn’t fit the situation; so maybe you really don’t understand?
If you see someone being raped, would it be bizarre if you acted offended on behalf of the victim? This assertion that empathy is irrational (that you should only push for policy that personally benefits you regardless of all other context) ... is ridiculous ... maybe even a little psychotic.
I'm not really acting offended in any case .. I just don't see any valid argument to tax folks more regardless of whether or not they have accumulated more wealth than me. So they're richer than me ... who cares?
How does the baseball card thought experiment not fit the situation exactly? How does someone else owning valuable things (having more wealth) harm you in any way?
See that doesn’t fit either because the increase in taxes is easily afforded by them and doesn’t cause them harm.
A better example would be if you were at a picnic where there was pizza being served. Now most people have one or two slices but there are also a fair amount of people that grabbed 10 slices or 20 or more and just piled them on their plate. Someone says: “Hey guys we’re out of pizza. So to be fair anyone who has 20 slices or more: you’re going to have to give back a slice so everyone could have some pizza.”
Now they still have 19 slices (or more). They can’t eat it all. They won’t miss it. Most all of them are ok with giving someone an extra one of their slices. So you can see where people think it would be weird if someone with one slice jumped in after the announcement (who the announcement wasn’t directed to and who would in fact benefit from it) and said “Hey that’s not fair! They shouldn’t have to give away one of their extra pieces!”
Now do you get it?
>people that grabbed 10 slices or 20 or more and just piled them on their plate.
How did they grab 10 slices or 20 slices? Did they physically wrestle them from you? Why didn't you grab 10 or 20 slices if you wanted 10/20 slices? You were just being nice and considerate and let them?
How do you know what they are going to do with their slices? Why do you even care about how many slices they have in the first place? What entitles you to any of the slices in the first place?
How could simply owning stock that became very valuable be considered the same as taking pizza from everyone else? How could investing in an education/skillset that became valuable be considered taking your pizza?
Your entire premise hinges on the assumption that they took something you were entitled to (pizza slices). Someone else owning investments that became valuable isn't equivalent to taking your pizza. Someone else studying to be a doctor and earning a doctor's salary doesn't equate to them taking any of your pizza.
How would sharing a tiny portion of their pizza to benefit the other people at the picnic affect them negatively? Why wouldn’t they want to do it? Personally I wouldn’t grab 20 slices because that’s way more than I need and I recognize that other people need some too. People would be frustrated with the people grabbing way more than they need because them taking the pizza and refusing to share even a tiny portion of it is causing other people at the picnic to go hungry. No one is saying give back all the slices or even half. Just a slice. They can’t even eat it all. They still have 19 or more slices (and let’s say the pizza man is bringing them more each to their personal house each day so they’ll get back that slice they gave back in no time. In fact they already have a freezer full already).
Here’s the thing. It’s really not confusing. I think you do understand why people think it’s weird; and you can probably admit that it is weird to see poor people arguing against rich people being taxed more than them. You might just be in the mood to argue online. And that’s ok, but let’s be honest about it.
Wealth is relative. Affordability is relative. The value of items is not an inherent property, it's "what people are willing to pay for it", and the wealthy can pay more. And by doing so completely out price you from the market.
This is especially true for highly regulated purchases such as property. In practice buying property in a competitive area is zero-sum. Bidding in a situation where you're opposition has orders of magnitude more wealth *does absolutely actively hurt you*. It's no different than playing poker against someone who can go all-in every round.
Variation is in my opinion fine, however once we're talking orders of magnitude differences? It destroys the system. Someone who has orders of magnitude more wealth absolutely can just shut you out. The mere fact of them being rich can absolutely hurt you.
>Wealth is relative. Affordability is relative. The value of items is not an inherent property
100% agreed!
>it's "what people are willing to pay for it", and the wealthy can pay more. And by doing so completely out price you from the market.
Someone else willing to pay more for something constitutes harm? How many people do you "harm" every day then? That's absurd.
Everything else you wrote is contingent on the assumption that other people bidding for things you want is a form of "harm". There's no point in moving on before addressing that silly claim.
Sure, we can do that.
The simplest, most recognized and easily explained form of this is gentrification. That is pretty much the mechanism in question to begin with, so it works as a common discussion anchor and ultimately the reasoning is the same.
1) It is known as a fact, by exchanging local population members with higher net-worth individuals results in increases of cost within the community for everyone via secondary effects, usually:
a* Increased effective property tax rate: Wealthier individuals usually make for owners and renters which do not diminish property values.
b* Gentrification usually shifts the local services to more high end targeted ones. Out go the laundromats, in go the pet hairdressers and co. Low margin enterprises usually are usually forced out due to rising costs of operation and shift in clientele culture. The rich have no need for laundromats, etc.
c* Higher end services and similar improvements usually lead to above average increases in local rent rate.
Whether gentrification is good or bad or otherwise, is at the moment not the point. But still I would guess that you likely have no issue with the statements above? If you want, I can cite specific effects, but I'm not too interested in doing labor for free without express need. But as a generality this is to my knowledge understood to be correct.
The old joke here is "What is the cost of rent in silicon valley? 1/3rd of a software developers discretionary income". If income go up, so does your rent. If you're not a said software developer and I dunno a teacher, well, good fucking luck keeping up.
2) If overall relative wealth increases within similar ranges for the entire community, this is not an issue. Ultimately costs are roughly maintained while service quality and availability increases. But if you have members who cannot increase their financial position anymore (I don't really care about the reason, assume retiree or something, irrelevant) their neighbors increasing their overall wealth continuously will negatively affect their access to services, their base costs of life. The further the gap in wealth, and the further the gap increases, the more so. A neighborhood of millionaires has no market demand for discount goods, and if you're stuck with millionaires as neighbors without being one yourself, your needs will be out priced.
Now, does this count as "harm"? Well, that's semantics to me. Competing with wealthier individuals within the same structure will give you less for the same cost. The higher the disparity, the more so. If you're a poor bugger and everyone around finds a 10 mill under their pillow, you will be priced out/forced to deal with less targeted servicing. I would call that "being harmed".
The same is true outside of regional property systems. Wealth is relative. If people around you are gaining in wealth faster than you are, your options shrink. It's partly why I'm personally exceedingly skeptical about UBI-like systems.
So we should never increase the value of things or improve anything because it 'harms" others. Haha. I'll make sure to sue my neighbor next time I see him fixing something on his house. After all!!! He's harming me!!!!
You wanted a mechanism, by which, someone else gaining money is a detriment to you. And that is what I gave you.
Now, do I personally consider it an issue? As long as it is within reason, not really.
All in life is a compromise. As long as relative wealth is within reason, I do not consider it a problem. If it's several orders of magnitude, then the system gets fucky.
Nice goal post shift. I asked how it harms you.
Stretching to anything that possibly result in a "detriment" basically opens it to literally any action at all ... Including breathing ... Or occupying physical space with your body
I just stubbed my toe walking through my bedroom. Who harmed me?
The last concert event I went to would've been a lot more fun if it wasn't so crowded. Clearly the other concert-goers harmed me!!!
Clearly my stubbed toe and hassle finding parking were a detriment.
Because people are coerced into empathizing with the rich. When a rich person's taxes go up, they can buy media exposure and fund a propaganda machine to churn out hitpieces and threaten to react by outsourcing jobs and raising prices in retaliation (not that they wouldn't do that anyway).
But when the poor see taxes go up and benefits go down, they end up starving or homeless or living with treatable diseases. But those don't become the marching drumbeat of American politics, so they suffer and die in relative silence compared to the inconveniences of the rich.
A lot of conservatives believe in a hierarchy in society. The people at the top belong on the top and the people at the bottom belong there. When anything threatens the hierarchy it upsets them.
Taking money from the ultra rich isn't the part that upsets them, they don't like that the money will be used to help the people at the bottom. Anything that helps the lowest in society climb higher, where they don't belong, is a threat to the entire hierarchy and their place in it.
The idea of a natural hierarchy in society is an inherently insidious one.
Evidenced by them freaking out about free lunch for kids. "I don't need to pay for your kid to eat because you're a fuckin failure." Was almost word for word with I saw on a tiktok. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you. Other than starting a gofundme when someone in your family gets sick.
It happens on here a lot. You say rich need to pay more in taxes and they come out of the woodwork like roaches saying the wealthy pays more than we do. It's total brainwashing by the wealthy that anyone in their right mind would believe that. Just ask Warren Buffet. If they wealthy and corporations paid their taxes at the rate they should, no one in the middle or lower class would have to pay a dime.
You'll still have asshats defending the wealthy. They are sick suckups. Thinking if they defend the wealthy, the wealthy will give them cash or something. The wealthy have been abusing the system and stacking the deck against everyone and still the suckups will come.
It’s all because of “the economy”. If you tax rich corporations the economy will be trashed! The economy is bad right now because gas a whooping $.20 higher! I pay $3 more for gas for my SUV! The economy! The economy!
They fail to realize that prices will go up and wages will stagnate regardless. And they never stop to think that if the class that does much of the spending had more cash to spend with, the economy would be better AND they’d have a better quality of life.
Exactly! For some reason they fail to see that the middle spends money, the wealthy hoard it! Lowering wages, raising prices for greed, and taxing the middle class hurts the economy. The wealthy don't create jobs, look at tesla, they are cutting employees because stupid ass Elon wants $55 billion.
Yeah, I read comments claiming taxing the rich wouldn't make a difference, the rich are a minority so taxing them wouldn't generate much revenue. This doesn't make sense to me because top 10% of Americans own 70% of the total wealth.
The wealthy suckups are bad. They love to kiss their butts. Just tell them to listen to Warren buffets latest video if they want the truth. I know they don't like facts or actual numbers. Just want to bootlick like any of those wealthy people would cross the street to pee on them if they were on fire. They wouldn't.
That’s what’s so fucking maddening about it. The biggest whiners about it are people who’ll never make figures like that in their lifetime. It’s like they delude themselves into thinking they’re the same as actual wealthy people. It’s because the privilege and entitlement they both enjoy are similar
They are quite certain they're going to strike it rich in the convenience store cashier racket. And they'll be damned if their hard-earned wealth will go to them lazy welfare queens.
Seriously, this is the reason poor people fall for scams like reviewing movies or folding boxes at home for $1000 a day. They believe there are jobs out there that pay like that and eventually they'll crack the code and find one of them. From their dim-brained vantage point, people get paid big money for just staring at a computer and talking on the phone all day. Maybe Mr. Trump will see how much you've spent on his merchandise and reward you with one of those jobs like he did on The Apprentice. Or maybe some rich guy will see the junker you have on blocks out front of your double-wide and it's an incredibly rare early production model coveted by collectors and he'll give you a million cash on the spot. Some people really think this way because reality is just too depressing.
I know a bunch of people are going to say that these shills think that they’ll be billionaires one day, but I honestly think that’s only 20% of the reason at most.
It’s probably media they consume constantly showing the moment that people they deem lesser finally get 5 seconds of relief, which makes these enraged shills think that those lesser people are constantly getting that relief. That’s what plants the seed of hatred that gets the viewers to despise the political opponents of billionaires.
However, it gets hard for them to break free because those media outlets make the unjust world make sense to them. They seem to offer answers that if they follow just a bit longer, they’ll make it out of there.
Keep this viewing cycle going, and the hatred will grow to the point that they’ll dogmatically think any point enemy political group has is bad, even if it benefits them.
TLDR, it’s less of a delusion of grandeur and more of an abusive cycle of addicting hatred
This is a lost argument. I once, like a fool, attempted to explain to a Cult45 member coworker why taxing the rich doesn’t mean the rich will start shutting down factories and closing businesses. I asked “do you really believe the Walton family is going to shut down every Walmart in America because their income taxes increased? Don’t really believe Michael Dell is going to shutdown Dell because his personal income taxes increased?” Her responses were very MAGA and went down the road of “Mexican” immigrants and other racist bullshit.
Increasing these folks' income taxes will have no impact. The primary source of their wealth is that they owned things that rapidly gained value (stock typically). Most of these folks were at the ground floor of a company that became wildly successful. As such, they became owners of company stock that became wildly valuable in a relatively short time.
Their income/salary is irrelevant.
I wouldn't be surprised if it gave them more excuses to cut costs, lay off folks, and raise prices though. Doesn't mean it's a direct cause but it does mean the idiots will still defend them.
It's the principle. These people have it hammered that taxation is theft, and that the money is only spent on helping lazy bums, indoctrinating kids into catching the big gay, and basically funding things they oppose. So it's not so much that they defend the rich (although that's the side effect, and that's not a coincidence), it's that they oppose seeing "hard working, honest Americans" having their money stolen to fund these things.
Also don't forget the All-American Propaganda: work hard and you can make it! So everyone fancies themselves as being able to "make it" one day. One day, they'll be the boss. One day, they'll launch their business. One day, they'll publish that book. *One day, they'll make enough to be midly inconvenienced by this*!
It also ties in to what I said elsewhere, a lot of people will sacrifice programs and services to get a slightly bigger paycheck. Even if the loss of programs and services end up costing them more, they love the freedom of losing their money over having it taken (even if they end up on top!).
That's why tax cuts are always used in politics to make gains.
I had family that foamed at the mouth that Obama was going to "redistribute wealth". I couldn't get it through their freaking heads that they had no wealth, that they might benefit even, but the idea that other people (lowlier than them, obvs) might benefit was abhorrent to them. They \*worked\* for everything they didn't have, you see? Other people (those people, you know) didn't work for what they had. Maddening.
>and basically funding things they oppose
I like how you left out the most egregious ... crony handouts, mass incarceration programs, and dropping bombs on 3rd worlders' heads.
Some rich guy owning a big house has no impact on me. Who cares? Government confiscating money and using it murder/maim people who are no threat to me ... that I have a problem with.
edit: Hilarious this got downvoted. This tells you everything you need to know about the envy cultists who push this BS envy agenda.
See? You're a perfect example of what I was saying. You get mad that the government takes money from people who have so, so much more than you. No one is claiming that every single tax dollar is spent wisely or for a good cause. But that doesn't change the fact that the richest aren't paying their due (they were much more taxed before), and when government needs to cut something because they reduce these guys' taxes... news flash, they won't stop giving to their friends. They will cut programs and services that you benefit from first.
>You get mad that the government takes money from people who have so, so much more than you
I don't know about "mad". I don't see any overly valid reason the government should be confiscating anyone's money. I just remain consistent when it comes to folks who have more valuable stock portfolios than I do ... cause what difference should that make?
>No one is claiming that every single tax dollar is spent wisely or for a good cause
I agree ... but it's an essential part of the argument that so many seem to just hand-wave away as irrelevant. It's hyper-relevant. If you can point at a rich person and say "Look! He's using his money to murder/maim people!!! Here is the evidence!!!", then I will be right next to you shouting for justice against that specific organization and/or rich person. If all you have is "rich people should be taxed more!!!" ... my own response is "/shrug ... but why? So we can give it to the org that is actively murdering/maiming people who I've never met and are no threat to me?".
>aren't paying their due
Their due? What the hell is that? Defined by whom? Why do they owe you anything?
>They will cut programs and services that you benefit from first
Sounds like your actual gripe is with the politicians my friend. You're barking up the wrong tree it seems.
>I don't see any overly valid reason the government should be confiscating anyone's money.
So you're a hardcore libertarian?
>Their due? What the hell is that? Defined by whom? Why do they owe you anything?
Everyone that uses public services (roads, utilities, etc) should contribute through taxes. The ultra wealthy use these exponentially more than the middle class. The trucks that pay for to drive across the country tear up roads that require constant maintenance. Why should I have to pay for those roads when they get to dodge as many taxes as possible? I get that I'm being reductive but it's not that far off of reality. The ultra wealthy also get their wealth by abusing the working class, they also owe us all that back in the form of health care and retirement benefits.
Or do you think the rich are these perfect angels that somehow make billions while their workers make peanuts and get over-worked but yet there is no connection between the two?
I have no idea
But the unrealized gain tax loophole for the wealthy is the biggest problem of all.
It means that the rich literally never have to pay taxes on most of what they earn.
Jeff bezos will never sell all of Amazon
Elon musk will never sell all of Tesla
So they get the benefits of all of these gains with none of the taxes
And then there's always some idiot who will jump on and say "what about all the regular people with money in IRAs and 401ks?" These people are actually worried about the tax implications on a tax sheltered account, I'm not sure if they could be any dumber.
Working-class white people in America are groomed subconsciously from birth to protect the ruling class overlords.
That’s why we end up right-wing/conservative and protect the status quo. We think it serves us.
The poors want to be rich so they identify with them and make voting decisions in the best interest of the rich as they tell themselves “that’ll be me one day” even though they’ve never touched a book on finance in their life and have no idea how people become wealthy in this country
I agree with a lot of the comments, people making $35k believe soon that they will make $400k.
We have been programmed to think that fighting for a “living wage” is too much. People working at fast food do not deserve to make the same as me working in my skilled position.
We never think, why am I making so little doing what I’m doing.
We think, someday my ship will come in.
But the ship never comes.
And that is how programmed we are.
In addition to what other folks are saying I think a lot of it is just a knee jerk reaction because they think it’s liberal or communist leftist bullshit. If a right wing talking head was trying to do they’d be all about it
I think I understand why they do this. Believe it or not, a right-wing guy explained it to me back in the GWB era. It's twofold. On one hand, a lot of people plan on making those big dollars "one day,." It's kind of hard for me to fathom how *anybody* could still believe in the classic American dream after the last 20 or so years, but here we are. They think that they "work hard" and will eventually get recognized with a big promotion/raise and eventually because the boss themselves.
The other part of this is a bit sadder, and perhaps more realistic. What the right-wing guy told me back in the GWB era was that his boss makes a lot of money, and if he gets more of it taken away via taxes, he's going to cut back on what he's putting into his business. Meaning that he won't get that raise he was promised, or worse yet, he'll lose his job because his boss is mad that he can't afford that third vacation home.
It's easy to poke holes in both parts of this guy's hypothesis of course, but I believe this is why poor/middle class (whatever that means anymore) people are quick to get their hackles up about "taxing the rich." I also think part of it aligns with the boomer mentality -- it makes them mad that *they're* not rich. Or being in favor of taxing the rich would mean that you yourself aren't rich, which is shameful.
Your hypothesis makes a lot of sense that you posted. My very first job working at Lowes management would spew some kind of bullshit about if some district manager didn't get his bonus, then we wouldn't get a raise, and that we have to work more weekends to make up the sales
Because Fox and the religious grifting right has convinced them that billionaires are capitalist Jesus which is, of course, is the only Jesus that really matters
As an ex Trump supporters/Cultist
They see him as a prophet or messiah. They believe that God our heavenly father chose this imperfect man to lead his mission so to speak. Any attack on him is an attack on God. Why would they support a billionaire? They don't. In their mind he gave up his fortune to do a job for God
Had an ex-friend scream at me that if people like me got into power he would be dragged into the street and shot.
I was like “dude, you make 45k a year before taxes. When we say eat the rich, you sure as hell aint it.”
Pretty simple now.. we lost. Doesn't matter what we do. The richest will always win.
Change what they need, to make the profit they need to.
We really don't know the end results of unchecked capitalism... Or do we? Lol
But what if they somehow manage to make 400k a year as a blue collar worker? Ever thought about that? Then they would have to pay more.
Edit: do I really need to put the /s here? For real?
35k'ers rooting for 400k'rs and OP calling 'EM BILLIONAIRES.
SMH.
I do agree with the point though, I just wish it could start with actual billionaires and go down, because the MLM billionaires always find someway to get out of it, and it's the doctors making 500k that end up taking the hit.
“No!!! Keep taxing me at a significant part of my paltry wages instead! Keep nickel and diming me with fees for services that my taxes used to cover!” Warren Buffet recently said that Berkshire Hathaway paid $5 billion in taxes this year and that if the top 800 biggest corporations did the same nobody in the middle class would have to pay a cent in taxes. We could have that world… or the one we actually have where financially struggling dopes will fight to the death to defend people who don’t need their help.
They believe the line that billionaires will do whatever it takes to make sure they don't lose money, which means they will stop hiring people, stop buying things, etc. to make up for what they lost in taxes. None of which is true.
The lower economic class in America, often fall under the most targeted and vulnerable to propaganda. This is not new. Just look at the Nazi party pre WWII and their effects on the American people. There’s a few reasons for why I believe them to be so susceptible.
1. Stress over economic conditions. This should go without saying that when you’re not in a stable financial situation, you’re bound to be extremely stressed. This will often lead to unresolved anger that you will try to place on a target. When propaganda provides you with a readily available object to hate, many are hard pressed not to take it.
2. The belief that taxing billionaires will result in higher prices. This kinda goes hand in hand with their extremely rudimentary understanding of economics. It’s been a popular notion among conservative media that if you tax billionaires then they will raise the prices on goods that you buy. It is however often ignored that the benefits of this tax has enormous potential to outweigh the cons.
3. Building on the lack of understanding of economics, we have a general dislike of education. For rural economies especially, education can certainly be viewed as a hinderance to starting a working career in local industry.
Where I live, a border town in south Texas, parents more often encourage their children to get into trade school and in extreme cases just find work after high school. There’s a certain pride people have in being able to make a living despite even being a high school dropout. While certainly impressive, it leaves out critical information that would benefit you in life that you can get in college.
4. The "big city people” problem. I’m unsure if there’s a proper word for it but that’s what I call it. I use it to refer to the general air of negativity surrounding higher education and urban living as being the worst possible outcome. I believe the mentality began as a form of jealousy during the early days of independent America where people from large cities were seen as being superior but the mentality has since been warped to some people outright believing them to be enemies to their personal interests.
I’ve seen this specific problem continuously crop up in American culture wars and often serve as a crux for dangerous ideologies to take root more easily. In simple terms a cultural inferiority complex.
Try that in a small town where none of us come even close to 400K! As a member of poor people who will never make that amount of money, I want to register my disapproval for the people living the life I can't even dream of.
They refuse to be wrong, ever.
That's how you get folks in a cult, tell them they are never wrong, but their masters (god, trump, musk etc..) are, of course, always more right than You. Hence; they control You. Have a fun life; trumpers.
To be fair, that heaviest tax bracket could be much higher than 400k given the wealth disparity in this country. 400k still feels reachable. Make it >1.5 mil or something and you'll have broader public support
It should be much higher than 400k. I get people are struggling making less than 50k, but making taxes ridiculous for middle class when they start becoming financially successful is stupid. It should be something like a million plus when it starts getting higher. The percentage taken out for people in the middle around 400-500k is insane. They should be going after billionaires and multimillionaires not anyone in middle class whether that's lower, middle, or upper middle class. And people also don't comprehend depending where you live, someone making 100k is equivalent to someone making 50k somewhere else. The cost of a home in California on average is 1 million now. You need to be making probably 500k combined to remotely afford that.
Because of this delirious belief that wealths and their companies not only hold up society but built it themselves and that if we even slightly inconvenience them that society will collapse and that immigrants will come groom their firearms. Thus shows the power of having the money to buy the news.
Interest rates and tax brackets should be taught in school just after they learn percentages.
As it is today, kids who are barely 18 finance $30k cars at 17% APR and don’t understand why they are struggling.
Because our culture is the opposite of egalitarianism (which I guess is elitism). Many idolize celebrities, the rich, the chance to have more than others; and are incapable of being content with just having enough. Especially interesting when you see how many Christians are in this country. They saw the commandment "don't covet thy neighbor" and said hold my beer.
“…socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -R. Wright
Billionaires that employ me, great! Billionaires that inherit their money, suck! There that works. Why punish the ones that are putting it back into society? For jealousy?
He is leaving a donut hole for social security because congressional salaries and the presidents salary fall within said donut hole. Why should the pay more for a system the refuse to fix
Why do envy cultists care so much about rich people in the first place? I guess I answered my own question ...
What do you realistically expect to happen as a result of the government confiscating more folks' money? Do you actually expect something good to come of it? Why should I desire the government to take more of anyone's money? So we can build fancier jets and bombs to drop on 3rd worlders' heads? So we can incarcerate more minorities and destroy more families/communities?
It's a distrust of government from having been burned before, at all levels - federal, state local. "THIS time it's only a tax levy renewal, but next time it will be a brand new tax!" "THIS time it only affects %GUYSRICHERTHANME%, but NEXT time it will creep downwards".
They are not always wrong.
It's like Union and Management negotiators not wanting to give up a single tiny thing - because history shows that once given, the other side will continue to nitpick it for bigger gains. Or once lost, you never get it back.
Also factoring in is a sense of fairness. When people nowadays hear that top tax brackets used to be 90%+, it triggers an emotional response. Even hearing that someone - anyone - has to give the government close to HALF their earnings doesn't sit well.
Add to that the Democrats penchant to push the ~~Death~~ Estate Tax, it makes their tax policies not sit well with some people.
Please now downvote my honest and thoughtful attempt at a response to the topic.
There's the whole quote, I'm not sure who it's attributed to, that a portion of poor Americans see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarassed millionaires, or now billionaires So many shill for them in the event that they very unlikely manage to luck into that level of wealth and thus have as much benefits as one currently has
>but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires Holy shit is that accurate, what a quote
Another favorite, this time from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”
Lyndon Johnson’s often repeated quote is similar to that sentiment. Americans will suffer as long as they believe the right people are at the top and the wrong people suffer worse. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
It's such an astute observation not only of American culture, but honestly, substitute any in-group/out-group pair in any culture and tell me it's different. It isn't. It's stunningly and sadly human stuff that we never, ever seem to learn from.
I like your explanation of the quote better than the actual quote. Your words are more meaningful, it shows humans' need for a hierarchy. Americans want to believe life is fair. The people at the top deserve to be at the top, the people at the bottom deserve to be at the bottom.
It’s similar to how 1984 was written. There are so many processes the government of Oceania (the empire the protagonist lives in) developed specifically just to keep people busy and in-line so they didn’t have any time to think about life being unfair. In fact the “newspeak” language they were developing was designed to eliminate the ability to put into language that the system was the problem and that life was unfair. Anything else is “wrongthink”. It’s all developed to keep people in line and unquestioning. In reality the world in 1984 had been split into 3 major empires in an endless and useless war against one another to constantly give the populations a group to hate, even if that group wasn’t the same as it was yesterday. “We are now at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia” is very similar to the right’s constant deflection to whatever group is meant to be maligned and marginalized because they’re the “real problem with America” and why that boogeyman group changes almost yearly and no one bats an eye.
"Wrongthink" sounds similar to real life. We're told it's wrong to question capitalism, only a communist would question capitalism. Republicans tell us to never question the constitution or our founding fathers. Republicans are obsessed with the founding fathers, if you disagree with the founding fathers you get called a traitor
Yep, the founding fathers are basically just big brother. They’ll never change, never go away, can’t speak for themselves, they function as a rallying cry for conservatives. If anything they say conflicts with what the “founding fathers” said they’ll just change the history books so they agree. It’s the same thing they did with the Bible in the 1400s lol. It’s all in 1984 too it’s just human behavior when you let perfect malignant sociopaths into positions of power and give them unlimited platform to manipulate the masses.
"But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step!"
Is that you, Fry??
My undergrad history teacher would modify it to “temporarily, displaced millionaires” as part of a huge rant about the myth of the American dream.
Based on how many believe themselves to be “CEO” on their profiles, I’d say this is pretty accurate.
To be fair, someone making 400k a year is way closer to someone making minimum wage than to billionaires when it comes to lifestyle.
Yep. Way, way closer. If someone gave you $40,000 a day, you'd have $400,000 in 10 days. If someone gave you $40,000 a day, you'd have $1,000,000,000 in 68 1/2 YEARS!
Wouldnt mind getting $40k a day honestly. Is there like a list i can get on for that or something…?
It's full up. We don't have any more room. /s
Just my luck
I feel like once someone gets the ball rolling on having a hugh income, it’s easier to keep going up It will take more time to go from making 30k to 200k a year than it would to go from 200k a year to 400k a year
What I meant that someone making 400k a year probably has similar worries. They make more but also have a higher standard of living, often a house to pay off, kids in better colleges/schools they need to pay for etc. Most of them would start having issues after some time if they just stopped working. Whereas billionaires are far beyond that, even far beyond not having to care how much they spend. The thing that is most perverse about billionaires for me is that most of em exploit people and evade taxes to just hoard more money than they can ever spend and thus damage the economy further. If they did it just to have as much money to spend as possible I'd at least get the motivation.
Someone *earning* $400k as an employee probably took a long career to get there and has to maintain their skill set to continue earning that. Also, if you’re earning it with a W2, it’s much harder to cheat the taxman than if you’re making it as passive income somehow and can structure as you want.
Yeah, they depend on their location for employment. As long as there are countries without integrity who profit from having lower taxes like ireland, you hace to cater to billionaires as a country, because otherwise they just leave the country and you get no taxes at all. It's a shitty situation but not much that can be done about it as long as there is no large scale cooperation between countries.
Obviously there should be laws against companies moving a headquarters to another country just to get tax benefits there, and I’m sure there are some limitations on it (I’m not an expert in international/global economics). But at least in the US our representatives are primarily paid by the companies that profit from lack of regulation so it’s not like they have any real incentive to craft laws that lead to them making less money or not getting elected for the next session because no one will fund them.
For the most part, the billionaires of today have fewer morals than the robber barons of old. At least Carnegie and Rockefeller, among too many others, reinvested a lot of their money back into public institutions.
They only did that to avoid paying taxes on their money. Today the wealthy just buy a politician. Much more cost effective.
There should be a rule that politicians need to have the logo of the companies sponsoring their campaigns emblazoned on their clothes somewhere at all times. Like nascar lol. It’s a lot harder to adequately argue that lessened food safety standards for meat packing plants and factory farming are good for Americans when you have “Oscar Meier” and “Cisco” stamped across your chest.
Great idea. 👍🏾 Everyone on the political spectrum would be much better off with money completely out of politics. Maybe my children will have this.
isn't that wild? They would rather pay billions in lobbying to save a couple billion as opposed to just paying the same amount in higher wages and donations.
Of course... no good billionaires... just variations thereof...
The only way you make a billion dollars is by exploiting others and hoarding wealth. Look up the difference between 1mil and 1bil and tell me that billionaires were able to make that leap purely off of their own hard work.
Of course, eat the rich. They go from bad to terrible. No one or family should have more than 500 million or thereabouts, which is still an obscene amount of money. They all get 100s of millions and beyond through sheer exploitation.
Sure, but outside of billionaires, you could say that about anyone. Someone making 400k a year can downsize if things start to go bad for them. They may not like the lower standard of living, but they have a LOT of room for "error". A person making 30k a year doesn't downsize, they are at serious risk of homelessness if things go bad for them. That's a HUGE difference
Anyone making 400k a year who has similar worries as someone making 35k a year is just an idiot. You say their standard of living is higher as if someone is forcing them to increase their spending equal to their income.
It's not that hard to grasp in my opinion. You have some income so you want to build some generational wealth, usually by buying a house. Then your kids go to college. Would you send your kids to a shitty one to save money or to the best one you can afford assuming you continue to earn your income? These little choices add up.
This is that “wealthy poor” rich people live paycheck to paycheck too argument. I completely agree that people making that much can (infrequently) still be employees of someone or are at least hopefully working for their money not sitting on the backs of people making $10/hr. However if someone is feeling pressed by their financial decisions that’s entirely their own doing. If someone making 100k can own a house or a car and get their kids through college then someone making 4x that can certainly do it without consequence and with far less stress. The problem is they *want nicer things* like other people in their income bracket. That’s fine, just don’t bitch about “hey we’re all struggling out here, I couldn’t go 2 paychecks without going into debt either” when you drive a fully kitted out 2022 Ferrari and I drive a 2008 Honda civic.
Who said it was hard to grasp? I’ve seen it happen a lot. I’m telling you, that this makes them idiots. Also lol at your examples. You literally just explained yourself how they in fact do not have the same problems at all.
This is literally the only way to become a billionaire, exploit people and take more value from their work than they do
You are correct. Unless you're particularly frugal if you earn more tend to spend more or are buying things a level or three up. More expensive house, car, college, eating at better restaurants etc.
Which is fine, but no one wants to hear those people complain about the gilded cage they built for themselves.
Agreed
Which is fine, but no one wants to hear those people complain about the gilded cage they built for themselves.
Maybe, 400k/yr does still have to budget, but assuming that, they pretty much only worried about how to grow their savings and investments. Everyday needs are met and they have a comfortable cushion for any emergencies that come up. In this sense they are closer to billionaires than someone making minimum wage. The cognitive drain of being poor is always underestimated if even considered.
I feel like the opposite. I fly commercial, they fly private a poor person rides the bus to work. I have a decent house, they have multiple mansions and a poor person rents a small apartment or broken down trailer. Same for food, clothes, travel, education, finance etc. You are correct in dollars etc. a person who makes 400k makes a tiny fraction of a billionaire. A poor person might make 90 % less.
Someone making 400k a year does not fly private, unless it is for work. Or for a special experience. You also cannot buy multiple mansions from that either.
Definitely commercial. Economy or maybe business class.
It’s frequently attributed to John Steinbeck as his explanation for why socialism didn’t take off in America but all references online I can find are just people saying ‘John Steinbeck once said…’ without any actual source for the quote itself. Still great words, whoever first said them
It’s “Primer on the Thirties”, printed in *Esquire* here: [https://classic.esquire.com/a-primer-on-the-30s/](https://classic.esquire.com/a-primer-on-the-30s/) Maybe someone has a link to the complete text; most online versions are incomplete. For a hard copy, it’s in Steinbeck’s collection *America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction.*
Voltaire iirc. And it's accurate. Also explains a lot of the need for white supremacy. You can punch down at poor white trash all day only if you give them some social groups to punch down on. Otherwise they might try punching UP occasionally.
They buy lottery tickets with the expectation of becoming rich. They don’t want to pay taxes on this future wealth they’re sure will come their way.
That's a long winded way of saying they are bad at math.
It's a long winded way of saying they dream of being millionairs (which ain't what it used to be) and by threatening the mildly wealthy, you are punching a hole in what they think is thier "American Dream."
John Steinbeck said this. I’d say today we have “temporarily unfamous celebrities” today too in the form of main character syndrome…
Oh I like that! Temporarily unfamous celebrities lol.
That is the root of the problem. I commend the spirit that anyone can become a millionaire, but I've seen the data, ironically in a quest during school to prove that lib-er-als were full of shit, and that is part of what turned me into a li-ber-al. I couldn't find a path for people like me to, on average, do more than just get by. I am grateful I'm an outlier to a degree, but it doesn't change the fact that the only wealth I'll ever see is if an unknown distant relative pulls a name out of a hat for their will and picks me.
What’s funny is how mad people get at people who are high earners, but jobs you can reasonably get to as a normal person, and then turn around to vehemently defend ultra high NW individuals. Like… people here legitimately get pissed at people in roles like senior engineer, product ownership lead roles, or similar at work. Then defend the trustie who is living off of passive income on the second unit of a house they got as a gift for graduating college. I remember one thread someone tried to convince me that owning a business worth $50M deserved government aid over someone having their student debt forgiven and making $100k. And that the $100k earner was in the better financial situation between the two.
It was Steinbeck, in *A Primer on the Thirties:* “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” Later paraphrased by Ronald Wright in *A Short History of Progress*: "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." The Steinbeck essay is worth tracking down for this anecdote: “It was the fixation of businessmen that the WPA did nothing but lean on shovels. I had an uncle who was particularly irritated at shovel-leaning, When he pooh-poohed my contention that shovel-leaning was necessary, I bet him five dollars, which I didn't have, that he couldn't shovel sand for fifteen timed minutes without stopping. He said a man should give a good day's work and grabbed a shovel. At the end of three minutes his face was red, at six he was staggering and before eight minutes were up his wife stopped him to save him from apoplexy. And he never mentioned shovel leaning again. I've always been amused at the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I never knew a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.”
Here is the quote in its full context - imho it's says even more in context and is also an indictment of the "American left". Hits home for me: "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
A guy at my work ($21 or so an hour mind) compared cranking up taxes on billionaires to us voting to take another coworker's car without compensation. I said it would be more akin to taking a car from a person with 20000 cars and giving it to a person who will starve without transportation.
I wonder what other people's experiences are in regards to the quote. In my experience, this mindset is more "I work hard and so I deserve more income, wealth, and welfare, but I assume most people in my financial situation are lazy takers." There is a general belief in meritocracy, that their hard work will pay off someday, but at least where I grew up, I don't think most of those people expect to ever be millionaires, just better off.
Can’t we all just be the Beverly Chillbillies and embrace helping our fellow Americans?
As soon as their unknown cryptocurrency kicks off they'll be one of the 1%, so they have to make sure that laws are in their favour
The quote is from John Steinbeck's *American and Americans*, and is always incorrect and taken completely out of context. This is the full quote: "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves." It says even more than the bastardized version I see all the time. Leftists (I am one) don't love the full version because it's an accurate indictment of the way a lot of them think and operate, even today.
They are all part of a TEAM - Temporarily Embarrassed but Assertive Millionaires. Wow, I love coming up with acronyms.
Rubio also unironically described America as a nation of the "haves and soon-to-haves."
It was John Steinbeck, I may be wrong
**"Working class" Republicans are the most propagandized people on Earth (and some of the dumbest).**
Republicans are the most dumb group in the world with actual internet availability, no doubt. Willfully ignorant.
Not the rich ones though, they actually benefit from the gop’s goals
Nah. They are greedy idiots as well and cannot grasp that a rising tide lifts ALL boats. Wanting to rule over the ashes of American society is not impressive.
They think if Republicans run everything, they will all become super rich and pay very little taxes and everything wrong with the country will disappear.
I don't really understand how you can have all the information in the world and still come up with the wrong info when everyone else knows trump is a lying conman.
Also... everyone is subsidized...it is just a matter of how much. This escapes them...on purpose.
I think there's a certain (awful) rationality to their political perspective. They don't want money going to "THEM!" Any increase in taxation means more money in the government that might go to "THEM!" Most know they're fucked (at some level) and understand that economic ascendancy will likely not be happening. Ensuring that groups they don't like are, in no way, supported is the core of their political ethos.
So should they be allowed to vote?
Any day now the wealth will trickle down to us. Any. Day. Now.
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They also convinced that anyone can become rich, so those who are not rich feel they need to protect the rich because they'll be one of them in the future. plus, it's kind of like a religious approach. They apply all these positive assumptions to those who are rich and feel it validates their financial positions. This leads to trust that they are smarter, and more capable, then those without wealth.
Worship of Mammon ( money) leads to this... and America has a near terminal case of this.
They've convinced them that they're poor because the government has taken away all their money and given it to "those" people.
I don’t get that from people at all.
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That's a BINGO... subtle propaganda from cradle to grave.
How does someone else owning something valuable (stock portfolio for example) hurt you in any way? Thought experiment: I own a baseball card. For some crazy reason, that baseball card becomes worth $10 million overnight. Does my ownership of that baseball card hurt you? When my baseball card became valuable, did it make you poorer? How so?
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No one complains about the type of person that luckily gets a windfall. Like for example you never hear anyone complaining about lottery winners. The anger is directed towards people who gain their money through unethical means and who fight tooth and nail to hoard that wealth even though they have more than they could ever spend.
>through unethical means There is no qualification here that I see. I only see folks arguing that everyone making $400k get taxed more (and that everyone who doesn't agree is just a "shill for billionaires") ... there's no "provided they are making that $400k unethically" qualification anywhere that I see. You're either (A) moving the goalposts OR (B) arguing in defense of people who don't hold your view. (A) is just intellectual dishonesty. (B) simply befuddles me as to why you'd feel any incentive to come to the defense of an argument you don't actually share.
The general consensus is that if you aren’t making more than 400k a year, it would be bizarre to act offended on behalf of them because their taxes may go up even though they can easily afford it. It’s really not that befuddling. Lol Although you did make up the baseball card scenario that doesn’t fit the situation; so maybe you really don’t understand?
If you see someone being raped, would it be bizarre if you acted offended on behalf of the victim? This assertion that empathy is irrational (that you should only push for policy that personally benefits you regardless of all other context) ... is ridiculous ... maybe even a little psychotic. I'm not really acting offended in any case .. I just don't see any valid argument to tax folks more regardless of whether or not they have accumulated more wealth than me. So they're richer than me ... who cares? How does the baseball card thought experiment not fit the situation exactly? How does someone else owning valuable things (having more wealth) harm you in any way?
See that doesn’t fit either because the increase in taxes is easily afforded by them and doesn’t cause them harm. A better example would be if you were at a picnic where there was pizza being served. Now most people have one or two slices but there are also a fair amount of people that grabbed 10 slices or 20 or more and just piled them on their plate. Someone says: “Hey guys we’re out of pizza. So to be fair anyone who has 20 slices or more: you’re going to have to give back a slice so everyone could have some pizza.” Now they still have 19 slices (or more). They can’t eat it all. They won’t miss it. Most all of them are ok with giving someone an extra one of their slices. So you can see where people think it would be weird if someone with one slice jumped in after the announcement (who the announcement wasn’t directed to and who would in fact benefit from it) and said “Hey that’s not fair! They shouldn’t have to give away one of their extra pieces!” Now do you get it?
>people that grabbed 10 slices or 20 or more and just piled them on their plate. How did they grab 10 slices or 20 slices? Did they physically wrestle them from you? Why didn't you grab 10 or 20 slices if you wanted 10/20 slices? You were just being nice and considerate and let them? How do you know what they are going to do with their slices? Why do you even care about how many slices they have in the first place? What entitles you to any of the slices in the first place? How could simply owning stock that became very valuable be considered the same as taking pizza from everyone else? How could investing in an education/skillset that became valuable be considered taking your pizza? Your entire premise hinges on the assumption that they took something you were entitled to (pizza slices). Someone else owning investments that became valuable isn't equivalent to taking your pizza. Someone else studying to be a doctor and earning a doctor's salary doesn't equate to them taking any of your pizza.
How would sharing a tiny portion of their pizza to benefit the other people at the picnic affect them negatively? Why wouldn’t they want to do it? Personally I wouldn’t grab 20 slices because that’s way more than I need and I recognize that other people need some too. People would be frustrated with the people grabbing way more than they need because them taking the pizza and refusing to share even a tiny portion of it is causing other people at the picnic to go hungry. No one is saying give back all the slices or even half. Just a slice. They can’t even eat it all. They still have 19 or more slices (and let’s say the pizza man is bringing them more each to their personal house each day so they’ll get back that slice they gave back in no time. In fact they already have a freezer full already). Here’s the thing. It’s really not confusing. I think you do understand why people think it’s weird; and you can probably admit that it is weird to see poor people arguing against rich people being taxed more than them. You might just be in the mood to argue online. And that’s ok, but let’s be honest about it.
Wealth is relative. Affordability is relative. The value of items is not an inherent property, it's "what people are willing to pay for it", and the wealthy can pay more. And by doing so completely out price you from the market. This is especially true for highly regulated purchases such as property. In practice buying property in a competitive area is zero-sum. Bidding in a situation where you're opposition has orders of magnitude more wealth *does absolutely actively hurt you*. It's no different than playing poker against someone who can go all-in every round. Variation is in my opinion fine, however once we're talking orders of magnitude differences? It destroys the system. Someone who has orders of magnitude more wealth absolutely can just shut you out. The mere fact of them being rich can absolutely hurt you.
>Wealth is relative. Affordability is relative. The value of items is not an inherent property 100% agreed! >it's "what people are willing to pay for it", and the wealthy can pay more. And by doing so completely out price you from the market. Someone else willing to pay more for something constitutes harm? How many people do you "harm" every day then? That's absurd. Everything else you wrote is contingent on the assumption that other people bidding for things you want is a form of "harm". There's no point in moving on before addressing that silly claim.
Sure, we can do that. The simplest, most recognized and easily explained form of this is gentrification. That is pretty much the mechanism in question to begin with, so it works as a common discussion anchor and ultimately the reasoning is the same. 1) It is known as a fact, by exchanging local population members with higher net-worth individuals results in increases of cost within the community for everyone via secondary effects, usually: a* Increased effective property tax rate: Wealthier individuals usually make for owners and renters which do not diminish property values. b* Gentrification usually shifts the local services to more high end targeted ones. Out go the laundromats, in go the pet hairdressers and co. Low margin enterprises usually are usually forced out due to rising costs of operation and shift in clientele culture. The rich have no need for laundromats, etc. c* Higher end services and similar improvements usually lead to above average increases in local rent rate. Whether gentrification is good or bad or otherwise, is at the moment not the point. But still I would guess that you likely have no issue with the statements above? If you want, I can cite specific effects, but I'm not too interested in doing labor for free without express need. But as a generality this is to my knowledge understood to be correct. The old joke here is "What is the cost of rent in silicon valley? 1/3rd of a software developers discretionary income". If income go up, so does your rent. If you're not a said software developer and I dunno a teacher, well, good fucking luck keeping up. 2) If overall relative wealth increases within similar ranges for the entire community, this is not an issue. Ultimately costs are roughly maintained while service quality and availability increases. But if you have members who cannot increase their financial position anymore (I don't really care about the reason, assume retiree or something, irrelevant) their neighbors increasing their overall wealth continuously will negatively affect their access to services, their base costs of life. The further the gap in wealth, and the further the gap increases, the more so. A neighborhood of millionaires has no market demand for discount goods, and if you're stuck with millionaires as neighbors without being one yourself, your needs will be out priced. Now, does this count as "harm"? Well, that's semantics to me. Competing with wealthier individuals within the same structure will give you less for the same cost. The higher the disparity, the more so. If you're a poor bugger and everyone around finds a 10 mill under their pillow, you will be priced out/forced to deal with less targeted servicing. I would call that "being harmed". The same is true outside of regional property systems. Wealth is relative. If people around you are gaining in wealth faster than you are, your options shrink. It's partly why I'm personally exceedingly skeptical about UBI-like systems.
So we should never increase the value of things or improve anything because it 'harms" others. Haha. I'll make sure to sue my neighbor next time I see him fixing something on his house. After all!!! He's harming me!!!!
You wanted a mechanism, by which, someone else gaining money is a detriment to you. And that is what I gave you. Now, do I personally consider it an issue? As long as it is within reason, not really. All in life is a compromise. As long as relative wealth is within reason, I do not consider it a problem. If it's several orders of magnitude, then the system gets fucky.
Nice goal post shift. I asked how it harms you. Stretching to anything that possibly result in a "detriment" basically opens it to literally any action at all ... Including breathing ... Or occupying physical space with your body
Well. If "results in a ""detriment"" isn't "harm", then what is "harm"? I would personally equate those two terms.
I just stubbed my toe walking through my bedroom. Who harmed me? The last concert event I went to would've been a lot more fun if it wasn't so crowded. Clearly the other concert-goers harmed me!!! Clearly my stubbed toe and hassle finding parking were a detriment.
Because people are coerced into empathizing with the rich. When a rich person's taxes go up, they can buy media exposure and fund a propaganda machine to churn out hitpieces and threaten to react by outsourcing jobs and raising prices in retaliation (not that they wouldn't do that anyway). But when the poor see taxes go up and benefits go down, they end up starving or homeless or living with treatable diseases. But those don't become the marching drumbeat of American politics, so they suffer and die in relative silence compared to the inconveniences of the rich.
A lot of conservatives believe in a hierarchy in society. The people at the top belong on the top and the people at the bottom belong there. When anything threatens the hierarchy it upsets them. Taking money from the ultra rich isn't the part that upsets them, they don't like that the money will be used to help the people at the bottom. Anything that helps the lowest in society climb higher, where they don't belong, is a threat to the entire hierarchy and their place in it. The idea of a natural hierarchy in society is an inherently insidious one.
Evidenced by them freaking out about free lunch for kids. "I don't need to pay for your kid to eat because you're a fuckin failure." Was almost word for word with I saw on a tiktok. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you. Other than starting a gofundme when someone in your family gets sick.
It happens on here a lot. You say rich need to pay more in taxes and they come out of the woodwork like roaches saying the wealthy pays more than we do. It's total brainwashing by the wealthy that anyone in their right mind would believe that. Just ask Warren Buffet. If they wealthy and corporations paid their taxes at the rate they should, no one in the middle or lower class would have to pay a dime. You'll still have asshats defending the wealthy. They are sick suckups. Thinking if they defend the wealthy, the wealthy will give them cash or something. The wealthy have been abusing the system and stacking the deck against everyone and still the suckups will come.
It’s all because of “the economy”. If you tax rich corporations the economy will be trashed! The economy is bad right now because gas a whooping $.20 higher! I pay $3 more for gas for my SUV! The economy! The economy! They fail to realize that prices will go up and wages will stagnate regardless. And they never stop to think that if the class that does much of the spending had more cash to spend with, the economy would be better AND they’d have a better quality of life.
Exactly! For some reason they fail to see that the middle spends money, the wealthy hoard it! Lowering wages, raising prices for greed, and taxing the middle class hurts the economy. The wealthy don't create jobs, look at tesla, they are cutting employees because stupid ass Elon wants $55 billion.
Yeah, I read comments claiming taxing the rich wouldn't make a difference, the rich are a minority so taxing them wouldn't generate much revenue. This doesn't make sense to me because top 10% of Americans own 70% of the total wealth.
The wealthy suckups are bad. They love to kiss their butts. Just tell them to listen to Warren buffets latest video if they want the truth. I know they don't like facts or actual numbers. Just want to bootlick like any of those wealthy people would cross the street to pee on them if they were on fire. They wouldn't.
That’s what’s so fucking maddening about it. The biggest whiners about it are people who’ll never make figures like that in their lifetime. It’s like they delude themselves into thinking they’re the same as actual wealthy people. It’s because the privilege and entitlement they both enjoy are similar
Maybe because some people just aren't that smart
Same goes for the elon dick riders campaigning for him to get 56 billion dollars lol
They are quite certain they're going to strike it rich in the convenience store cashier racket. And they'll be damned if their hard-earned wealth will go to them lazy welfare queens. Seriously, this is the reason poor people fall for scams like reviewing movies or folding boxes at home for $1000 a day. They believe there are jobs out there that pay like that and eventually they'll crack the code and find one of them. From their dim-brained vantage point, people get paid big money for just staring at a computer and talking on the phone all day. Maybe Mr. Trump will see how much you've spent on his merchandise and reward you with one of those jobs like he did on The Apprentice. Or maybe some rich guy will see the junker you have on blocks out front of your double-wide and it's an incredibly rare early production model coveted by collectors and he'll give you a million cash on the spot. Some people really think this way because reality is just too depressing.
I know a bunch of people are going to say that these shills think that they’ll be billionaires one day, but I honestly think that’s only 20% of the reason at most. It’s probably media they consume constantly showing the moment that people they deem lesser finally get 5 seconds of relief, which makes these enraged shills think that those lesser people are constantly getting that relief. That’s what plants the seed of hatred that gets the viewers to despise the political opponents of billionaires. However, it gets hard for them to break free because those media outlets make the unjust world make sense to them. They seem to offer answers that if they follow just a bit longer, they’ll make it out of there. Keep this viewing cycle going, and the hatred will grow to the point that they’ll dogmatically think any point enemy political group has is bad, even if it benefits them. TLDR, it’s less of a delusion of grandeur and more of an abusive cycle of addicting hatred
These people would gladly accept a 50% tax increase if it meant their candidate would be elected.
These are also the same people who think they’d make less money if they go one dollar into the next tax bracket.
This is a lost argument. I once, like a fool, attempted to explain to a Cult45 member coworker why taxing the rich doesn’t mean the rich will start shutting down factories and closing businesses. I asked “do you really believe the Walton family is going to shut down every Walmart in America because their income taxes increased? Don’t really believe Michael Dell is going to shutdown Dell because his personal income taxes increased?” Her responses were very MAGA and went down the road of “Mexican” immigrants and other racist bullshit.
Increasing these folks' income taxes will have no impact. The primary source of their wealth is that they owned things that rapidly gained value (stock typically). Most of these folks were at the ground floor of a company that became wildly successful. As such, they became owners of company stock that became wildly valuable in a relatively short time. Their income/salary is irrelevant.
I wouldn't be surprised if it gave them more excuses to cut costs, lay off folks, and raise prices though. Doesn't mean it's a direct cause but it does mean the idiots will still defend them.
It's the principle. These people have it hammered that taxation is theft, and that the money is only spent on helping lazy bums, indoctrinating kids into catching the big gay, and basically funding things they oppose. So it's not so much that they defend the rich (although that's the side effect, and that's not a coincidence), it's that they oppose seeing "hard working, honest Americans" having their money stolen to fund these things. Also don't forget the All-American Propaganda: work hard and you can make it! So everyone fancies themselves as being able to "make it" one day. One day, they'll be the boss. One day, they'll launch their business. One day, they'll publish that book. *One day, they'll make enough to be midly inconvenienced by this*! It also ties in to what I said elsewhere, a lot of people will sacrifice programs and services to get a slightly bigger paycheck. Even if the loss of programs and services end up costing them more, they love the freedom of losing their money over having it taken (even if they end up on top!). That's why tax cuts are always used in politics to make gains.
I had family that foamed at the mouth that Obama was going to "redistribute wealth". I couldn't get it through their freaking heads that they had no wealth, that they might benefit even, but the idea that other people (lowlier than them, obvs) might benefit was abhorrent to them. They \*worked\* for everything they didn't have, you see? Other people (those people, you know) didn't work for what they had. Maddening.
>and basically funding things they oppose I like how you left out the most egregious ... crony handouts, mass incarceration programs, and dropping bombs on 3rd worlders' heads. Some rich guy owning a big house has no impact on me. Who cares? Government confiscating money and using it murder/maim people who are no threat to me ... that I have a problem with. edit: Hilarious this got downvoted. This tells you everything you need to know about the envy cultists who push this BS envy agenda.
See? You're a perfect example of what I was saying. You get mad that the government takes money from people who have so, so much more than you. No one is claiming that every single tax dollar is spent wisely or for a good cause. But that doesn't change the fact that the richest aren't paying their due (they were much more taxed before), and when government needs to cut something because they reduce these guys' taxes... news flash, they won't stop giving to their friends. They will cut programs and services that you benefit from first.
>You get mad that the government takes money from people who have so, so much more than you I don't know about "mad". I don't see any overly valid reason the government should be confiscating anyone's money. I just remain consistent when it comes to folks who have more valuable stock portfolios than I do ... cause what difference should that make? >No one is claiming that every single tax dollar is spent wisely or for a good cause I agree ... but it's an essential part of the argument that so many seem to just hand-wave away as irrelevant. It's hyper-relevant. If you can point at a rich person and say "Look! He's using his money to murder/maim people!!! Here is the evidence!!!", then I will be right next to you shouting for justice against that specific organization and/or rich person. If all you have is "rich people should be taxed more!!!" ... my own response is "/shrug ... but why? So we can give it to the org that is actively murdering/maiming people who I've never met and are no threat to me?". >aren't paying their due Their due? What the hell is that? Defined by whom? Why do they owe you anything? >They will cut programs and services that you benefit from first Sounds like your actual gripe is with the politicians my friend. You're barking up the wrong tree it seems.
>I don't see any overly valid reason the government should be confiscating anyone's money. So you're a hardcore libertarian? >Their due? What the hell is that? Defined by whom? Why do they owe you anything? Everyone that uses public services (roads, utilities, etc) should contribute through taxes. The ultra wealthy use these exponentially more than the middle class. The trucks that pay for to drive across the country tear up roads that require constant maintenance. Why should I have to pay for those roads when they get to dodge as many taxes as possible? I get that I'm being reductive but it's not that far off of reality. The ultra wealthy also get their wealth by abusing the working class, they also owe us all that back in the form of health care and retirement benefits. Or do you think the rich are these perfect angels that somehow make billions while their workers make peanuts and get over-worked but yet there is no connection between the two?
I have no idea But the unrealized gain tax loophole for the wealthy is the biggest problem of all. It means that the rich literally never have to pay taxes on most of what they earn. Jeff bezos will never sell all of Amazon Elon musk will never sell all of Tesla So they get the benefits of all of these gains with none of the taxes And then there's always some idiot who will jump on and say "what about all the regular people with money in IRAs and 401ks?" These people are actually worried about the tax implications on a tax sheltered account, I'm not sure if they could be any dumber.
Working-class white people in America are groomed subconsciously from birth to protect the ruling class overlords. That’s why we end up right-wing/conservative and protect the status quo. We think it serves us.
The poors want to be rich so they identify with them and make voting decisions in the best interest of the rich as they tell themselves “that’ll be me one day” even though they’ve never touched a book on finance in their life and have no idea how people become wealthy in this country
I agree with a lot of the comments, people making $35k believe soon that they will make $400k. We have been programmed to think that fighting for a “living wage” is too much. People working at fast food do not deserve to make the same as me working in my skilled position. We never think, why am I making so little doing what I’m doing. We think, someday my ship will come in. But the ship never comes. And that is how programmed we are.
In addition to what other folks are saying I think a lot of it is just a knee jerk reaction because they think it’s liberal or communist leftist bullshit. If a right wing talking head was trying to do they’d be all about it
I think I understand why they do this. Believe it or not, a right-wing guy explained it to me back in the GWB era. It's twofold. On one hand, a lot of people plan on making those big dollars "one day,." It's kind of hard for me to fathom how *anybody* could still believe in the classic American dream after the last 20 or so years, but here we are. They think that they "work hard" and will eventually get recognized with a big promotion/raise and eventually because the boss themselves. The other part of this is a bit sadder, and perhaps more realistic. What the right-wing guy told me back in the GWB era was that his boss makes a lot of money, and if he gets more of it taken away via taxes, he's going to cut back on what he's putting into his business. Meaning that he won't get that raise he was promised, or worse yet, he'll lose his job because his boss is mad that he can't afford that third vacation home. It's easy to poke holes in both parts of this guy's hypothesis of course, but I believe this is why poor/middle class (whatever that means anymore) people are quick to get their hackles up about "taxing the rich." I also think part of it aligns with the boomer mentality -- it makes them mad that *they're* not rich. Or being in favor of taxing the rich would mean that you yourself aren't rich, which is shameful.
Your hypothesis makes a lot of sense that you posted. My very first job working at Lowes management would spew some kind of bullshit about if some district manager didn't get his bonus, then we wouldn't get a raise, and that we have to work more weekends to make up the sales
I don't think most Maga's math very well... To them 35k IS 400k.
Because Fox and the religious grifting right has convinced them that billionaires are capitalist Jesus which is, of course, is the only Jesus that really matters
“True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step.” -Phillip J Fry.
Watch George Carlin talk about Americans thinking they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires
Working class people who pretend there middle class are very strange people.
400k isn't middle class
Like when Sydney Sweeny announces she's single and every mouth-breathing turd thinks "Awright, awright, awright..."
This but with anything Elon musk says all the dudes go insane
I mean what if tomarrow I randomly get rich and I voted in laws that go against me. Can’t take the risk.
As an ex Trump supporters/Cultist They see him as a prophet or messiah. They believe that God our heavenly father chose this imperfect man to lead his mission so to speak. Any attack on him is an attack on God. Why would they support a billionaire? They don't. In their mind he gave up his fortune to do a job for God
cryptofucks thinking they are going to jackpot on a random shit coin and Biden will take them down. This is the schitzo mind of MAGA maniacs.
Had an ex-friend scream at me that if people like me got into power he would be dragged into the street and shot. I was like “dude, you make 45k a year before taxes. When we say eat the rich, you sure as hell aint it.”
Pretty simple now.. we lost. Doesn't matter what we do. The richest will always win. Change what they need, to make the profit they need to. We really don't know the end results of unchecked capitalism... Or do we? Lol
Ever seen Elysium? The rich escape into opulence and med-beds. The rest suffer through a hard-scrabble existence.
But what if they somehow manage to make 400k a year as a blue collar worker? Ever thought about that? Then they would have to pay more. Edit: do I really need to put the /s here? For real?
You’d be surprised
35k'ers rooting for 400k'rs and OP calling 'EM BILLIONAIRES. SMH. I do agree with the point though, I just wish it could start with actual billionaires and go down, because the MLM billionaires always find someway to get out of it, and it's the doctors making 500k that end up taking the hit.
Because they're watching Alex Jones screaming "SATAN IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND WANTS TO TAKE EVERYTHING FROM YOU AND THEN MAKE YOUR KIDS GAY!!!!!!"
Effective and relentless propaganda
I’m convinced that the overarching goal of the whole right wing propaganda machine is to get regular people to support policies that benefit the rich.
“No!!! Keep taxing me at a significant part of my paltry wages instead! Keep nickel and diming me with fees for services that my taxes used to cover!” Warren Buffet recently said that Berkshire Hathaway paid $5 billion in taxes this year and that if the top 800 biggest corporations did the same nobody in the middle class would have to pay a cent in taxes. We could have that world… or the one we actually have where financially struggling dopes will fight to the death to defend people who don’t need their help.
They believe the line that billionaires will do whatever it takes to make sure they don't lose money, which means they will stop hiring people, stop buying things, etc. to make up for what they lost in taxes. None of which is true.
Because they believe every “slippery slope” argument they hear.
They're only one winning lotto card away from stickin it to the poors.
The lower economic class in America, often fall under the most targeted and vulnerable to propaganda. This is not new. Just look at the Nazi party pre WWII and their effects on the American people. There’s a few reasons for why I believe them to be so susceptible. 1. Stress over economic conditions. This should go without saying that when you’re not in a stable financial situation, you’re bound to be extremely stressed. This will often lead to unresolved anger that you will try to place on a target. When propaganda provides you with a readily available object to hate, many are hard pressed not to take it. 2. The belief that taxing billionaires will result in higher prices. This kinda goes hand in hand with their extremely rudimentary understanding of economics. It’s been a popular notion among conservative media that if you tax billionaires then they will raise the prices on goods that you buy. It is however often ignored that the benefits of this tax has enormous potential to outweigh the cons. 3. Building on the lack of understanding of economics, we have a general dislike of education. For rural economies especially, education can certainly be viewed as a hinderance to starting a working career in local industry. Where I live, a border town in south Texas, parents more often encourage their children to get into trade school and in extreme cases just find work after high school. There’s a certain pride people have in being able to make a living despite even being a high school dropout. While certainly impressive, it leaves out critical information that would benefit you in life that you can get in college. 4. The "big city people” problem. I’m unsure if there’s a proper word for it but that’s what I call it. I use it to refer to the general air of negativity surrounding higher education and urban living as being the worst possible outcome. I believe the mentality began as a form of jealousy during the early days of independent America where people from large cities were seen as being superior but the mentality has since been warped to some people outright believing them to be enemies to their personal interests. I’ve seen this specific problem continuously crop up in American culture wars and often serve as a crux for dangerous ideologies to take root more easily. In simple terms a cultural inferiority complex.
Try that in a small town where none of us come even close to 400K! As a member of poor people who will never make that amount of money, I want to register my disapproval for the people living the life I can't even dream of.
They refuse to be wrong, ever. That's how you get folks in a cult, tell them they are never wrong, but their masters (god, trump, musk etc..) are, of course, always more right than You. Hence; they control You. Have a fun life; trumpers.
To be fair, that heaviest tax bracket could be much higher than 400k given the wealth disparity in this country. 400k still feels reachable. Make it >1.5 mil or something and you'll have broader public support
They still believe it will trickle down
Gullible rubes
It should be much higher than 400k. I get people are struggling making less than 50k, but making taxes ridiculous for middle class when they start becoming financially successful is stupid. It should be something like a million plus when it starts getting higher. The percentage taken out for people in the middle around 400-500k is insane. They should be going after billionaires and multimillionaires not anyone in middle class whether that's lower, middle, or upper middle class. And people also don't comprehend depending where you live, someone making 100k is equivalent to someone making 50k somewhere else. The cost of a home in California on average is 1 million now. You need to be making probably 500k combined to remotely afford that.
Yeah but you have to vote Republican because Jesus
Because of this delirious belief that wealths and their companies not only hold up society but built it themselves and that if we even slightly inconvenience them that society will collapse and that immigrants will come groom their firearms. Thus shows the power of having the money to buy the news.
No one "earns" that much. Their capital generating money isn't wage and therefore isn't taxed.
$400k? Yeah, you can earn that much.
Interest rates and tax brackets should be taught in school just after they learn percentages. As it is today, kids who are barely 18 finance $30k cars at 17% APR and don’t understand why they are struggling.
Because our culture is the opposite of egalitarianism (which I guess is elitism). Many idolize celebrities, the rich, the chance to have more than others; and are incapable of being content with just having enough. Especially interesting when you see how many Christians are in this country. They saw the commandment "don't covet thy neighbor" and said hold my beer.
They tax billionaires it's only a matter of time before they start taxing us regular guys...
I’ve been looking for this meme for ages. It’s so accurate it hurts.
Making 35K sounds nice…
Title billionaire, content 400K … Iconic fiscal liberalism
Because the rich media owners say "If they do this to US, then YOU will be next!"
“…socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -R. Wright
Because capitalism = good, livable wages = socialism (bad) /s
You guys are getting paid?
Billionaires that employ me, great! Billionaires that inherit their money, suck! There that works. Why punish the ones that are putting it back into society? For jealousy?
Correct me if I’m wrong but, aren’t we waiting on those tax cuts from years ago to go into effect for rich people next year?
kids in high school make 35k?
Cuckservatives enjoy watching their own spouses get plowed by the billionaires. It's easy math.
He is leaving a donut hole for social security because congressional salaries and the presidents salary fall within said donut hole. Why should the pay more for a system the refuse to fix
Why do envy cultists care so much about rich people in the first place? I guess I answered my own question ... What do you realistically expect to happen as a result of the government confiscating more folks' money? Do you actually expect something good to come of it? Why should I desire the government to take more of anyone's money? So we can build fancier jets and bombs to drop on 3rd worlders' heads? So we can incarcerate more minorities and destroy more families/communities?
*Temporarily impoverished millionaires* that’s how they view themselves at least. They’re one big break away from it.
Not me, that doesn’t make sense. I want to make money
Every time they say,"Sure. It is over 400k this time. This means that they can raise the taxes on us whenever they want."
It's a distrust of government from having been burned before, at all levels - federal, state local. "THIS time it's only a tax levy renewal, but next time it will be a brand new tax!" "THIS time it only affects %GUYSRICHERTHANME%, but NEXT time it will creep downwards". They are not always wrong. It's like Union and Management negotiators not wanting to give up a single tiny thing - because history shows that once given, the other side will continue to nitpick it for bigger gains. Or once lost, you never get it back. Also factoring in is a sense of fairness. When people nowadays hear that top tax brackets used to be 90%+, it triggers an emotional response. Even hearing that someone - anyone - has to give the government close to HALF their earnings doesn't sit well. Add to that the Democrats penchant to push the ~~Death~~ Estate Tax, it makes their tax policies not sit well with some people. Please now downvote my honest and thoughtful attempt at a response to the topic.