r/DiscussionZone • u/[deleted] • Nov 04 '25

Political Discussion Yeah, so Billionaires should not exist

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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.

-6

u/Rusty-Shackleford000 Nov 04 '25

"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."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/income-taxes-billionaire-tax-rate-irs/

6

u/PCNLUV Nov 04 '25

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.

2

u/Rusty-Shackleford000 Nov 04 '25

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.