"First of all, I didn't say they shouldn't pay the most. That's what they do right now. I would agree that the people who make the most money probably benefit the most from the infrastructure this government has set up. But if you want to use the argument that they benefit from a police force and other things, I would venture to say that it is the wealthiest .1% of people who could afford to hire their own cops to guard their factories (I said .1% because the top 1% aren't the factory-owning, fortune 500 corporation CEOs you characterize them to be. They're small business owners. The .1% is who you are referring to.) Whereas these people don't hire their own police forces to guard their factories. They pay taxes that contribute to paying for national and community police forces.
I suppose he is right here. My personal problem isn't necessarily with the 1% so much as the .1%, like he said. So is this guy in favor of upping the .1%'s taxes? Is he in favor of raising capital gains taxes? And as for the 1% being small business owners... eh. They're not. They work in finance, they're in the medical field, and they're lawyers. Maybe a few are "small" business owners, but I think he's using that term a bit loosely. My mother owns a small business. My boss owns a small business. These people are not pulling in 350,000+ per year. If one dude at the top is pulling that, it's not really 'small' anymore. People using that term in these types of arguments are usually only doing so for emotional appeal.
And you also seem to be under the delusion that only physical labor counts as "doing something." Why is it only the factory workers that work toward making the profit. The manager who shows up early, opens the day, stays late, closes out the books. He isn't sitting there sipping a coffee all day. That's such an ignorant view of executives that people in the occupy movement like to put out. Everyone who heads a corporation is doing something. They aren't putting the parts on the products their company produces but thank god they aren't, that's not what their talent is. They have the industry expertise, the ideas, the managerial skills. That's what their job is and it shouldn't be valued any less because they aren't doing manual labor. That's the communist ideology of killing all the intellectuals and only valuing the factory workers.
I know I'm not under that delusion. I'm in marketing and graphic design as my career. I definitely don't think just doing physical labor counts. But I do think that doing physical labor does count quite a bit, and sometimes it isn't proportional. My dad broke his fucking back working in a factory. It would take him literally years and years and
years to make what the 1% makes. Is that really fair? Not really. So I'm not in favor of saying only physical labor counts, but I think you do have to give more credit to that side of things than what typically happens.
And yes managers can do a lot. No one said they couldn't. But, look, as I said before money makes more money. Currently I work at a place owned by two guys. One owner got his money from his grandfather. The other owner is the ideas guy that puts in hour after hour after hour. The business is his blood, sweat, and tears. The first owner that got the money? I haven't seen him in like a half a year. He doesn't do anything. He'll still be making money though. Likely he'll be making more money that the owner that's doing everything, and that's all because he put in the money... money he didn't earn from doing anything.
So there are certainly instances where managers and owners don't do a lot. It happens.
And no, the taxes and fees the 50% pay are not far more regressive.
Luxury taxes are much more frequent than the taxes on items such as food and other essentials. Many municipalities have NO tax on food items.
But yes, there are sales taxes. Everyone pays them.
And even if you want to say that it affects the poor more than the wealthy, the sales taxes in most localities are 5-6%, rarely exceeding 10%. So saying they are MUCH MORE REGRESSIVE is idiotic if you're juxtaposing it with the 35% vs 0% income tax rate the wealthy face.
I don't think it's idiotic to say that. Someone making minimum wage and having to pay for a family really isn't going to be able to afford much, and so that sales tax really does affect them in a profound way that wouldn't even occur to someone making the wage of 1%. Do you really think someone like that gives a fuck what the taxes on his hamburger are? Well, the poor people that just need something to keep their kid fed and only has a few dollars sure as fuck does.
Most people work to get where they are. Being fortunate and getting to go to college doesn't mean you'll be the head of a big fortune 500 company
Most company executives of the fortune 500 went to state schools, not private schools.
It takes hard work, skill, training, the self-discipline for these people to rise in the ranks.
And most people at the bottom worked to get where they are. A lot of people at the bottom work a whole helluva a lot. They sometimes work 2 or even 3 jobs to make ends meet. Just because you're high on the totem pole does
not mean you worked harder than everyone under you. It just doesn't. That's a fact. It doesn't mean you didn't
work if you're at the top. No one should try and say the people at the top don't work at all or did absolutely nothing. I'm sure most of them did work and did do something. But opportunity isn't handed out proportionally to your work.
It is so unbelievably narrow minded and narcissistic to think that the only people who work for a living are the people who work in the factories.
The people at the top worked longer hours when they were at the bottom, sometimes 120 hour weeks like some interns I know working in NYC right now."
It's also certifiably insane to think that the proportion to which wealth is handed out in this country is equal to the proportion of work done by a given person. It isn't. I may not have worked as hard as I could, but someone like Mitt Romney sure as fuck didn't work 1 MILLION times harder than me. That to me is the problem. When put so much emphasis on work being equal to pay, then our proportions are insanely off. One person physically can't work as hard as I work in a year... in less than one day. They can't. It can't be done. But yeah, that brings us to my first point. That's more of the .1% rather than the 1%.
