Economic inequality has massively increased since abandoning the gold standard. Of course academic economists carry water for the people at the top benefitting from the inequality.
So how do you decide which correlations to believe in more than other?
I believe economic inequality is a problem, but the gold standard would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, based on weak "look, these things happened at the same time" reasoning.
Economic inequality has been MASSIVE at many times in the past prior to modern currency, after all.
Yes high inequality is a problem but I'd argue too low inequality is a problem too. You need a difference of outcomes to motivate people. If that doesn't happen in currency it will happen in another way. For example people will invest in political power and work hard to corrupt the system in their favor. This happens with high levels of inequality but is reduced as there is a legitimate path to improving ones lot. There is something competitive in us the drives us to do better than our neighbors. That needs a legitimate outlet.
Perhaps, but this is largely a result of manufacturing (a primary source of middle class jobs) moving from developed nations to previously agrarian economies. The same cycles will repeat itself until there are no pockets of cheap labor left in the world for the owners of these corporations to exploit.
Of course the sea pirates are still very active on some areas.
I’ll rephrase as well. Problems like inequality or robbery have a tendency to adapt to whatever circumstances we create for them.
https://files.taxfoundation.org/20220119175339/The-Top-1-Per...
Tax burden for the bottom 50% has dropped. Fewer and fewer low income Americans pay any income tax at all.
So you need to consider the change in income distribution alongside any change in relative tax contributions. Otherwise the stats you cite are pretty meaningless
https://files.taxfoundation.org/20220119175430/The-Top-1-Per...
Despite the top 1% total share of income decreasing since 2007, they still pay the same percent of all taxes.
Thus the tax burden on the top 1% has increased over time.
It looks to me that the general trend for the top 1% of earners has been a slight increase in both income earned and tax paid
So we can at least say from 2007 to now, tax burden increased.
The top 25% saw their tax burden increase, the bottom 75% decrease.
Also, the trend seems to be the other way around: Tax rates of the top households have continuously decreased.
[1] https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/10/07/david-l...
[1] https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/10/04/us/tax-trump-weal...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/08/first-tim...
[2] https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
The trend of both graphs appears to be a modest increase over time, obviously with annual fluctuations.
https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income...
Note that the percent the top 1% pays goes up when the market goes up and goes down when the market goes down. A big part of that is equity comp.
You could "step up" the basis when you die, but I find it hard to believe some billionaire would roll over debt for 30+ years, pay 200-300% in interest, just to avoid 20% long-term capital gains?
I read a lot of conjecture about how this happens and many people said Musk did this, yet he paid $500M in taxes last year?!?
Tech stocks are down 50-75% now. You think it was smarter to borrow money against that equity rather than sell and pay taxes?
Like I said, it's all theoretical, yet no one has actually shown me numbers that makes sense.
Delay selling equity? Sure? Delay it until you are dead? No way (unless you're within a few years of dying).
The borrowing strategy starts with $100 million and a $10 million loan, and ends up with $128 million and a $12.2 million loan, so net $115.6 million (and the interest is likely tax deductible).
The taxpaying strategy starts with $88 million and ends up with $112.65 million.
It’s pointless to do unless you can do it until you’re dead so capital gain tax is actually reduced.
Otherwise you’re just deferring the tax. Which has value, but isn’t avoid tax.
Plenty of rich individuals do exactly that, though. Hang out in any retirement/investing forum and you see people doing the cold hard math and deciding not to sell the stock and pay taxes if the step-up basis is enough.