While we're struggling and distracted by fear of big government, big billionaires are sucking the country dry

Shouldn't they pay their fair share like you do?

While tens of millions of Americans are now facing economic desperation – unemployment, loss of healthcare, evictions, hunger – the very rich are becoming much richer. Here are three figures that should come as a shock to everyone in America:

$13,000,000,000. That’s how much Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man alive, made in one day while the companies he owns denies paid sick leave, hazard pay and a safe workplace to hundreds of thousands of his workers.

$21,000,000,000. That’s how much the Walton family, the richest family in America, made over the past 20 weeks while US taxpayers continue to subsidize the starvation wages at Walmart, the largest private employer in America.

$731,000,000,000. That’s how much the wealth of 467 billionaires increased since the Federal Reserve started taking emergency actions to prop up the stock market in March.

Incredibly, thanks to President Trump’s tax giveaway to the rich signed into law a few years ago, billionaires now pay a lower effective tax rate than teachers, nurses, firefighters or truck drivers.

The extraordinary wealth gains that billionaires have made during the pandemic come at a time when 92 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and tens of millions of Americans are facing evictions or foreclosures.

At a time when so many of our people are struggling economically, it is morally obscene that a tiny handful of billionaires – the top 0.0001% – are using a global pandemic as an opportunity to make outrageous profits after receiving a de facto bailout by the Federal Reserve.
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SomeMichGuy · M

The one issue--and only tangentially mentioned in the "FEE" vid is that you are mixing two different notions.

1) Taxes
2) Valuation of net worth

TAXES are on certain classes of income and things like capital gains.

The tax structure is eminently unfair and biased towards the very rich in many ways.

NET WORTH is based on the valuation of total assets minus total liabilities.

If you bought Apple as a "penny stock" and put $1,000 dollars into it when it could first be purchased, and let it stay there through today, you'd have a HUGE valuation of tgat asset, and--if you live as a typical middle-class person aside from this asset--you should have a HUGE net worth.

However, the mere ownership of that stock has NOT triggered many taxes. I guess you would pay on dividends (not sure about if you reinvest them, but I own Roth retirement funds...), but the biggest gain you would have is how much your shares are worth (and you'd have a lot through stock splits, etc.). That is capital gains, and THAT bill only comes due when you cash out your stocks.

Why? Because only when you ACTUALLY sell your stocks do you get a REAL valuation. It is just like selling your house or car: you can CLAIM any valuation you want, but until you have completed a transaction and gotten the cash, you valuation is speculative (which is why you might say you are worth $350k "on paper" if you think you could get that out of a house which you kwn free-and-clear, but if the market has too many homes, too few buyers, jobs go away, your area gets tainted water or a chemical factory or you are under a new airport approach...you'll likely get less, potentially MUCH less.
And vice versa, of course.

To the extent that the increases you speak of--the increases of Bezos & the Waltons--are of that nature (stock valuation), they are only increases on paper.

When they SELL shares, they will get a taxable event. But unless they DO, they will have a bunch of assets on paper with an indeterminate and uncertain valuation.

Possible wealth, but not actual spending money in their accounts.

SomeMichGuy · M

Yes.

It's great how Republicans used to be on board for sound financial policies like limiting debt, not going crazy with spending over income, etc.

Now, the story is those poor rich ppl need money, so give them more money...

so
1) give away a stable source of income based upon the ability to pay
BUT
whine about raising the debt ceiling, b/c of what it will do to "the debt"

2) Social Security can go broke
BUT
can't take the cap off the income for contributions to Social Security

3) Wars anywhere can be started and continued, because they have the magical property of never impacting the budget
BUT
there is NEVER "enough money in the budget" for social spending

4) the rich somehow need money
BUT
nothing about how the middle class has vanished into the poor
AND
whine about helping to support the lower classes individually & in their unemployed condition & in their businesses

Wiseacre · F

It is obscene..Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk are some of the biggest earners according to a Report from Americans for Tax Fairness, based on Forbes’ data for America’s more than 600 billionaires between March, when most states were in lockdown..and May. Nobody cares about the uninsured or underprivileged..no fairness anywhere..it’s a man for himself:-(always was, always will be.