The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

...in America. There are countries that actually fight the oligarchs and tax them until the wealth inequality becomes lesser.

Of course there's no silver bullet and high progressive taxes for the mega-wealthy do have other negative effects. Like people being less motivated to strive. Less capital to invest and less competitive companies born.

But billionaires paying less taxes than the guy sweeping floors at the local mall is absurd. Once you reach a certain threshold of wealth, your taxes actually start going down.

There is actually no sense to put high taxes on ultra wealthy people. They have all means to avoid payment of income/profit taxes at all, no matter of the current tax rate.

That's why poor people pay the highest percentage of their income: they have no choice, no ways to do tax evasion.

In fact, note how some European countries tax wealth from pretty low amounts: Sometimes under a million euros worth.Often around 2% of wealth after you get to 2 or 3 million, in practice making self-funded early retirement almost unheard of. Those wealth taxes raise more money from professionals that save instead of spend than from anyone rich enough to seem like an oligarch.

> That's why poor people pay the highest percentage of their income

The key word here is income. “Wealth” and “income” tend to be conflated by ostensibly intelligent people who should know better. If I’m granted a million dollars in stock but draw a $20K salary, I’m “wealthy” but not “paying my fair share” because I’ve hardly earned any income for the year.

You’re essentially saying that rich people are above the law. If that’s the case, we should fix that first.

This is what everyone forgets when they label anyone against a wealth tax as “temporarily embarrassed billionaires.” Even if the government could convert 100% of a billionaire’s wealth into cash (they can’t) and confiscated it all, great, what are you going to do for revenue next year?

Taxes always START by targeting the wealthy but have this funny habit of applying to more and more people as time goes on. The US income tax was a whopping 1% percent until you made the equivalent of $400K. How’d that work out?

That's right. Look at Trump and his friends.

Also you have no means to change the law. But ultra rich people can push/promote "correct" people to the government or to be elected. Like Musk did.

They're not above the law, but they have the choice of which legal jurisdiction they reside in.

Is it right? From my knowledge stock compensation is considered as income and is taxed.

But I got your point. There are ways to be wealthy, have a rich lifestyle but report no taxable income/profit.

What you actually want is to have a wealth tax like in Switzerland. 0.05-0.3% annual tax based on net assets.

And so we arrive at the old insight that the fight against inequality needs to be global.

But I think you underestimate the possibilities. You can just design the law to make taxation a prerequisite for doing business. That's what the EU is (trying to) do, and it seems to work well.

Doing business in the EU and the US is a lot more profitable than not doing business there, even if you pay taxes. That's kind of the point.

If people don't want billionaires, they should quit their addiction to billionaires products.

"I hate Jeff Bezos, by I'll be damned if I have to give up same day delivery $6 Chinese mugs. The local made ones are $40!"

Realizing stock value (selling stock) is considered income.

US taxes incomes of their citizens globally, so, no matter where you reside, you're still subject to US tax legislation. The only way to get away from it is to renounciate US citizenship, which I imagine the rich may not be ready to do.

In theory, yes, but in practice the US doesn't have robust enforcement and it's easy for rich people to find loopholes to dodge taxes.

I'd go a step further and say that (particularly if you are in the IT industry) and are also ideologically opposed to megacorps like Facebook, Amazon, etc. that you should deny them the power of your labor.

This is such a weird take. When choosing what to buy, it’s impossible to factor in whether or not you believe the seller is already too rich. How could such a market ever determine the price of goods?

No, free markets work reasonably well. What doesn’t work is extremely disproportionate wealth, which is a result of neoliberal policies from the 80s. Revert those policies (i.e., actually tax the wealthy), and get back to medium healthy economy of the 60s and 70s.

> Is it right? From my knowledge stock compensation is considered as income and is taxed.

Unless you have enough stock that you can take a zero or low interest loan against that stock as collateral and kick that can down the road until you die and there's a huge threshold for estate tax, that is if you've not got it structured so that the stock is owned by a trust.

Looks like you are talking about stock options, not stocks.

If you receive a stock as compensation - it is an income. If you sell them years later with profit - it is additional extra income.