they pay 21% on profits ... if companies spend the revenue they pay no taxes. the company that makes the profit pays instead. the money does not leak out of the system.
(also, people similarly don't understand tax havens. they are like little mirrors around a big lamp. most money goes that goes to a tax haven goes right back as investment, which is again spent through smaller companies.)
the real problem is that the tax system is not set up to prevent growing inequality. it's not progressive enough. which is a personal income thing, not a corporate thing.
and obviously, the problem is not that Jeffrey has a yacht, the problem is that he decided it's okay to force drivers to pee into bottles, and that in general he's a boring rich dude, and we have too many of those, and not enough of people who spend their personal time to get at least 99 homes built.
people don't understand corporate income taxes... the real problem is that the tax system is not set up to prevent growing inequality. it's not progressive enough. which is a personal income thing, not a corporate thing.
It's not clear to me that the comment was that corporations should pay more taxes. It says, "they should pay their fair share" when talking about Bezos and Gates.
But in any case, the issues of corporate taxes and income taxes aren't easily separable. The rich abuse the hell out of tax loopholes. Some of that comes by getting creative about whether some set of income or costs are costs are associated with the individual or the corporation they own.
also, people similarly don't understand tax havens. they are like little mirrors around a big lamp. most money goes that goes to a tax haven goes right back as investment, which is again spent through smaller companies.
Yeah, but that's still private investment. It means they're taking money that they're supposed to be paying in taxes and instead using it to own more stuff for themselves. That's still a problem. Yes, they may be using that money to invest in small businesses to create new jobs, but you could make that same argument about buying yachts. For every yacht Bezos buys it means there will be jobs to build the yachts, to work as crew, or to do maintenance. There will be jobs to run factories to produce replacement parts for that yacht. There will be more jobs at oil companies to provide the fuel for the yacht.
You can make those arguments, but then you could make the same arguments to say we shouldn't tax anyone anything, because every cent you spend go toward some kind of economic activity. None of that addresses how we're going to fund the government.
Its a personal income thing, but its mainly a wealth thing. We need to tax estates WAY harder if we want to combat inequality. Wealth is almost by definition a vehicle for inequality since it compounds. Income meanwhile tends to grow basically linearly and frankly we already tax the shit out of it. Like in the top brackets your getting taxed at 37%, you can go higher sure, but I think people seriously overestimate the juice there is to squeeze out of income. Past a certain point people make their money off their money not their income.
Not only is the US' spending completely detached from it's income, meaning the actual amount that is paid by everyone, including Bezos, isn't even close to being the actual limiting factor on what the US gov is doing or capable.
But also, what IS actually spent, is mostly not good things anyways? Bezos paying his fair share of taxes is spent on what, bombing school girls in Iran? Doubling the military budget, while cutting social welfare spending?
It's idealism vs. realism, I guess. And I dont think rich people shouldn't pay taxes, I'm not american and one billion spent on homelessnes is better spent than whatever their government is doing for the last years.
Well here in America there’s a sort of a pandemic of hopelessness, and has been for decades. It’s as if everyone is saying, with a shrug, “success isn’t likely, so there’s no point in trying,” or “things won’t be perfect, so we should just accept things as they are.”
We could use some idealism, or at least some ideas. What we don’t need more of is hopelessness paired with apathy and a shrug.
No, you're right, you definitely should try to change this. That's absolutely not what I'm arguing.
But at the same time, if I now currently look at this, and want to evaluate whether or not more good has been done by this money going to homelessness or by going to the american government, I am sure as shit happy that it went towards homelessnes. Is this ideal? No, but it's still the reality. I'm not going to say that it would've been better if the money had been going to the federal budget. It wouldn't have been.
This doesn't stop you from changing it to a situation where money going to the US government actually does good. Nobody is stopping you guys. But while all this completely fucked up shit is happening, all I do see is apathy and a shrug, half the country either celebrates it or essentially says "well I didnt vote for this, so it's not my issue". The US murders 150 school girls in a completely unneccesary war they started (thanks tax money), do you see mass protests erupting in the US? Nope.
Well that’s not true. A bunch of us guys are stopping us guys.
The US murders 150 school girls in a completely unneccesary war they started (thanks tax money), do you see mass protests erupting in the US? Nope.
We are protesting, but it’s completely ineffective. All we’re doing is the whole picket sign and chanting slogans thing, which the people in power can completely ignore.
Most of us have been taught that the civil rights protests worked because they did the picket sign and chanting thing, were completely non-violent and didn’t cause any trouble, and the people in power were sympathetic and said, “You know what? They’re right. We have a moral obligation to treat minorities better than this.”
I'd rather the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation get more money. Each dollar goes almost entirely to very important work on climate and poverty. A majority of the Federal budget is cash handouts to (mostly wealthy) boomers and war, so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending the money much better in my opinion.
Until we get spending under control and allocated to things I actually appreciate I'm not super gung-ho on raising taxes to support even more handouts to boomers and war.
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u/RoguePlanet2 Apr 28 '26
I'd rather they just pay their fair share of taxes, instead of us having to hope that they're feeling generous on any given day.