>700k. Still a ton of money, but very very far off from a billion
that 700K is income, but the billion is assets.
earning 700K is the income from $10 million in the stock market (although working to earn $700K is in exchange for you time while the income from $10 mil is passive. OTOH people with the work ethic to earn like that tend to like what they do.
a billion in the stock market is $70 million a year, a large number but far from a billion.
TLDR: 700K compares to a billion 1 in 1000, but the truth is closer to 1 in 100
That is a strawman argument. Nobody is seriously arguing to take all the money. I called out extreme wealth disparity, and implied it was a problem. You can disagree at the latter, but you cannot disagree with the former.
>a byproduct of wild wealth disparity, not because the rich are so generous with paying the government
you're overcorrecting WAY too far. Tax rate percentages are much higher on high income people, and THAT is why they pay most of the federal budget, it's forced generosity paying the government.
and it's actually the top 20% who dominate income and taxes, but including that extra 19% is important because that is the class of people ("coastal elites") who have a (all too human) tendency to rig the system in favor of their children in terms of good schools, universities, learning high status pasttimes, "internships" at prestigious institutions, rent paid in high value/opportunity areas after university etc. These high income people basically earn their livings from the 1%.
(that should not be interpreted as a pure sign of oligopoly, capitalist markets measure productivity, and that's how it works out, production in these industries is highly valued by the populace, but turnover of these people is high, where the top of the list is almost invariably new people each generation.)
I do not understand what you mean by "overcorrecting WAY too far". I have not posited anything aside from wealth disparity existing and that the wealthy do not have a tendency to just give money to the government for the fun of it. If they are paying most the taxes, it is because they have most of the money. Seems self-evident to me.
>I do not understand what you mean by "overcorrecting WAY too far".
you wrote this, and I would call this "attempting to correct any misconception":
>This is a byproduct of wild wealth disparity, not because the rich are so generous with paying the government.
I'm saying that your formulation is not much better than what you are arguing against because you neglect graduated income tax. It's not because rich people have more money, it's because they are taxed at much higher rates, and lower income people are hardly taxed at all.