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Neofeudalism 101: Strip-Mining The Upper Middle Class
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
This Neofeudal structure is unstable by its very nature.
I have often examined the Neofeudalist structure of the U.S. economic hierarchy, and the many social and financial fault lines running through this creaking structure. For example:
America's Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy (April 29, 2014)
Are You an Elitist? Class Warfare and the New Nobility (April 26, 2014)
Protecting Elites and the Clerisy Class That Serves Them (September 26, 2014)
Bifurcation Nation (June 24, 2013)
The Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012)
Tyranny of the Majority, Corporate Welfare and Complicity (April 9, 2010)
Today I'd like to examine the neofeudal strip-mining of the class that pays most of the taxes. These taxes support the bottom 50% who pay the 7.65% payroll taxes and receive substantial income tax credits, and enables the super-wealthy to pay lower tax rates on their vast unearned income.
Let's take a quick glance at payroll and income taxes for context. Individual income taxes and Social Security/payroll taxes total $2.4 trillion.Corporate and other taxes add $600 billion, for a total of $3 trillion in Federal tax receipts.
Put together, people making under $40,000 a year get $81.1 billion from the income tax; that is, they get more refundable credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit than they pay in taxes. But that same group pays $121.5 billion in payroll taxes.
So people making under $40,000 a year--63.9% of all taxpayers, according to the Social Security Administration, paid a net of $40 billion out of the $2.4 trillion in payroll and income taxes. This is truly a drop in the bucket.
Meanwhile, the wealth of the top .01% has pulled away from the top 10% and even the top 1%:
A household income of around $150,000 a year qualifies as a top 10% income:
- $145,000 to $149,999: 90.20%
- $105,000 to $109,999: 81.09%
- $190,000 to $194,999: 95.21%
Because the super-wealthy are in the top 10%, 5% and 1%, the average incomes of these groups are heavily skewed by the enormous incomes of the top 01%. As a result, it would be more accurate to remove the top .1% from the top 10%, 5% and 1%, but I haven't found any statistical charts that reflect this.
For their part, the top 10% (roughly 15 million taxpayers in a nation of 317 million people) pay the vast majority of income taxes: CBO:Top 40% Paid 106.2% of Income Taxes; Bottom 40% Paid -9.1%
The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes (CBO; highly recommended)
The top 20% pay 93% of all federal income tax and 45% of all payroll taxes. The top 10% pay 77.4% of all federal income tax and 27% of all payroll taxes.
Most of the income gains have flowed to the very top of the income pyramid:
So what makes this structure Neofeudal? Simply this: the tax donkeys who pay most of the tax support the large class of modern-day serfs (working poor and state dependents) while their labor generates the great wealth enjoyed by the Financial Aristocracy.
The class of tax donkeys earns most of their income by their labor, and this income is exposed to both payroll taxes (up to $111,000 annually) and income taxes. Unless they are fortunate enough to be granted stock options in bubblicious tech companies, they do not own the capital needed to skim millions of dollars annually in unearned income like the Financial Aristocracy.
This Neofeudal structure is unstable by its very nature. For every person in the bottom 50% looking with resentment at someone earning $150,000, there's somebody like me (who doesn't earn $150K) paying $300 cash for a small tube of medication (that's long been off-patent) because I can't afford gold-plated health insurance but earn too much to get healthcare and all medications for free.
This class in the middle--making too much to qualify for federal subsidies, but not enough to afford healthcare, higher education, etc.--has its own fault lines, fractures I will discuss tomorrow.
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Donkey is right, aka Goyim.
"it would be more accurate to remove the top .1% from the top 10%, 5% and 1%, but I haven't found any statistical charts that reflect this."
Huh?
The math isn't that hard to do it.
BTW: Goyim means "cattle" moreso than donkeys.you have a reliable source for income of top .1%?
the best drill down i can find is census bureau with income of top 5%
It's in the table above.
DUH!
152,000 x $5,600,000 = ?????
And there is a reliable source called the IRS
the problem stems from "income" and "payment" and "dollars"
hugs,
the rentier class with properties abroad
thanks. just looking at irs table for 2012 ... sorta jibes
http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats---Individual-Statistical-Tables-by-...
thinking this is a safe stmnt:less guv, less taxes, less wealth concentrated at the top...
It would also help to factor in where you live into the income equation. Make $150K a year in coastal Californai and you're a peon. $50K a year in Southern Georgia and you live like a king.
True but his point is how the Lexus driving dopes are being fleeced through obscenely high taxes by the 0.1% elites to bribe the lower 90% into complacency.
Commit suicide.....vote
Clinton/Bush 2016
or...
Bush/Clinton 2016
Oligarchy/Plutocracy 2016!
2+2=5
Awesome, printing the bumperstickers now...
Military Industrial Complex / Wall St. Industrial Complex 2016
MIC / WIC 2016 !
Commit suicide.....vote
Clinton/Bush 2016
or...
Bush/Clinton 2016
"I know you think things are bad. I know you think you don't have any control.....any say....but this. But come out of that booth....and let's talk. I promise you things can get better....will get better. Take my hand. Come on out. Let's just....talk. You and me. Forget about all these people here. It's just you and me now. You really don't want to do this. But I know....right now....it seems the only way. I'm here to tell you....it's not. Come on out of that voting booth.....and let's talk. Once you flick that switch it's over. But if you come on out....with me right now....I can help you start again. Whaddayousay?"
" The Negotiator"
I repeat, USA should require that all citizens pay a minimum of $100 in federal taxes. this will chnge this free shit army thinking and fast. the $100 to the fed govt is a joke, but it makes the guy living off welfare have some skin in the game.
There is no free shit army exvcept in mislead political bull shit.
In fact the new deal has been so eroded now that it barly exist it does not exist to any point of doing the job it was designed to do.
If you are not taxed to support the unemplyed what incentive is there to even create a job or see that people keep them.
You make it easy to get a job that is how you keep people off with a great wage that makes you want yo go to work.
Not you need 3 interviews a background check and a drug screen and sorry we hired someone to wash the dishes crap.
Jack asses like you that think you can survive on 200 fucking dollares of food stamps and that is to fucking much help I want to shoot your kind in the face.
Your ruin any chance of anyone at the bottom getting work.
When they save 30 billion in taxes buy firing up 15 billion in payroll they get right fucking on it.
I use to hire the guy who showed up at 5 am on the job site I knew he wanted a job.
Today every step added above put your name address and SS number on this paper so I give you your pay check.
Has to be paid someone to do are you legal drug test background check medical check several interviews all that cost you more jobs than the immigrant you wanted to discriminate against.
If you pay under 45,000 a year it is the same as the dishwasher position just adds to the slow decline of employment.
You know when you do all that shit when you hire the CEO but I bet that is the time you dont.
I think you said first, that there is not enough free shit these days and second, you would shoot in the face anyone who disagrees, particularvengeance will be sought on those supplying the free shit.
Did I interpret you correctly?
It isn't easy to understand thecrud. He does't seem to write coherently. He talks about hiring people but seems to know little about it.
You totally can survive on 200 dollars of food stamps if you 1) use coupons 2) shop for sale itiems, 3) cook your food (no heat and eat)
With that kind of effort the recipient should be FED forever then.
Have you tried it? Also make sure you try it with bottom 10% kitchen and roomates/family.
Being poor is hell, mentally, phycially, emotionally, and spiritially.
The cabal wants to bring hell on earth.
Hells bells! If you ain't got no job and are getting section 8 housing and food stamps don't you think someone got time to cook some freaking groceries? Being poor may be hell, but at some point 'folks' got to choose to get up off the mat and take some responsibility for something. Maybe not. Whatever. Being poor sometimes is just a choice.
Taxes are misunderstood.
The US .gov doesn't NEED taxes. What they need is someone to buy their BONDS.
The purpose of taxes is thus not to fund a government which can ultimately print whatever it needs, but to convince bond buyers that there is a steady stream of income which is guaranteed to pay the coupon.
Taxes are thus just a way to maintain the *percieved* value of government bonds...
Its like a poultry farmer selling eggs using the number of hens to convince the bank to give him a loan...
Goyim/cattle indeed.
Government prefers to tax the slaves because it is such a useful control lever - keeps the slaves in constant fear, allows the Deep State to selectively attack its domestic enemies, allows it to selectively reward its allies through tax breaks, allows the government to tweak the economy to get us to buy more or less stuff, and psychologically gets the slaves used to the idea that the state has ultimate control over what the sheep are allowed to keep...
Whats not to like?
Your income bracket is not static. It changes throughout your life.
The important point of this article is that only a very small group benefits from the taxes of the upper-middle class, who pay a disproportionate share. The fact that people may find themselves in various parts of the spectrum over their lifetimes doesn't change the fact, unless you believe you are destined for .1% status, which is statistically unlikely by definition for the large majority of the population.
When they were taxed we built highways and dams and bridges and canals and piplines and rail.
Now we cant evenmaintain them.
I guess by very little you mean everyone.
What this tells me is that I might want to rethink making $7000 a week working from my ex-girlfrind's mom's basement.
Got the Clap again?
Eventually the big dogs start turning on each other. That's when things might start to get interesting for the serfs.
There are many ways to facilitate this, big dogs turning on each other.
Love it when they try to undermine each other and in the process they show us, the people, how to expose them also. Case law...
Exactly.......
I've been in BOTH the 99% (the very bottom at that) and the 1 % in this Life....
Human Nature is the SAME at either level.......
I've been observing this for fifteen years, at least. The top 0.01% carves the top 0.99% - 4.99% up like a Thanksgiving turkey, feasts upon their labors to their shrivelled hearts' content, then throws the scraps to the bottom 50% to keep the riots from breaking out. The media dutifully blathers and screams TOP ONE PERCENTERS OH NOES!!!11!1!! while purposely ignoring the top 0.01% and the fact that the other 0.99% of the top 1% aren't the ones causing the problems.
Nationless neofeudal globalist world order. That's what the psychopathic Pharisees have been planning - for centuries.
Either they are ripped forcibly from their self-appointed Olympus, or the New Dark Ages will make the old Dark Ages look like a walk in the park.
Given the general cluelessness of the public combined with the police state apparatus that will easily defeat anything other than a coordinated uprising of the population, I'd say it's pretty much a lock that there will be no forcible ripping.
How about a "down rising" - used to be called a general strike.
We may all dream about it, but it aint gonna happen. At least, if you want to topple the current ruling class you can't start with an uprising in their stronghold, which is America. You have to start in some trash dump of a country where no one cares to pay for the establishment and maintenance of an effective security apparatus and a proper "misinformation infrastructure".
Without a forcible ripping, humanity is pretty much fist-fucked. The banksters are evil incarnate.
e use to do that before trickle down we taxed them and we taxed them good.
I m sorry of the 70 billion you only get to spend 30 sort of like when you hit the lotery now.
while purposely ignoring the top 0.01% and the fact that the other 0.99% of the top 1% aren't the ones causing the problems.
The ZWO
Exactly, Charles
one (of many) reasons i can't stand warren buffet. If you recall, a couple of years ago when raising income taxes was debated, buffet in favor of raising taxes on LABOR income. But (absent a small increase for high income earners) income taxes on PASSIVE income (dividend, interest, capital gain) left untouched .... and WELL below taxes on labor income (for high earners)
Which is why there should be no trickle down taxation and all income regardless of its source should be taxed equally.
I like a flat 10 percent of everything with no deductions for anyone.
Top to bottom.
Beauty in siplicity no tax people caps the national budget at 10 percent of everything
This is the fair way to go.
I would sure vote for that. or alternatively, a flat tax everytime money was transfered, a transaction tax. It would be much much lower than even 1% and there would be no other tax at all.
One can dream...
Buffett is a classic case of the fox guarding the chickens in the barn.........he's that old grandpa mafia don no one would ever suspect of any wrong doing.
"For every person in the bottom 50% looking with resentment at someone earning $150,000, there's somebody like me (who doesn't earn $150K) paying $300 cash for a small tube of medication "
Yeah, equating top 10-20% as "rich" is insane. Those earners cannot buy whatever the fuck they desire, irrespective of price, and are subject to tradeoffs. Bottom earners don't seem to understand that making 100-150k really isn't what it used to be. And anyone who makes that much money definitely works at least 40 hour weeks.
When I was a kid in the '70's, I remember reading about people who "struck it rich" and retired "millionaires" at age 40. Having a net worth of one million dollars today doesn't even cut it for retirement at age 65 if you want to live what most would consider an upper-middle class lifestyle through retirement.
you're right. it takes about $4 million to retire at 65 and live to be 90
$1,000,000 invested @ 2% = $20,000 per year = $384.62 per week = a millionaire's income.
If you can get 2%.
$500k can easily buy a nice piece of arable land with a house, barn, and a well in a low cost country like Panama or Costa Rica. Add solar panels and balance to manage the farm and save for rainy days. Problem solved. Fuck the US.
Farmer Joe.... "$500k can easily buy a nice piece of arable land with a house, barn, and a well in a low cost country like Panama or Costa Rica. Add solar panels and balance to manage the farm and save for rainy days. Problem solved. Fuck the US."
Ferfal's blog site is very sensible and down-to-earth on the subject of "survival", not the usual cliches and misinformed nonsense you often find. They stem from his own experiences post-2000 crash in Argentina. This is the bugging-out page as an example:
http://bit.ly/1IKkgdy
Same as it ever was. Same as it will be. Nothing has changed.
Those at the top control the finances. They dictate who and what gets funded. That has never changed.
But consider the current alternative where people vote for as much freebies as possible - never understanding that nothing is free. That is why we have never found a real solution in hundreds of years.
Be happy that you live in the USA and not in Germany. In Germany if you are not married you pay the top income tax rate of 45% on every single EURO earned from € 52.882 upwards.
Granted, but the difference being you have something to show for your tax payments. Not just income alone, we are taxed at every move. Failing infrastructure and no freebie health care. Germany at least has suffocating taxation with style.
We have about the same tax rate when all taxes are added up. But we don't get free college education and free healthcare
Obama Care!
One day, we’re all going to be rich and take advantage of the tax credits.
The system stands!
So you guys are still debating "how many lashes" eh? this the plan?
The core issue are "rents" in the system - prices controlled by monopolies / oligopolies - local property taxes will eat everyone alive -
the funding of public education and natural born killer cops need to be eliminated
no mattter what you make the rents will increasingly be the problem not the poor
"the tax donkeys who pay most of the tax support the large class of modern-day serfs (working poor and state dependents) while their labor generates the great wealth enjoyed by the Financial Aristocracy."
"they do not own the capital needed to skim millions of dollars annually in unearned income like the Financial Aristocracy."
Seems like I've heard this somewhere before.
Oh yeah, it was Karl Marx: "The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital..."
"According to Marx's theory, surplus value is ... the new value created by workers ..., which is appropriated by the capitalist as profit ..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value
Funny how the supposedly discredited Marx keeps becoming more apropos to our modern experience.
While I am not a Marxist (and I suppose not a pure libertarian either - I support solid public education, controlled immigration, and certain health, safety, and environmental laws, pragmatic soft nationalism versus 'I just read Ayn Rand and she has all the answers' naive idealism...)
(Ahem).
Marx absolutely deserves to be read and taken seriously. as a philosophical writer, he is strangely clear and coherent.
Of course, I would also suggest that Jewish eschatology informs Marx's project ... he may argue on behalf of the rabble but don't confuse him to mean he considers the cattle his equal.
His poppa was a rabbi - an Orthodox one.
Marx's atheism is not opposed to his ethnocentrism or supremacism. 'God' is generally tacked-on where megalomania and secular/political/information/cultural control are the goal.
Doubt me? Always wise - but try reading a bit with this in mind.
Marx is in a sense a would-be (ethnic) elite deriving power from huddled masses who would love him as liberator, even as he crowded their cages, and gave them more bread (usually) but far less of everything else.
This is exactly correct. Talmudic goyim-scorn is the very cornerstone of all Marxist philosophy. Atheist sociopaths (and psychopaths) see themselves as gods, and Jewish doctrines of genetic supremecy go hand in glove with these parasitic delusions.
Even satan quoted the word of God, I tend to look at results.
It is true that the economic growth is going almost entirely to the top 0.1% Since we started implementing trickle-down policies in 1980, the top 0.1% saw massive gains in their share of the wealth and income, the rest of the top 1% saw modest gains, the rest of the top 10% saw very small gains, and the remaining 90% got nothing out of 35 years of massive economic growth- http://politicsthatwork.com/blog/inequality.php
By the way, you can find the income data with the top removed (e.g., the income of the top 0.1%-1% instead of the entire 1%) from Saez- http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/TabFig2013prel.xls
Anybody who is ever going to be happy will have every material need met to do that at an income of maybe $75,000 a year, tops. After that you're just keeping score. It's like a weird game of Civilization with real money and slaves.
I have no objection on principle to great wealth made honestly (such cases are rare, but they're out there). The real benefit of being in the 0.01 per cent is power. It's at that level that your opinion on any issue grander than the choice of soda you'll take with your selection from the dollar menu starts to be taken seriously by people in a position to do much about it.
Because few make it into the 0.01 per cent by caring about anything but number one, policy invariably reflects their interests and those alone. Few pay much in the way of taxes---on the contrary, as Uncle Sugar's and Euroland's biggest creditors, the government pays them handsomely---and most are exempt from any human law. Only proles pay taxes.
Only proles have to worry about their kid getting an education or a job. The 0.01 per cent can send their brats to the best schools and universities on the planet---assuming they don't have the kids privately tutored---and cushy jobs with few responsibilities will always be found for even the family dunce to keep his mug off Page Six.
Only proles have to deal with health care "systems" either. Not for the 0.01 per cent to sit in a gurney while a TB case just off the boat from Africa gives it to the whole ward---much less wait years on a list for an organ transplant. Doctors make house calls to the 0.01 per cent, and come running. Their new hearts, lungs, livers and kidneys are freshly sourced on demand from the next young, healthy prole to arrive at a hospital very much alive, and often still conscious when a doctor starts tearing out his viscera.
Heck, only proles have to deal with marriage as proles understand it. The boys of the 0.01 per cent (they are almost all men) have their choice of the world's most beautiful women as trophy wives, and can trade them in every five years like proles trade in cars, or earlier if they see something better at a cocktail party. Once her breasts start to sag the lawyers will figure out trophy wife's price for going away, keeping her yap shut about how monstrous her ex-husband is, and taking any brats with her until the brats are old enough to start at the firm.
Depressing but you nailed it.
Good piece. ZH is always worth a gander in the morning.
I am Jack's simmering rage.
I pledge allegience to the false flag of the united media of big money. And to the banana republic for which it stands, one nutjob, after another, under the elites, in denial, without liberty or justice for all.
I'd like to think America is still classless but, I suppose, if it is said enough, then it is true,,, whether true or not.
Words have meaning, or at least used to. What used to be labeled Middle Income has become Middle Class,,, Republic is now Democracy. Credit is now Capital. Currency is now money. War is kinetic. License is now Freedom. Police are now Enforcement. Slave is now citizen. Rights are now opinions... and so on.
Please feel free to add.
Rents are costs above the lowest cost of production. Free lunches are a form of rents in that is income gained without associated production.
The income data is actually skewed, and rents are higher than what the author states.
Our credit money system is primarily based on FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) then real-estate is bid up in value. In other words, most of the debt instruments relate to FIRE. Example: I am bidding on an apartment complex. The winner of bid is whoever takes out the largest loan. The loan cost is then passed on to my renters. In this way, the cost of capital is captured by banker. Since land is untaxed, then bidding up of property prices commences due to the way credit works. (To stop credit boom bust madness would mean a large down-payment, and the only way to have real savings is to have debt free money in supply.) Government then becomes more inefficient as they are not taxing away rental gains on land, instead the banker has capitalized the gains. Government must get its taxes elsewhere.
Owner of the apartment complex then gets to take accelerated depreciation, yet his asset actually grows over time. This is more rentier gains, or free lunch.
A business owner takes out a loan, and then passes on the costs – especially usury, into prices. This is hidden income for finance and is not captured in income statements.
NIPA (national income and product accounts) are accounting with lies. Housing bubble drives up prices, and GDP goes up. Yet, the housing stock didn’t really appreciate in true value, just its price. GDP “appears” to be doing well, but it is all smoke and mirrors, and in actually it is damaging to the real economy.
The rich, especially those with lobbyist power, have tilted the law to off load costs onto income. The .01 and .10 take their income in the form of asset increases or stock gains, etc. People like Donald Trump actually claim to have no income, and are in the poor-house. The apartment examples above, income from rents are offset by “losses” due to taxable depreciation. In this way, the owner can have their income completely sheltered and not shown, possibly having even negative income if depreciation claims are large enough. Yet, they may have millions to spend tax free.
Labor pays income tax; just ask Warren Buffett if you doubt it. The rich pay little in income tax, they have found ways around it, and their “assets” financial or otherwise are being funded, indirectly with QE.
Oil companies and others take their income taxes in tax havens, or keep their profits off the books in other ways. Exxon for example, takes its profits in Panama.
Taxing away free lunch and rents are the proper way to tax. Income tax is an improper tax; please consider - the 16’th amendment was passed by debt spreading bankster cabal starting in 1912. Remember TARP, it was funded by income taxes to then save private banking corporations?
Turn over a rock, and you find these ass-hat financial corporation’s (banks) wriggling every time.
If the income statements are broken down further, one will find ties to finance – it is guaranteed. Finance does not really produce, they are more like infrastructure. Our infrastructure is acting like highwaymen, taking tolls and rents for their existence.
Well-written and easy to understand for those who know little about the subject.
Shamelessly cut-and-pasted into an email to my kids.
I still think if we play by the rules, sign petitions and get out the vote, things will change. Hahahahaha...kidding. Keep making nooses and blindfolds
I am a tax donkey as described above. Only thing keeping me there is my kids. Otherwise I'd be single, living full time in a van and surfing as much as I can while making money under the table freelancing for cash.
Really really working hard to cut ourselves out of the system as much as possible. Instead of expensive vacations, we are going camping every other weekend this summer. Growing a big garden. Used vehicles. Have reduced my utilities to 175 a month from 800 bucks a year ago.
The largest public campground in my state has increased tent camping fee from $5 to $45 per night in the course of 15 year.
Thats the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. Fairly simple thing. Happens to work. You know, anything different, thats what they gonna talk about. Race, religion, ethnic and national backgrounds, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality. Anything they can do, keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.
You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep them showing up at those ...increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.
The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. ...nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it. - GC
Ignore.
When I see a CHS post my first thought is "uh-oh here we go", but this one is top-notch.
Absolutely.
Well, I don't know that for sure. In 1984 Big Brother's world was stable enough, a boot crushing your face, forever.
CHS makes the statement, "This Neofeudal structure is unstable by its very nature. For every person in the bottom 50% looking with resentment at someone earning $150,000, there's somebody like me (who doesn't earn $150K) paying $300 cash for a small tube of medication (that's long been off-patent) because I can't afford gold-plated health insurance but earn too much to get healthcare and all medications for free."
But this assertion of instability doesn't really explain it. So, I'd like to do so:
This is an unstable position for two reasons.
1) Top 10%-ers have to invest a HUGE PORTION of their lives in education and certification requirements...and get no payoff for the effort. As this become apparent they will stop doing it. (Say goodbye to your doctors. Doctor education requirements and certification requirements are today too expensive relative to the resultant income. My wife fits in this category. Had I not paid for her education, her net earnings as a pediatritian would be NEGATIVE... ergo she'd be paying to work.)
2) It is inherently unstable because (as CHS mentioned with his tube of medication example) the marginal benefit of reaching the top 10%, but without reaching the top .5% is NEGATIVE. After taxes you have less to spend than someone who earns less. (Again personal experience. Wife and I together just squeak into the top 5%. Our best friends earn HALF what we do. Their after-deduction income is GREATER than ours.)
Do you work for someone else or do you work for yourself?
Let's see. You work for yourself and bust your ass to bring home $10 million taxable income for a year. In the final analysis, you're still a serf of the system, compared to the heirs of the Standard Oil, for example, who receive billions nontaxable income.
Charlie would be a lot more convincing if he opened a dictionary to the "F-" section and realized that each of the literally thousands of times he's used some variant of the root "-feuda-" has been totally preposterous and makes him sound like an ignoramus. He sounds as if everything he knows about it, he learned from a single page of public school history textbook. There is nothing remotely feudal or feudatory or feudistic about any subject Charles has ever touched.
Charles needs to appreciate the difference between problem and a predicament. And learn what a metastable system is. The quick death of the parasite middle class was part of its destiny since the moment it emerged in modern form sometime in the mid-1800s. Good riddance. This death process is not a problem in desperate need of a brilliant solution. It is a predictable and inevitable fait accompli every bit as natural as slavery and serfdom (in case you didn't know: practiced in various forms by every known agricultural civilization).
Conveniently, Charles is careful not to make any real prescriptions. Maybe he thinks redistributing the tax burden would fix things right up, but if he is to be believed, that is impossible. In fact, however, it's both impossible and would not fix anything. Everything he writes could be filed away under "Mean-Reversion Denialism."
"...the tax donkeys who pay most of the tax support the large class of modern-day serfs..."
Taxes support nothing at all. Taxes pay for nothing at all. When you spend more than your income, you can't say you earned your rent and food but took on debt for the booze and smokes. Debt pays for the warfare / welfare. Taxes are a control mechanism and extraction of wealth.