When you have an economic system where most of the economic growth goes to a small percentage each year the system will keep compressing the wealth to one side till the system breaks. With the advancement in AI I think the problem is likely to be exacerbated as more of the economic growth is captured by corporations from the workforce.

The lengths that people would go to avoid paying those marginal tax rates was legendary!

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nocera-tax-avoidance-...

There were also a lot of 'perks' paid for by companies, and a lot of spouses who didn't bother working.

You can have a high marginal tax rate, but it tends to be economically counterproductive.

That's a million per year, not the usual definition of "net worth over a million" which is a rather lower bar considering plenty of quite normally-salaried or even retired people are sitting on a million in property value.

Good narrative but the data doesn't support the claim:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

Not to mention rich people who store their money and assets instead of cash are much less affected by inflation.

There's literally zero way I see of America not becoming a third world country in the coming decades.

Although I've looked at the original report, it isn't clear if this $1M in annual income that they're comparing to the 1950's is inflation adjusted. The only comment I can find on this point appears to say that it isn't which makes it an unfair comparison because that's the equivalent of more than $13M today.

The article avoids a bigger concern which is the size of government spending. In 1960 (I couldn't find older data) federal government spending was $144B. If we adjust for inflation, today's spending would be $1.6T. It's $9.7T.

Perhaps the rich are paying less, but a government that increases spending by 6x is certainly contributing to the problem.

Population has doubled size 1950 explaining some of the spending increases and spreading out some of the costs, but not all. It would be interesting to see if the number of "millionaires" has rise proportionally.

Do one thing, make dividents you receive from companies as taxable at 30% instead of 0 or 10% and see how taxes get generated.

All the bs about "marginal rate" and yet people will find ways. If you force companies to deduct and pay taxes and then remit balance to the shareholder, the taxes collection will happen.

Also, increase capital gains tax.

In India its 15 or 20%, short or long term which is too little. Make it 30%

> billionaires have benefited massively from the Trump tax cuts, with the U.S.’s 806 billionaires’ collective wealth hitting an all-time high this month of $5.8 trillion. This is double the amount of wealth they controlled in 2017, the year the bill was passed

The S&P 500 was at 2300 at the start of 2017, and 4800 at the start of 2024. If billionaires' wealth doubled, it was mostly due to equities (and other assets like real estate) doubling, not due to tax cuts, as this passage implies.

If this does not include inflation then gtfo, big deal.

We have millions of poor Americans voting against their self-interests to protect the thousand billionaires.