Brad, you really believe that a billionaire should pay the same rate as someone making $30K?
That doesn't make any sense to me. We're not playing a game of monoply where we have a set of rules that apply to everyone and therefore wealth should all be taxed equally. Money gives people right to use the wealth that is created by our society. We are not separate atoms that create wealth and the government snatches it from us. We are a society, no one has any wealth prior to the creation of the society, and we should have reasonable rules for how wealth gets used. Money is just chits we used for accessing wealth. So one reasonable rule should be that if you work 2,000 hours at a full-time job you should be able to support yourself with the basic necessities of life. It's ridiculous to me that we would favor a billionaire making as much money as they want with relatively modest inputs while some working poor don't make enough to support themselves. That is why the minimum wage should be $15 a hour.
Imagine we were in a hunter gatherer group 10,000 years ago. And it was getting near winter and there was a big hunt for game. And in this society beads were the currency. And Brad controlled 85% of the beads. And so he says I should get 85% of the meat even though others would starve. Would that happen! Of course not. So thousands of years ago we would have worked together to make sure no one starves but now insist now insist that the market dictates that a person could work full-time and not support themselves.
Right now we have an economy with a financial sector about 7% of GDP but which earns 1/4 to 1/3 of corporate profits. Bank profits are st record highs. Corporations plow money into purchasing company stock to increase their compensation. Our financial sector is too big which has a negative effect on GDP.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatl ... le/273732/http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017 ... -2016.htmlhttps://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperityhttps://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonw ... and-growthSo banks are making profits off of cheap money from the Fed, corporate executives are making money off of increasing the share price by stock buybacks. That is not a lot of of value added by those players.
And of course as those players take more money...you get wealth stratification which is not only unfair but also economically inefficient. Those at the bottom end of the economic spectrum tend to have pent up demand and when they make more money they spend a lot of it. This increases consumer demand, companies can make more products to fill increased demand and they can hire employees to make the products. Economic growth is created.Billionaires already spend a lot and are not going to spend more when they get extra money.
So we are massively rewarding corporate executives and those in the financial sector who are not adding much of anything of value to the economy close to what they are taking out..meanwhile we continue to insist that poor workers not get enough money to pay for basic necessities.
And with all of that money going to the top 1 or 2%...they have excess money to use to influence the political process...to skew things even more in their favor.
So we have systemic problems in our economy that need reforming. These tax cuts do not anything about our economy's real problems.