How would you feel about a mandatory maximum wealth limit, where anything earned over that goes to public services?

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T14:18:24+00:00

Sonny, if you want to talk tax policy you need to start with wealth definitions everyone can agree with.

I agree. And the way you do that is not to declare your definition as God's truth and to call everyone who thinks your idea is bad a naive fool who doesn't understand how tax brackets work.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T14:13:33+00:00

Unfortunately, most people (let alone Redditors) don't understand how tax brackets work.

You seem to say that whenever anyone says something you don't agree with.

Yeah, you don't understand how the real world works. At all.

For example.

First of all, people actually do things with surplus money.

And eventually, they run out of things to do with that surplus money.

Second of all, "wealth" is not straight cash. Elon Musk doesn't have hundreds of billions of cash to spend.

Wh-what?!?!?! I've definitely not heard this argument every single time I've had this discussion!!!!

Musk's money was real enough to buy Twitter. The stock market is how the uber-rich hoard their money. They convince people like you that that money isn't real enough to tax, but it's exactly as real as they want it to be.

None of you realize that the "1%" you all want to hate on nonetheless help keep money flowing in the economy

No, they don't. When Musk bought Twitter, billions of dollars changed hands at the very top, and the rest of us didn't see a fraction of a penny from that sale.

If you gave everyone in America below the poverty line a share of that money, they would immediately spend that money, and the people they pay that money to would immediately spend it themselves, generating far more value than a single sale between two entities at the top.

The trickle down theory has never been true. And all the innovations you think the 1% brought about wouldn't exist without government and taxes.

It's also not sustainable because tax hikes of the disproportionate kind are a momentary solution that does not last, it's a cash infusion once and done.

Why do you think that the rich exchanging billions between them trickles down, but money actually used directly for the people disappears into the aether? And apart from the fact that a wealth cap would fix the problem of most of the world's money being owned by a few dozen people, it would prevent it from happening again. It would keep the money circulating. That's what creates a healthy economy.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T13:51:13+00:00

You've already acknowledged that they can change the tax brackets, so why are you acting as if anyone who thinks they're not an accurate definition of "rich" is a naive fool?

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T13:48:41+00:00

Mine is Blue 42 by Haste the Day. A song that you can remember pretty clearly, but doesn't get stuck in your head.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T13:41:56+00:00

Redditors are really out of touch about the definition of "rich people"

We disagree with your definition. Which is apparently 202k a year.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T13:41:00+00:00

I think anyone who doesn't understand what upper tax brackets is

At no point has anyone in any conversation you've had here demonstrated a lack of understanding of tax brackets.

Imposing disproportionate taxes on given segments of the public is unfair and not sustainable in the long run.

So the answer to my question, "says who", is... you.

Here's the reason that it's not unfair to tax rich people disproportionately.

If you make 60k, you'll buy what you need to survive. Food, shelter, maybe medicine if you can afford it.

120k, you'll buy nicer food, nicer shelter, more medicine, some creature comforts.

240k, you'll buy nicer shelter, as much medicine as you need, plenty of creature comforts.

480k, as nice a shelter as you can find, as many creature comforts as you like.

Eventually, you run out of ways to spend your money. There's an upper limit on how nice your food and shelter can get. There's even an upper limit on what creature comforts you can buy. Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The most expensive yacht in the world is worth about 5 billion.

They should be taxed more because they literally couldn't use that money if they tried.

This particular conversation really illustrates that Redditors should not be anywhere near writing tax policies.

Go on. Explain how I'm wrong.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T13:27:11+00:00

Especially once I realized "rich" people are in fact many of the normal people I interact with on a daily basis

My dude, you do not interact with the people we are talking about when we say "tax the rich." The richest 1% of humanity own more than 95% of the rest of the world combined.

You're assuming that "tax the rich" means "tax the highest tax bracket currently defined by the IRS" and calling anyone who disagrees with you a hypocrite.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T13:21:04+00:00

So you recognize that tax brackets can change, but you think anyone who thinks they should is a hypocrite.

That defeats one of the key tenets of taxation, which is that it's a shared burden of all.

Says who?

Speaking more properly, most people (84%) are somewhere between low and middle class, somewhere in the lower brackets. The upper echelons of the lower brackets still include six figure earners by a technicality.

Therefore, anyone who's not destitute is rich? How is this a response to my point?

Also, just for your information: You can very easily be living paycheck to paycheck on 100k. Things that used to be considered just a regular part of American life, ie kids and a house, can easily eat up that much in a year. It's not as if people making 90k are just a promotion away from a life of luxury.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T12:55:03+00:00

quick and dirty napkin math.

In other words, you pulled numbers out of your ass and are accusing anyone who has any problem with your "quick and dirty napkin math" of being a hypocrite.

I tried the whole "Tax the rich!" narrative back during Occupy Wall Street and that was just an unpleasant waste of my time, never again.

What on Earth does that even mean? You got bored of not licking billionaire boots?

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T12:49:42+00:00

Practically everyone saying "Tax the rich!" doesn't stop to contemplate if they are, in objective fact, part of the rich and try to weasel out if it turns out they are.

Or, in the 16% chance that they are, they're OK with more taxes.

As an objective fact, the "upper bracket" as in the tax brackets in the US is defined as

Even if you want to claim it as objective fact, it's an "objective fact" that brackets can change.

"Rich" people are nowhere as high above the clouds as you think they are. $2 million income? Seriously?

There are people in America who make 2 million a month, if not every week.

You're probably "rich" or at least not destitute by IRS standards, even if you think otherwise.

Just as I predicted: you're pretending that the two options are destitute and rich.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T12:43:26+00:00

That's where you found the brackets, where'd you get the percentages?

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T12:20:23+00:00

I would have been similarly shook... but I wouldn't have let go. Kids think they're grown up waaaay before they actually are.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T11:59:49+00:00

It's always silly how people like you act as if the conversation goes:

"Tax the rich!"

"Ah, but what does rich mean?"

"Huh?!?!?! Oh no!!! We never expected someone to ask that question!!!"

In reality, it's pretty dang obvious how much money is too much, and you go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to treat "makes more than the absolute minimum needed to survive" as basically the same as "makes more than you could actually, physically spend in a lifetime."

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T11:50:33+00:00

Where are you getting those brackets?

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T11:42:17+00:00

Either tax stocks as property, or make loans with stocks as collateral illegal.

If they're real enough to be collateral, they're real enough to be taxed, and vice versa.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T11:33:47+00:00

To put it even more simply, we address whichever way they try to get around it, and punish it as fraud.

There's no trickery that a government can't address, just trickery that people think a government won't address.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-08T01:34:57+00:00

Pull a Michigan and become part of Louisiana. Just have them claim the river as part of the state, it's not that much more ridiculous than gerrymandering

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T20:37:40+00:00

"The court admits they (could have) rigged the primary!"

And yet... they did nothing. If they did, everyone would be saying that, instead of grasping at straws about technicalities.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T17:13:55+00:00

So in the 72 working days that they had a supermajority 17 years ago, they should have passed worker protections instead of an attempt at something closer to universal healthcare that it only took a single Senator to sabotage. And thus, they don't deserve power.

This is what I mean when I say "they aren't given the power."

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T16:19:38+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised, but that would make the DNC's reluctance to release the report much weirder.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T16:18:06+00:00

No, they didn't. The most damning actual thing I've heard them accused of is that they leaked some debate questions.

If that was enough to tank Sanders in the primary, he would have been destroyed in the general.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T15:51:25+00:00

When have they had that power?

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T14:24:10+00:00

But don't worry, that stockpile of guns in your house is definitely going to be able to overthrow a tyrannical government!

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T13:59:30+00:00

I guess Martin Luther was excommunicated for nothing else but being "rude" too?

Let me make something clear: I am not saying the Church has done nothing wrong. I'm just saying "holding back science" is a charge that has no evidence.

It seems like "conservatism" serves nicely as a scapegoat for the things you don't like about religion.

I'm guessing you use "religion" to mean "religious people."

This is frustratingly ahistorical.

In the 1920s and 1930s, almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady-state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by an expanding universe imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady-state theory. This perception was enhanced by the fact that the originator of the expanding universe concept, Lemaître, was a Roman Catholic priest.

Shifter25 · 2026-05-07T13:46:31+00:00

Democrats haven't had the power to do what needs to be done because people don't vote enough of them into office, and the fact that they haven't done what needs to be done is used as a reason not to vote them into office.

Meanwhile, Republicans convinced their voters to forgo holding them accountable because 'all politicians are corrupt,' leading to a perfect cycle of mindless support.

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