The Ultra-Wealthy Who Argue That They Should Be Paying Higher Taxes
30th December 2019
Voices of the Crust like The New Yorker love this kind of story. What they don’t tell you (and maybe are too dim to figure out) is that these people could ‘pay higher taxes’ at any moment just by writing a check to the Treasury. So what’s with the push for higher taxes? They want to raise tax rates to levels that wouldn’t pinch them at all but would leave the rest of us rubes very poor indeed, then we wouldn’t compete with the ultra-wealthy for things like New York apartments or seats in popular restaurants or the other things that wealthy people like to do but don’t want to compete with the lower orders for.
(The reason Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary is because she pays taxes on her wages, which are taxed as ‘ordinary income’; Warren Buffet doesn’t have any ‘ordinary income’ because he doesn’t work for wages. His money comes from selling stock for capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate for very good reasons, to encourage people to invest their money rather than just spending it.)