2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

[username]

So if you’re in the 1% group and paying ur full share of taxes (35%+) of ur income ur not contributing to society? Should those individuals contribute more than the 6 figures that they already pay? Or just refuse some of their pay and embrace a socialist or communist society? Pffttt. We’re moving to a more socialist society and I don’t think that’s entirely bad but the tax burden should be shared among everyone (including corporations).
There’s something wrong with this:
“In 2021, the bottom half of taxpayers earned 10.4 percent of total AGI and paid 2.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes. The top 1 percent earned 26.3 percent of total AGI and paid 45.8 percent of all federal income taxes”.
Mind u, that’s only Federal Income Tax.

We're talking about a group of people who have no national loyalty. They suck wealth out of communities like a Hoover vacuum. Do local economies matter? They do as far as I'm concerned. Small business is the engine that drives a healthy economy, not the corporate sector, which is predatory in nature. Furthermore, it's very difficult to calculate the wealth of this class due to it's ability to hide assets. Want to stop drug trafficking? The only way to do it is to eliminate offshore banking. Interdiction is a futile policy that wastes obscene amounts of public money. What do you think the chances are that the people at the top of the food chain are involved in trafficking. Close to 100%, IMO, because that's where the greatest profit margins are, all tax free. Dirty money is a huge chunk of capital inflow to the US. We're dependent on it, and the banking and finance sector is very happy to launder it, as is the case in the UK, and plenty of other nations, no doubt. The US is number one according to the UN, though, or was ten or so years ago.

What's paid in taxes does not begin to offset the damage that's done to the US economy. As for the poor paying a negligible amount of federal tax, they pay via currency debasement and price fixing. And as Adam Smith noted quite a few years ago, the wealthy benefit most, and I think that holds true today, even after factoring in welfare expenditures, because federal policy and legislation facilitates the consolidation of wealth and power in the top percentile. It's the federal gov't that bears the burden, not the 1%, which is also the case when it comes to empires: Governments go broke while the rich and powerful make out like bandits. When you talk about securing foreign interests, it isn't *our* interests that our being secured, it's the people that get rich via OPM (other people's money). The profits of those with great wealth and influence are subsidized while the costs are socialized, which is inverted socialism. Eventually the federal gov't will be forced into default and the balancing of accounts will be brutal, but not for those whose interests were secured. Having sucked the wealth out of this nation they will pack up and move to greener pastures. Eventually they will be forced to settle their own karmic account imbalances, but not before having harmed the whole of humanity with their looting and pillaging.

This is the cost of tolerating corruption. society collapses, and the many are left to wither and die in a manner that is most unpleasant. It's happening in many places in this world, and has happened throughout human history. Many think it couldn't possibly happen here, in spite of it already having begun. Such is denial.

No time to address point by point but I at least agree with u that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes and the loopholes available to the wealthiest ought to be closed. Entirely. And that’s just one reason (of many) I wouldn’t vote for Trump. He certainly doesn’t pay his share and for several years paid zero (and said that made him “smart”). So I don’t see him as an advocate for the poor or middle class—just the opposite.