It is scary to think that we could ever get to this point. I can't imagine what would happen to the poor if rich people decided they have enough money.

Remember that it is greed, not sympathy, that has lifted more people out of poverty than all other emotions combined.

So is your point that the rich pay a lion's share of taxes in this country, but government occasionally gives a tiny piece of it back so we shouldn't be grateful to the rich for carrying so many of us on their back?

Of course rich people get rich during a pandemic - they get rich during times like these because they work(ed) their asses off to put themselves in a position to make themselves money while helping hundreds of millions of other people. There are over 325 million people in the US alone who are better off because of what Bazos and sam walton did for the world. The net positive they have done for the US is greater than what all (or any handpicked group) of governments or non-profits around the world have done for the middle class and the poor.

Because the rich and corporations pay such a large % of all taxes in the US it is impossible to have a significant tax cut to anyone but them. Remember that you can't cut taxes for all the people who aren't paying taxes and cutting someone's tax rate from 10% to 5% just isn't going to make that big of a change in the big picture.

Remember that in most cases a tax break isn't a cost to the economy. In some cases the government may collect less tax money long-term and other times they will collect more. However, the other thing to point out is that taxes are taking away money from the productive to give to those who are less productive and a tax break is doing the opposite so really it isn't a cost to the economy at all - it is a bump.

And NO tax breaks to the rich are not paid for by the poor who pay zero to negative tax or the middle class who pay for a small % of taxes in the US. A tax break is just allowing rich people to keep a little more of their money that we usually let them keep.

Yeah I think tax breaks ultimately steal from the rich long term. Because spending isn't going down and it's ultimately the rich who pay inflation and the interest on debt.

The poor are hugely helped by inflation, which is why it's one of bitcoin's biggest lols when you get an intersection of a hate the rich/privilege-hating socialist and a bitcoin bro. If there's no inflation then wealth isn't forced to be used for economic activity (or bet lost), and the poor can't inflate away the holdings of the inactive rich.

Yeah nominally .and that changes drastically over the year .
In the 1960 , CEOs were winning 20-1 or 30-1 a middle class salary , you think the numbers still hold up ?
If you think 1 millions dollar for a middle class person as the same value than 1 million for Elon musk , you are right .
But dollars value isn’t linear right ?
It is about utility .

Illl tell you a secret , I would gladly pay 500 millions per year of tax to have 100 billions of wealth .
I could still leave 200 years like that no problem .
The concept of they pay more money so they should pay less doesn’t mean much .
Give me the choice of paying 10% of taxes but winning 100k a year and paying 50% of taxes every year with 500 millions a year , guess what , I will always take the place of the guy paying 50% taxes without blinking an eye ....!

And who you think for example profits more from the protection of the army ?
The billionaires for him and his wealth or the guy living on the minimum wages

The big problem with all of this is people do not actually realize how incredibly different 1 billion than 1 million is and even less 100 billions to 1 billion .
Human have tremendous difficulty to represent exponentially value obv.

Thx for answering but 1 caveat .
you seem to speak as if all the first tier of the 1% wasn’t there , the second top tier of 1% would not of been able to replace them which is nonsense .

If Besos wasn’t there , it doesn’t take a rocket science to make a similar company as Amazon for example.
It ain’t about genius , he just got first being in the right place are the right time .

You know , capital is ressource as important as labor and land for producing anything ..
So mis allocation of capital is a thing that exist .
What tens of trillions of capital sleeping in off shore account for example do what exactly for the greater good of mankind ?

If something gets destroy , always new creation appears .

Well if you think greed is all there is to life , I sincerely pity you .

Wait ....
Do you think Elon musk works even much harder in 2020 now than he did 5 years ago ?
It’s the environment that made it so by shutting down the entire world economy , not because he worked much harder in 2020 compare to 2019 ffs...

The point of limitless value of human being over is peers is ridiculous.

What Bezo's put together was far more complicated than rocket science.

Investments in the middle class and moving people from poorer to the middle class pays more for a Nation long term versus just top loading the richest few.

You will see China far out pace Russia for that reason amongst others. That reason is not everything but it gets a heavy weighting.

Counting on Trickle Down does not work especially in more mature economies where they tend to trickle out (offshore, buybacks, etc) more then they trickle down.

You know what , you do need people that are less productive than others because those unwanted job need to be done ....
Not a reason they should live in poverty .....

And btw , no one pays enough taxes in the US , if they would , why a growing deficit and a humongous debt ?
So rich and poor actually do not actually pay enough taxes regardless .
You think by the bottom 50% workers , paying more taxes would help more the US ?
Isn’t exactly what they are doing for years and problems keep getting bigger every year .

Trump made close a 1 trillions tax break to the top 1% and corporations , making the tax rates for corporations as low as in the 1940 !
Are we still better today , what they did with the money ?
Ha yes ... buy back shares of their company with the money from tax breaks to pay higher dividends and bonus ... now that is really helping mankind right ...?

I see , so no one could duplicate Amazon .
No other company in the world could take the place of Amazon .....
All giants company got replace and dies at some point .
Because a better one happened and someone could do the freakn job .

Besos step down btw from his position right ?
So Amazon finish , going into flames in a near futur?

Was bill gates the only one ?
Steve job?
There is plenty of “rocket scientist “ like them and they will be even more in the future .

Yeah Besos did amazing dont get me wrong , but you do get me wrong if you think only Besos was able to accomplish what he did with Amazon , in the environment he was in when he created that company .

I look forward to Montrealcorp telling us about the company he starts that is hugely successful. Since it's so easy and all that.

lol, i never said i was in the top .1% of 1% either....
But i tell you if besos would of failed, there was thousands of dotcom companies during the bubble early 2000, the second guy would of been fined to succeed....

But let just say if it is all about the greater good of mankind we should give to CEO of companies unlimited access of capital, i am glad people like Einstein, Planck, and hundreds others doing fundamental research did not get that greed bug because those people contributed a lot more than a CEO running a business ......

When capital only uses is too create more capital (buyback shares for example) than capital as lost its function because its only paper after all.....
Japan got a taste of it.

Most entrepreneurial success is not weighted heavily to being entrepreneurially brilliant in ways others (competitors) are not. That may apply to a semi conductor innovation company but not so much an online book seller.

Yes, ideas matter. Yes tactics and delivery matter. But so to do things you cannot control as much like 'timing' and 'luck'. Many companies fail who have great ideas and tactics but bad timing and luck. And sometime weaker companies flourish due to good timing and luck.

Bezo's best skills seem to be that he is great at seeing the road ahead and willing to take big risks (leverage) with what he has already built to get there. He should get that credit. There are other great entrepreneurs who believe in 'staying in their lane' and that has served them well.

Of course anyone would choose to make more money, but with all due respect, you aren't smart enough and don't work hard enough to make that kind of money (hint: neither do I). You have the option to make $500 million a year - all you have to do is create a product(s) that improves the lives of millions and millions of people and they will give you their money.

This is wrong as well. There are very few people in the history of the world that could take nothing and create what Bezos has right now.

Elon is a bad example of a person turning nothing into something on is own. He is probably the best example of taking advantage of government bail outs though since TSLA would probably be bankrupt without the gov't subsidies. This is a good example of government deciding to give a billionaire money so east end housewives can sleep better at night.

I agree to this to an extent, but I still believe the best way to help the middle class is eliminate corporate taxes and cut taxes on the rich.

Money doesn't go offshore because of trickledown. In fact, it goes offshore because there isn't enough trickledown. When you raise corporate taxes more money goes offshore - which should be intuitive if you think about it.

Company buybacks are not bad for the middle class. It increases stock prices and when a company buys back their stock that means someone else is selling it for higher than they otherwise would. Once the seller receives the money it goes somewhere and almost everywhere it goes is good for the economy and the middle class.

I used 'trickledown' in that second point only to mean 'giving it all to the rich'.

In younger nations the investment opportunities with huge return are immense. So even the uber rich tend to invest more at home. All ships are floated.

In mature nations finding good investment opportunities becomes tougher. Thus the focus on offshore and cash hording you see will companies and uber rich do instead of re-investing some or all into the local economy.

It is also why you see Wall Street focus lobbying on gutting all the middle class wealth in America to force that money up to the top. They already gutted the single biggest 'saving pot' the middle class had with housing equity. Gold Star for a good job completed.

They are focused on SS and Medicare as the next biggest 'stores of wealth'. It is just easier to loot these pots then create new wealth. Something you do not see during a countries younger formative years, as much.

While I agree stock buy backs are not bad, I would say taking tax payer money from gov't to then use it for stock buy backs is not good. You want those gov't dollars to go into measures that providing consistent ongoing benefits. And that is why whenever they give bailout money to corps they sell it as maintaining and growing jobs and not stock buy backs to help a class, who will appreciate the bump but generally does not need it.

Easy to say .
Internet started when exactly .....30 years ago ( www) .
I’m sure if Internet would of appear in 1950 for example , a guy like Besos would of appear to create the same kinds of company .

I mean it is pretty common in science/math etc. 2 persons in different countries are studying and discovering stuff almost simultaneously but strangely in finance it would never happened ???

Totally false .
For 40 years that is exactly what the US did , lowering taxes for corporation and top 1% .
The wealth gap just keep increasing for decades .....

And why that is because the buyback share is a clear example .

88% of the stock market are own by the top 10% , how the hell you think middle class get a taste of it ?
They won’t buy more houses or more hamburger with it , just buy more shares or transfers money offshore .
The way for the poor and middle class to get wealth is true real economy not Wall Street .

I mean how the hell stock market reaches all time high when the entire economy of the world was close ????

It’s the biggest disconnection ever between Main Street and Wall Street .
Biggest bubble due to low interest rates .
What are bubble if it is not mis allocation ( hence non productive) of capital I ask you ???

Paper money producing more paper money do not produce real wealth in the real economy for the bottom 60% of population .
It just produce more paper money to Inflate financial assets that have absolutely no connection to the bottom 60% of Americans ....

I don't care about the wealth gap. It's more important to raise the floor than to limit the ceiling. And if you don't understand that the floor has risen significantly - and continues to do so - then I don't have much to discuss with you.

Well the reason professional sports (NFL,NBA,NHL,etc) did survive is exactly the opposite of what your suggesting for a better product , competition, viability of the sports .....


And if you think unlimited wealth gap is ok, it is all good but don’t complain to have riots , civil war , your head cut off or w.e that destroy your hOuse, store , etc .

Because that is always the results .

Out of all the software companies in the world chasing trillions of dollars 2000-2010, why did no one except Bezos manage to create something as useful and well designed as Amazon Web Services? All these replaceable geniuses out there and only Amazon managed to create it? All these companies with huge head starts (IBM, Oracle, etc), and Amazon overtook them. Kind of weird, no?

Bezos' creation powers much of the modern web and he got there before anyone with the best product. A guy who started selling books on the Internet out of his office ended up creating the world's premier cloud computing platforms.

Another example (there are thousands) is Musk using his own (illegitimate capitalist not-taxed-enough money according to you) money to start the world's largest rocket company (SpaceX) that's transforming the industry and expectations. These geniuses are everywhere you say; why is Musk's company crushing them and bureaucratic NASA despite starting far behind?

There is ample evidence for the genius founder effect. You see it all through history and not just in business: from science to warfare to leadership to technology to medicine to merchant activity, there are enormous differences in human capacity and they affect whole continents and centuries when the best come along. A good example of this is how quickly inheritance turns over; on average vast wealth is gone in less than 2 generations after the creator of the wealth created it. The is also ample evidence of the opposite: the dickhead Mao ruined China for two generations and killed about 100 million people because he was such a boneheaded loser. He campaigned and fought on your premise: that the capitalists were the problem and if you removed them they could easily be replaced. That experiment has been run, with horrible consequences.

If you want to be better educated about the world around you, I'd suggest reading Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Time in China's Gulags. It goes into depth about the cultural revolution premised on the kind of Nazi-level evil* ideas that you hold.

*Envy turned into politics has been a more dangerous and destructive force than racism ever has with many times the body count and 100x the slavery/severe oppression count. Misunderstanding about who generates wealth and how has been a big part of driving the base emotion of envy into incredibly destructive and oppressive action that's devastated the poor.

TS i agree with all you write .
What I am saying tho is cut off for example 20% of all the wealth for these people , would the world change to the worst tomorrow ?
Would their companies failed ?
Absolutely not .

The point is limitless wealth for 1 person is meaningless .
There is a limit on what a person can build , do or consume .