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When I see things like this, all I can think is our entire economy is a house of cards. And I feel bad for anyone with young kids.
I don't think you know how any of this works. These people own publicly traded companies so we know their salaries and can determine their taxes from there.
Do you know what Zuck's salary is? $1. His total compensation however is over $25million when including travel, lodging, food etc... But those are considered expenses, not income. So Zuck gets to lead a $25 million dollar a year lifestyle without paying ANY taxes. But wait, there's more.... He also owns 2,300 acres of Kauai. How did he buy those with no real income. Well, he has assets such as stock in META. He can take loans on those assets to purchase things like land, homes, cars etc... None of which is considered income as it's a "liability" on his taxes.
I am not explaining this in it's entirety as I refuse to use AI for a moto forum... But you get the gist. They pay close to nothing unless, in a forced situation, they have to cash out stock or other items for very specific reasons. They get to live billionaire lifestyles while paying poor man's wages.
We allow this to happen.... the problem isn't them... it's US.... our lazy asses aren't willing to fight for what's right....
And the last time people did....they were wrong.
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Tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11 and it gets me thinking that all of this mess started because of that attack. That was last time we had balanced budget. GW was asked about the deficit spending early on and said one of the few times it’s justified is during wartime. The war lasted 20 years.
The Fed kept cutting interest rates to avoid recessions, to the point of record lows. Everyone was locked into low payments while the resale went through the roof. Savings accounts didn’t offer any meaningful growth, you were better off taking a loan (dang near free money with the low interest rates)
We had the subprime mortgage collapse, and too big to fail followed by more printing money and more stimulus. Every time the government issues a stimulus, it’s followed by immediate inflation.
Then Covid and more stimulus, and unchecked spending. This time inflation caught us big time. Now we have massive inflated goods and the highest interest rates in 2 decades.
We’re going to have to pay the piper one of these days. I often think if we’d be here if 9/11 didn’t happen…
"GW was asked about the deficit spending early on and said one of the few times it’s justified is during wartime."
In the US's 250 year history, when has the US not been at war?
Depends on your definition of war I guess 😉 the latest one had a major part in bankrupting us
The current one may finish the job.
they make it work with quotas on how many procedures of each type are funded each year. Also, horrendous wait times for your turn- IF you get it that fiscal year. They also build the cost into higher income taxes baselines everyone pays- nothing is actually free, just paid for differently.
Biggest under publicized factor making these comparisons seem lopsided is number of people in each country. You can't compare a tiny European country with 5 million people vs the US with 360 million and go HEY somethings wrong with our system compared to these others! without looking at the whole picture.
Privatized health care would still exist even with UHC.
https://www.us-debt-clock.com
Do the 1m+ employees of meta and amazon pay taxes? What if zuckerberg and bezos just said fuck it. I am tired of the criticism and shut both companies down completely. How would that affect the amount of tax revenue collected?
Impossible to calculate when you consider something like a trillion in foreign sales just through Amazon and Walmart, so in this hypothetical, would that trillion now be spent in the USA?
Not sure either. It just seems that the goal of some folks is not to increase the amount of tax revenue collected, but to punish the rich.
Would be one of the best things that could happen to us.
How many Amazon employees are on government benefits?
If those monopolies shut down it would be the biggest boom for small independent businesses we’ve ever seen
My god do you have any foresight/critical thinking ability?
All I am saying is all those employees are paying income tax, even if the guys running the show are not.
you are truly this forum's Yoda, constantly supplying answers to questions nobody asked
Pit Row
A valid concern. I also have no clue what would happen if they shut down, except that history says someone else would popup in their place.
🤦🏼
Well folks in here act like it’s one or the other. It’s not.
Covering your eyes so you can’t see the truth?
Is that a serious question? You believe Bezos or Zuckerberg has the authority to make that call? Once again, I don't think you know how any of this works.
If you’re referring to trickle down economics, it could work if the system wasn’t rigged. The idea is simple, company has record profits, then company rewards employee with raises and bonuses and thus more money gets circulated into the consumer driven economy. The national trend for wages suggests this isn’t happening unfortunately. And when a large portion of company employees are subsidized for being low income, it’s a double edge sword for tax payers. (I’m all for low taxes, but I’m more for companies doing the right thing so the government doesn’t step in through legislation and more welfare subsidies, which is where we’re headed eventually)
"then company rewards employee with raises and bonuses"
That might happen in an ideal world, but in the real world, to maximize profit, public companies pay the least they can for inputs, that includes labor, bonuses are paid to the executives who generate the largest increase in profit, or executives with the most political power within the company.
Amazon uses robotics and Walmart has self checkout so that eliminated all of those employees that paid taxes. Robots do not pay taxes or social security or vacation or sick time thats all profit saved. Did they lower prices? No.
I believe the people who own publicly traded companies are called Shareholders? Some may be on boards or hold high management positions that lets them have different kind of compensation packages, but not all owners (shareholders) are greedy gazillionaires who pay no taxes at the expense of less fortunate citizens. If you want to do something about real or perceived inequality in tax treatments - get Congress to change the tax codes and crack down on shady CPAs and tax legal firms that use every loophole in the codes to help their clients pay less taxes than they would if we had a flat rate tax or similar.
Walmart's shrinkage losses increased dramatically with introduction of self-checkout and they aren't the only 1. Walmart and others are now reverting back to human cashiers which I personally prefer anyways because I'm old.
I wont use self checkout but they usually only have 2 registers open so its a line getting to them
in their quarterly reports been talking about transitioning back to more live cashiers and some local folks I know working our Walmart confirmed it's happening. pay has been increasing for a couple years now too.
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