politics. Obama hit on a very popular theme with the DNC folks. He wants
a tax increase on wealthy people. There is little doubt but that he
will get what he is asking for. The section that I thought was
important:
"If we
want to reduce our deficit, our sacrifice has to be shared. And that
means even as we're making spending cuts, we also have to end the tax
cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans in this country.
(Applause.) It's not because we want to punish success. It's because if
we're going to ask Americans to sacrifice a little bit, we can't tell millionaires and billionaires that they don't have to do a thing.”
How could one argue with this kind of talk? Millionaires and
billionaires are not carrying their share of the burden so we should tax
the hell out of them.
The audience that I write to doesn’t like Obama very much. They also
don’t like big government; they hate the financial institutions and the
fat cats with big bonuses. So I’m interested to hear what might be said
on this topic. Is Obama striking a chord with you? I understand if he
does. But you need to look where this is headed. If you are young, with
children, and have debt from education or a home and aspire for some
degree of success in your life; beware. What Obama is proposing is
headed your way.
When Obama talks of taxing millionaires and billionaires he is missing
the mark. He is pushing for a higher tax on income. What he doesn’t get
is that millionaires and billionaires actually don’t have that much
income. Yes they have wealth, but it is very easy to avoid paying taxes
on wealth. The people who will pay higher taxes are young people, not
the rich old fogies that have bundles in the bank. I got this note
from a young professional who works very hard and is far from wealthy.
He does make a decent income and that income will get squeezed by the
higher taxes that are coming.
I love
it when Obama talks about taxing the "wealthy" when he talks of high
taxable income. Since he targets people with high wage income, he's targeting young people without much wealth that have a lot of debt (student, home, etc). The wealthy are mostly older folks, many of whom have lots of their money in muni bonds and assets throwing off capital gains. The wealthy are also foreigners who
can invest in the US without US tax on their capital gains, and reduced
US tax on dividends if a treaty applies, and generally, no US tax on
interest income.If you want to hike taxes on engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, airline pilots, and others with householders in high-earning brackets, fine. But it takes balls to call them millionaires and billionaires.
In the President’s speech he had this to say:
I don't want a $200,000 tax cut that's paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay more than $6,000 in extra Medicare costs. I don't want that. I don't want my tax cut paid for by cutting kids out of Head Start or doing away with health insurance for millions of people on Medicaid, seniors in nursing homes and poor children and middle-class families who are raising a child with a disability like autism. That's not a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
These sure sound like popular views. The President has defined the
debate here. This is about billionaires on the one hand and seniors,
Medicaid and Medicare recipients even kids with autism on the other
hand. But actually the proposal to increase income taxes will hurt a
different audience than those billionaires. Those that are going to get
hit, the young lawyers, doctors, airline pilots and business people of
all stripes are going to respond with their feet. They will not vote for leadership that puts the tax burden squarely on them.
The end result will be that the political pendulum will
shift to the extreme right. The House, Senate and the White House will
belong to conservatives. When that happens there will be a great
unwinding of the social programs that Obama champions. And all those who
think the solution is to tax wealth will be very disappointed with the
outcome.
Trying to speculate on what taxes will be raised is like pissing in the wind. Just know that you will be paying more, probably much more, in the future. Therefore, plan you life accordingly. Don't contribute to IRAs or 401Ks because they will be confiscated. Try to buy assets that can be sheltered (or hidden) from taxes. If you are young, then learn some languages and try to get multiple work visas and/or National residencies. The USA has been looted and will probably not offer the best opportunities in the future.
Ponzinomics 201 - An Orwellian Nightmare - Money is Fungible, but required to sustain the spending orgy at the pig trough.
Constraints: 90% debt-to-gdp, 1:1 income-to-borrowing, 10% debt service load
Selected Statement of Cash Flows & Balance Sheet (numbers rounded from memory):
1.5 trillion borrowing to 15 trillion gdp, with 13 trillion outstanding (now 14.2)
2.2 trillion tax receipts (for simplicity I'm treating it all as personal income)
top 1% (40%) - 0.88 trillion cash flow
top 5% (20%) - 0.44 trillion cash flow
combined - 1.32 trillion cash flow
for each 10% loss of income tax receipts in the top 5% of taxpayers $132 billion are lost in tax revenue
for each dollar not received in tax receipts one dollar must be borrowed to pay for desired budget outlays $350 billion in lost revenue (midpoint of $700 difference & less than a 30% income drop among the top 5% achieves the dreaded 1:1 income-to-borrowing ratio. - PONZI COLLAPSE
Conclusion: Obama and the Congress realize that in order to continue their spending orgy, unemployment on wall street must be OUTLAWED,and they will use everyone's current tax dollars and future debt burden to achieve this. In short, in the mind of a politician the bottom 95% of Americans don't matter because they don't pay enough taxes to account for a significant percentage of the required cash flow for their spending addiction, since in their mind SPENDING MUST NEVER ACTUALLY BE CUT.
The quantify the politicians disdain for the average American in pursuit of increased spending (except for the 0.137% of days when a federal election is occurring):
A top 1%er is a whole person
A top 5%er is a 1/8th person
All Other Persons are counted as 1/100th of a person
Orwell was right- ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Obama doesn't want to sock it to the billionaires (even if is really $160K and up), he wants full employment for them and a slightly larger piece of their wallet. Something tells me most people who don't have jobs would also being willing to give a slightly larger piece of their wallet for a full employment guarantee, too bad Obama doesn't give a shit about them unless the belong to a union (in which case he is happy to spend over $1M per person to create jobs).
In short, Bruce, I don't accept your premise, but I will accept your argument.
You're right, millionaires and billionaires should never ever have to do anything they don't want to. Wait their turn in line, pay taxes their minions forced on the rest of us, go to jail for committing crimes, etc. The rich are better and more equal to everyone else because they're rich and they're rich because they're better and more equal than everyone else. Why, don't you know, if you didn't deserve an overbearing police state and endless abuse, you'd be rich already? God damn it, assclowns who actually believe that should jump off a fucking bridge yesterday.
The actual structure of the tax code is broken and does not align taxes with either economic activity or profit, jiggering with rates will never fix this.
To state that the top marginal rate is 34% is misleading. As an example, a cab driver in NYC working pulling down 99,000/yr ($300 day), will find himself in the 28% bracket but pay 45% in Fed/State/Local taxes, furthermore for anyone self employed- the effective total rate would not break below 44% until after $160,000. Once you break into the top 1% (34% tax bracket), for example, with a partner in a law firm or boutique financial shop- you begin with a 46.7% effective tax rate and work down as the income amount goes up.
I came across an eye opening quote from early 2009 (which I am taking entirely out of context since it was part of a scathing assault on bankers and the structure of the code) but it raises some interesting points in light of the CBO projected 2011 $2.228 trillion in tax revenues and $1.5 trillion in government borrowing - and the evil bargain that is struck in primarily sourcing US government revenues from individuals' incomes.
"With respect to Individual income taxes- regardless of whether one focuses on the top 1% or the top 5% of income earners- they account for a disproportionately large share of the tax revenue, 40% and 60% respectively. Tens of thousands of Bankers who have been laid off over the past year were in the top 1%. Unless they miraculously find new jobs with similar combined salary and taxable benefits- the absolute decline in tax revenues will be significant. It is these tax revenues which have financed 40.5% of our current debt.
Further compounding the issue are the recent limits on bank compensation. If bank revenues are not paid out as taxable compensation, and instead are retained by the struggling banking institutions, they will merely offset existing and future losses and not generate any new tax revenue for the Government. I recognize this is presently a politically unacceptable argument, but it must be accounted for and mitigated in Fiscal Policy development, if any policy to succeed in addressing the crisis.
The tax code structure also raises an increasing Risk Management concern. There is a mathematical point at which tax revenues from the declining incomes of the top 1% or 5% cannot be replaced, much less increased, by raising the marginal tax rate. Even if the tax rate were raised to 100% there would still be an absolute decline in tax revenues."
Bruce, I'm sure you also have seen this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ&feature=player_embedded
No further commentay needed regarding your post!
Yes i saw this.
To williambanzai7:
http://www.propublica.org/article/setting-the-record-straight-on-ges-tax...
interesting look into the bottomless pit.
Sorry to be the cynic, Bruce. Obama champions nothing........the orator of air.........the Confucious of whiteness, blackness and whatever blows in the fucking retard wind.........unless the double read is Obama is part of the unwinding design already play.
Senators with $50, $100 and $250 million dollar net worths and HClinton in the mix anything is possible for Democrats and Republicans.
dreams are for the middle class.
Greetings, my friend.
It is nice to see you! I was wondering where you had gotten off to...
you are a sweetheart, Orly. BK has my email if you want it. nice to see you hanging around again, too.
i have a friend from the past who lives in Texas. i know it is a BiG state but bet you may know that artiste.
did a lot of trading this week......mostly shorting
Well, congrats on that.
I was actually long on USDCAD and USDCHF but, with the markets taking a tumble, that trade has stalled a bit.
Now, I am waiting for a retrace in the USDJPY to about 79.31 to get in long and stay there for the duration. Also waiting for the AUDUSD to top, probably with a double at about 110. It's hard to say where it will land but when that puppy tumbles, it's going to be something to witness.
didn't sell AUD when it went back over 1.08 but did sell NZD 3 x along with the FTSE, DAX and GBP this week.
flat into friday. took a last shot short on NZD this PM into 0.7975/85 runnup and am out and FLAT into tomorrow and the weekend.
all trades i did this week were in and outs. bang bang, you know. missed the OIL short. Missed the silver short and called the fucking thing too somewewerewhere on a ZH post........did get a part of it on a rebound though.
i was long USD/CHF too but bailed too early on that.......same for USD/JPY
i like working at learning different tradng styles.
you know, i am wondering if this market isn't setting up for a lot of chop over the summer vs a big sell off on the end of QE.
the Big sell seems too obvious.
hope to hear from you.
Tax unearned income. A nice healthy mother of a progressive tax. With the first 5% going to Soc Sec and Medical care. As a collateral benefit, then maybe we would stop using the entire lending system to enhance existing assets, rather than creating new ones. Real ones, not naked side bets.
The wealth has already been redistributed. That deal was done 2 1/2 years ago by aristocratic mandate. Anybody up for getting it back?
Not fair and just?
Who said anything about fairness or justice. F and J got flushed down the toilet years ago. This is about mobs, a big one and an itty-bitty one. It's about brute force. This is not a flaming negotiation.
Who the fock represented the other 98% of the US citizenry in Sept '08? My guy wasn't there, or we would just be coming out of the biggest 2 1/2 year shithole ever known to Man. But everybody would have their fair piece. Financial disasters are built for the pondscum who cause them. And that's the ones who abused their treasure rooms of capital. It's nature's way of preventing aristocracies.
In between sopping up the gravy with his bread, even Buffett said it was class warfare. He can go last for that.
Unwind the IRS, get rid of the loopholes, and yeah...a flat tax would do that. Rebate credits back the the poor outside of the IRS structure (if you really feel a necessity to dole out money). I'd rather have a one page tax form. Here's what I made, here's 15%, sign my name, and Bob's your uncle. Likewise, Mr. Goldman-Sachs CEO writes down all his income including the obscene bonuses, writes in 15%, signs his name, and sends a check.
Was this written by Steve Forbes? I was waiting to hear promotion of the flat tax again.
It's not that Obama doesn't get it, Bruce. It's that he can't sell what, at least according to his rhetoric, needs to be sold, i.e. a wealth tax. Even if he could sell a wealth tax, he knows it is not enough. He also knows they could confiscate all of the income of all of the millionaires and billionaires and it still would not be enough.
Obama knows that the only way he can continue to feed the beast is to come after the middle and lower class with new tax hikes, and the only way he can do that is to demagogue it as going after the millionaires and billionaires but "unfortunately" having to bring everyone else along for the ride so that he can get at them.
He knows precisely what he is doing. Big O is one of the wealthy, and is not going to throw it all away by going after himself. Nevertheless, the Über-wealthy like Obama need to have a subservient class, and the only way they are going to have a subservient class large enough to meet their needs is to throw up obstacles like income taxes that keep aspiring middle-classers who are clawing their way up from actually building any meaningful wealth.
As for the comment you posted about old people having wealth in munis, that is all fine and good for the commenter, but for most of these people that wealth is the result of a lifetime of after-tax savings. It smacks of anywhere but the good old USA to come after the pot of gold a second time around, but things have changed, haven't they. I suspect many of the soon-to-be retiring boomers won't have nearly as much saved since they blew it all on Beamers, Hummers, and beach condos, so I guess a paradigm change was overdue anyway.
It was good to come of age at the peak of Western Civilisation ... it is a shame to watch it slip away in our lifetimes, no?
"Those that are going to get hit, the young lawyers, doctors, airline pilots and business people of all stripes are going to respond with their feet. "
No, they're not going to vote with their feet. It's just like I told you They are going to pay up. Political pendulum is going to swing? Nope. Old people vote. They vote and agitate on their issues. The political system will respond to them.
And don't go bashing me. I was one of those "young doctors" and I hated the social program giveaways. I'll get nothing in my old age, either. I got too much education, worked too hard and made too much money.
"The House, Senate and the White House will belong to conservatives." It already does and just like Nixon and Reagan, they'll pander to the old folks. Any young person that expects the political system to deliver for them is living in a dream world.
Bend over.
Interesting article Bruce, thanks. Obama's "tax the rich" remarks are a big lie that Democrat politicians tell their base. They have no intention of taxing millionaires and billionaires, but they're fine to tax and demonize people like my husband and I (both engineers) who work 60-70 hours a week to make a decent living, but are by no means rich. I detest the Republicans (except for Ron Paul), but you're right in saying this kind of rhetoric from the Dems would make it much easier to vote Republican in 2012.
They can only successfully tax wage income and retirement income that is earmarked as such. No one, billionaires for example, who earns their money through non-wage sources will be burdened.
an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget - just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits - John F. Kennedy
the Laffer curve. He didn't believe in the Laffer curve when it came to sex!
Despite a huge bull market, the Democrats lost bigtime in 2010 because of this "let's tax everything in sight" stuff. I guess they didn't notice.
OK Bruce! We'll tax wealth instead! The actual tax code suck at it anyway.
I mean...doesn't a society has the right, indeed the duty to aim for fairness?
Why should the goddamned tax code makes it so easy for the wealthy to pay far less than their fair share?
Exactly right!
There are no natural laws in economics or finance, just human laws, custom-made for transfer of wealth to the oligarchy.
Facts please!!!
Who benefited from deficit spending and low taxation? How much wealth did medical doctors leech out of the system? What about consultants, military procurement bonanza etc.
Poor people pay no taxes and get nothing in benefits.
Do people understand this? Allow me to illustrate this!
There was a very popular blogger who in 2009 was severely complaining about banks raising interest rates on their best customers from 4%~30%. He argued that, why should they pay a high interest rate when they paid off balances each and every month---they were not the dead beats?
I know a lot of people like that. They paid off their credit card every month and accumulated FREE rewards.
But, these type of people fail to understand that the reason why their interest rates were low was because millions of cc users with impaired credit and many who did not pay off their ccs each month, ended up paying billions in late and over limit fees. Another words they subsidized the well off card holders.
So the moral is: low and poor people get zip in benefits and end up paying for everything, the rich get all the benefits of government spending and literally pay nothing.
Cost vs benefit!
Wrong!
Of course taxation goes well beyond income tax ..
its rich people who are taxed very low...that's reality!
....
Yes, sock it to billionaires... but not the way others talk about it.
The fact is, it is important to end all the artificial advantages given to the rich and connected. And there is a way to do this that does not involve punishing anyone... it only requires leveling the playing field.
End all debt.
That's right. Get the banks out of the debt game. Stop them from lending unlimited sums to the rich and connected, who know how to play the games that let them become obscenely rich by leveraging wealth they did not earn, but was instead created out of thin air by the gangster banksters and lent to them.
Yes, rich individuals can still lend their wealth to other individuals (rich, poor or in between) via private contract. But then they are risking their own wealth, not risking fiat, fake, fraud, fiction, fantasy, fractional-reserve non-wealth created by others in the predator class.
The current unethical scheme gives almost unlimited opportunity to the already rich, and essentially none to the poor folks and regular folks. To be sure, the rich still have enormous advantages from being rich. They have their own wealth to invest, which is a huge advantage over others. But at least some limits apply, which today they do not, especially if they have good connections to the banking system.
To live without debt is good, wise, healthy and prudent. People think more carefully and make better decisions. People waste less. As a result, life becomes more efficient and everyone benefits.
The people in the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s and 1800s came to the americas from around the world, most often with very little money or assets. In the beginning they had a mostly empty continent to deal with, no electricity, no infrastructure, no roads, no transportation system, pretty much nothing but their own bodies, minds and a few hundred or thousand bucks worth of tools and supplies. And look how much they accomplished... without debt, without banksters, without government. For anyone to say today they cannot make it without debt is BS. Just consider all the infrastructure and technology that makes life and production massively more efficient today compared to the 1500s ~ 1800s. It is offensive for people to claim we need debt and banksters to survive. That's just an obscene lie.
Please, do not tax the rich! That will stop the flow of money trickling down .... it's really bad for everybody. Bad, i tell you!
I lay awake at night in dreadful fear that someday we might not be lucky enough to have the rich, from whom all trickles down, and jobs are created.
Every night I pray to the baby Jesus, thanking Him for creating the rich, so that we may exist to serve them. The rich must survive even if every one of us has to be sacrificed in their stead.
So far, my prayers have been generously answered. The baby Jesus has graceously blessed the creditors and their anointed financial high servants.
But we must be ever-vigilant on their behalf lest they become victims of those homosexual people, Negroes, and White folk who have no shame for their own inferiority.
Tell the people, Bishop ... spread the word!
This is a generational issue.
The baby boomers ripped off the younger generation and left them saddled with generations of debt.
The baby boomer generation has a lock on the voting process due to their numbers.
Rather than making it easier on young people, they are preying on them.
The answer is simple, our youth will tell us to stuff it and emigrate, leaving a narciscistic bunch of old and ignorant spend thrifts to complain about today's youth.
How easy is it emigrate? Which Countries are going to take our hundred millions of emigrees?
Try getting into any country and working there. The disUnited States is the most liberal emigree destination in the world. None other even comes close.
It's not countries that our young are going to light out for, it's opportunities to survive, live well, maybe even prosper. What country (ies) are going to have all these employment and career opportunities, business ventures, and other income and wealth building mechanisms going forward?
There is a chronic paucity of opportunity everywhere. A billion or more jobs short of the number of people we already have and by the end of the century a couple billion more, absent a seismic, cosmic or man-made event that destroys a couple billion people.
IT is not simple at all.
We are in a box and the only way out is invention, Invention that creates unheard of industries, products, services, and stuff that does not now exist.
And good luck with that, considering the amount of time that our young and everyone else is wasting merely observing, watching, entertaining, and amusing themselves, while creating absolutely nothing, for several generations now.
Where are the Jobs, Allens, Hewletts, Packards, Watsons, Gates, and other brilliant entrepeneurs that will provide the outlets we need to employ, gainfully, all the people who need to work?
And to what wonderful country will our over-entitled, undereducated youth emigrate to, pray tell?
Hey, just cut them off. That's the ticket. Whatever is the debt, just reduce SocialSecurity, Medicare, Medicade and other old age payments whatever percentage is required to offset deficits.
Of course, to be fair, we also need to get the USSA military to close down the 730 odd military installations, stop all the unconstitutional wars it is fighting, and wait to be attacked before fighting again.
But hey. The solution is simple. Cut them off.
"What he doesn’t get is that millionaires and billionaires actually don’t have that much income. Yes they have wealth, but it is very easy to avoid paying taxes on wealth."
A billionaire will have their money invested largely in land, stocks or bonds and will be collecting about 5% in rent, dividends and coupons. 5% = $50m annual income. That's not much income?
Does this strike a chord? Not with this poster.
Taxes are only half the problem and have nothing to do with government spending, which is the problem. Spending on record bonuses, fraud, manipulation, and corporate collusion.
"Taxes are only half the problem and have nothing to do with government spending, which is the problem."
Exactly.
True enough. But them taxes really bite........
I drive a 2000 Toyota Camry with multiple dents we didn't fix because it would be expensive. It's our only car. My kid has autism as well as a host of physical issues that resulted from a rare birth defect. We live in a rental. I buy the majority of my clothes at Walmart, Target or the second hand store. Most of the meat I bought yesterday cost under $4.99 lb and was near the expiration date.
Hi. Meet me. I'm wealthy.
Yes, I have money in the bank and in stocks. I feel like I have to have that if I don't want to live in a cardboard box when I'm allowed to retire at 75 one day. My understanding is Social Security will not be there for me and our current retirement savings, although substantial by American standards, will have shrunk dramatically in buying power by the time I'm old. By most "expert" definitions, we won't have enough to retire.
Yes, we take vacations. Sometimes to far away places. Where we stay in modest accommodations, like the 100 degree hostel with the non-functioning fan I attempted to sleep in last year. Or the noisy, windowless, room across from an adult book store that my family stayed in during spring break. (The neighborhood was safe enough and near public transportation.) Sometimes we stay someplace nice-- but never anywhere with a doorman. Maybe an elevator. That's always nice.
There are no "illions" in any aspect of my financial status. Not in my savings or salary (actually, I no longer have one because I had to quit my job to take care of our autistic child, now my spouse is the "wealthy" one).
If the lower end of the upper 2% is a problem, then a middle class lifestyle in America is a problem. Not a private jet, Paris Hilton, Lloyd Blankfein, BMW lifestyle, but just an occasional-steak-for-supper, rare-trip-that-needs-a-passport lifestyle.
I voted for Obama. I donated money to his campaign. I cried when he won the election I was so relieved.
This is BS. He knows it. Our truly millionaire Congress knows it. And I, an upper middle class American worried about surviving retirement one day, know it.
Talk to me about the upper .1% Mr. President. Talk to me about 0% interest for banks. Talk to me about the backdoor thievery that's eroding my "wealth" with dollar devaluation. Talk to me about why no one has gone to jail for robbing that retirement fund I had worked my ass off to build. Who got all that money Mr. President? Somebody "won" on those trades and those interest rates. Someone's winning on quantitative easing. Who is it? Talk to me about THEM.
Commence crickets chirping on Pennsylvania Avenue.
PS. Thanks, Mr. President, for the offer of "help" last year in the form of an $8,000 tax credit if we bought a house. Fortunately, I no longer trusted the government's "help" and instead went with the advice of folks on Zero Hedge, who correctly forecast that the $8,000 tax credit would be small compared to how underwater the house would eventually be.
I'm sure the real estate agents, builders and bankers benefited from the pile of money you didn't ask me if you could use for a tax credit that ultimately helped everyone but home buyers. In retrospect, and in the interest of truth-in-advertising, it should've been called "The First Time Home Buyer Tax Trap."
Go middle class! Obama loves you.
Best of luck taking care of your boy! It is the right thing to do, so never question that.
God bless your home.
:D
"Free people can say "no". Free people can refuse demands for their money, time, and children. Slaves cannot. There is no freedom without the freedom to say "no". If someone demands that you do something and you can say "no" and refuse to do it, then you are a free human being. If you can be forced to do something or surrender something that you do not wish to, then you are a slave. No other test need be applied" -- Michael Rivero
Living in Illinois, and being moderately successful, thanks to the state tax hike and the fed tax expirations, even after a decent raise my take home is less. God bless Amerika!
Edit: not a million or billionaire, even by Algores arithmetic.
This is why I would support a consumption tax..The lower on the ladder the less you consume and thus less tax you pay..The higher up ,you know how it works...
My father had a line he used to hammer me with all the time "dont tell me what your going to do, tell me what you done"
Talk about cutting spending is all great and everything but it never gets done...Im sure the wealthy wouldnt mind to bad being shaken down for a few more tax dollars if they saw progress on that spending side..Then it would atleast seem kinda fair..
People that take a risk or work hard or have a great idea deserve the money they earn..EVEN IF THEY GIVE IT TO THERE SPOILED KIDS,As long as it was made legal..
I would be classified as "working poor" Fuck BO....
Congrats, you hit upon exactly what our founders put in the constitution - consumption taxes. F'ng 16th amendment.........
Edit. coincidentally, adopted 1913......same year Fed was set up, no?
I am overtaxed and I am not anywhere near wealthy.
If taxes go up for me, I will quit working and live a more modest life.
Of course, I will be consuming much less, of no aid to the economy.
My way of voting with my feet without leaving.
"What he doesn't get is that millionaires and billionaires actually don’t have that much income. Yes they have wealth, but it is very easy to avoid paying taxes on wealth." That is the way it is now! The rules (tax code) need to be changed. A very quick and easy way is to have a minimum tax (10%) before any deductions. What they are doing is destroying the middle class. America; The land of the haves, and have not's.