by toss1 | 2026-01-01 00:25:34+00:00
Sure "Real median household income has risen" and other nice stats exist. And much of the society looks like they're OK. But the reality is this is extremely brittle.

There is near-zero buffer for about half of the country's people. Only 55% of adults have enough savings to cover 3 months of expenses, and 30% could not cover it by any means. 37% of people cannot even handle a $400 surprise expense out of savings, 18% can't even handle a $100 expense! Only 48% could handle a surprise $2000 expense, which is a ar breakdown or a ride to the hospital. [0]

Seven percent of adults did not have enough money to eat at times in the prior month. [0]

28% of adults went without some kind of healthcare because of the expense, and 17% are carrying medical debt. [0]

You can quibble about the exact threshold of what counts as "scraping by", if you have to worry about your next meal, worry about whether you should go to the doctor, worry about being wiped out if your car breaks down or you have a minor accident, you are scraping by. And whether that applies to exactly half, sixty percent, or "only" one third, it is too much. The wealthiest society in the history of the planet should be able to care for all of it's residents.

>>operating definition of "hoard"

Of course there are not Scrooge McDuck vaults, and they are entirely unecessary for the activity of keeping for yourself amounts of wealth that are orders of magnitude more than one could possibly spend in a lifetime.

It doesn't matter how you got it, once you are past $20-$50million, it is not about personal wealth or lifestyle (the interest alone at $25mm is over $4,000 per day); it is hoarding wealth for power, and at the cost of the rest of society

>>Warren Buffett paid $23.7M in Federal Income Tax ... 237 years worth of [secretary's taxes]
Yes, and his reported $125million income reported was 416X the secretary's pay, and the $24Billion wealth gain over the five years was 16,200X the secretary's 5-year earnings. We can take Warren at his word when he says he's paing lower rates.

>> society that is a necessary but not sufficient condition of earning that wealth.
Exactly. I'm glad we agree. A sound soceity is a NECESSARY condition to earning the wealth. We don't see many even millionaires coming out of low-tax states in East Africa, but they way you type scream about taxes one would expect them to be minting trillionaires.

>> deal in what works in the real world
Yes, we agree. I am not proposing any kind of -ism, only making a system that is fair for all and produced the most broadly prosperous society in history, specifically the US system based around a very broad middle class.

>>systems that let rich people be
I am not suggesting not letting rich people be rich, and certianly not confiscating or punishing; I'm suggesting a system that will actually have MORE people be rich

>>what is your fair share of what somebody else worked for?
OK, what is the billionaire's fair share of the labor stolen from workers paid exploitation wages?
When 20%+ of WalMart's full-time employees qualify for Food Stamps because we allow them to pay poverty wages, those billionaires do not have a business model, they have an exploitation model. They owe their employees a living wage, and they owe the rest of us the taxes they failed to pay to cover those food stamp benefits. They are stealing from all of us.

>>What is your fair share? How much of the earnings of a waitress, plumber, doctor, Fortune 500 exec, and Elon Musk is due to you, personally, as your empathic, ethical, and fair share?

Mine? I'm already above the threshold. OUR fair share is a fair system requiring EVERYONE to contribute, and contribute enough that the least among us have food, housing, healthcare, and education without undue worry. The entire society, especially the rich benefits when everyone is operating at their best potential, not primarily worried about being one slip from the ditch.

And while we still have income taxes (I actually think they should be eliminated in favor of transaction taxes, see other posts), the hedge funders should be required to pay tax on their millions of "carried interest", and capital gains taxes should be realized in ANY event where stock is utilized at it's current value, e.g., as collateral for a loan, not only when it is sold.

A lot of other detail, but it is not good to see the country which was the greatest in history with a large middle class slide backwards into a new corporate feudalism by allowing the rich to excessively hoard the wealth of the nation that made them rich. The irony is that the more wealth becomes concentrated, the harder it is to be and stay wealthy -look at any nation with a few rich in their gated communities - it declines for the rich even more than the poor.

Have a great new year!

[0]https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2024-repor...