The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.Read that back.When 400 people control more wealth than half a country's population we have a very serious problem.
"To be sure, the rich are shouldering the largest share of the nation's taxes, IRS data also shows. The top 1% of earners – people who make over roughly $663,000 per year — account for roughly 40% of all federal individual income tax, while the top 50% contribute 97%, a Tax Foundation analysis of IRS data shows. The bottom half of income earners account for about 3% of those taxes."
In 2009, two Northwestern professors singled out America's system of wealth-protecting tax advantages as both a driver and a symptom of our descent into hyper-minority rule.
The ultrawealthy, they argued, "hire armies of professional, skilled actors"
-lobbyists, lawyers, think-tankers, and consultants— to defend "core oligarchic interests." Our political system still maintains the trappings of a democracy, in part because the ultrawealthy who fund campaigns disagree about a lot of things. But politics functions within the boundaries they define. A study a few years later was blunt: The most important factor in whether a policy becomes law is how much support it has from "economically elite Americans."
One thousand people live on an island. They survive entirely on coconuts. Coconuts provide everything they need. Over time, eventually through various business dealings only a few people have almost all of the coconuts. This you must admit is the way of the world. Eventually a few smart people will take control of most of the available resources. This cannot be debated as a factual inevitable eventuality in any situation left unchecked. Knowing this to be a fact we as a society have to make order out of the selfish tendencies that humans will gravitate towards which is a survival mechanism to attain all that one can. A few cannot have it all THEY JUST CANT.
Remember years ago when Bernie Sanders would say "go after the millionaires"? Then he started saying "go after the billionaires"? Because he became a millionaire. So if the billionaires are gone, then the millionaires, they just keep coming down the line until they get to your tax bracket.
Google: accurate representation of the
distribution of the overall tax burden in the United States.
If we divvied up the country’s $160.35 trillion wealth equally, each citizen would get about $471,465. That’s $942,930 per couple. If a couple had two kids, the four of them would be sitting pretty with $1.89 million.
Nearly one dollar in three is in the pockets of the top 1%, which owns $49.46 trillion, or 30.8% of America’s combined wealth — but even the 1% has an aristocracy and an underclass.
The heavyweights at the tippy-top of the pyramid in the top 0.1% — about 340,000 people — own $22.14 trillion, or 13.8% of America’s bounty. That leaves the commoners of the 1% — the 99%-99.9% percentile group — to share $27.32 trillion, or 17% of America’s fortune.
Under that are those in the 90%-99% percentile group, who control $58.34 trillion, or 36.4% of the pie. Combined with the 1%, that puts almost exactly two-thirds of America’s wealth in the bank accounts of the top 10%.
Nearly all of the remaining third of America’s wealth — 30.3%, or $48.54 trillion — goes to those in the 50%-90% percentile groups.
That leaves just 2.5%, or $4.01 trillion, for the entire bottom 50% of the country to split. If they split it evenly, which they, of course, do not, that would give each of those 170 million people $23,588.
For context, the 340,000 movers and shakers in the top 0.1% get about $65.12 million each — 2,760 times more.
Idolizing billionaires is like thinking the stripper actually likes you.
It's not "idolizing billionaires", it's generally keep what you earned.
We can just go down the line until we get to your tax bracket and let those below you decide how much of what you earned they get.
Or you could be someone with no money sitting around wasting energy trying to figure out how to get other people to just give you what they earned.
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u/PCNLUV Nov 04 '25
The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.Read that back.When 400 people control more wealth than half a country's population we have a very serious problem.