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Originally Posted by Perfectlap
well they would say that because they became billionaires a million years ago. Since then I doubt they have ever looked spent much time looking at electric bills, arguing with the waiter for mistakes on the bill or saying "oh ****************, gas up a quater!? f@ack me!!!".
You get to a point where you are stupid rich and don't care about taxes anymore.
That being said, of all the nations in the world, the wealthy carry the lightest load. Well I'm not sure what Switzerland and Austria are doing these days but Michael Schumacher think its swell!! Low taxes on the greatest concentration of millionaires and billionaires is a double edged sword. It helps create more well millionaires and billionaires but it also keeps their explosive income and investment growth in the last 20-25 years from keeping up with their rates of taxation. The Wall St. Journal ran a widely cited article recently about how the wealthiest 1% are now paying the lowest share of taxes in nearly 20 years.
Some say well they're still paying 40% of the taxes but that not so shocking when you consider how much of the nation's wealth a very small % of the population controls. And in the current economy their shipping the gains from those low tax rates to overseas economies where labor and manufacturing costs are much lower.
Meanwhile tax rates on people not making hundreds of thousands of dollars are a tad on the high side when you factor in how much of take home is eaten up by 'cost of living' expenses. And I'm NOT talking about Plasma TVs. I'm talking about insanely high housing prices, high home ulitility costs, out control college expenses, high food costs, health care through the roof and high fuel costs as well. Wages aren't keeping up and cost of living expenses are not being contained. So people said eff' it...I'm never going to catch up. Let's go down to Best Buy and get that 40 inch plasma and put it on the Best Buy card. What difference does another $3K home enteraintment center make when my house and kids college has me nearly one million dollars in debt (nearly all going to interest).
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates feel guilty about that. Billionaires guilt.
The poor bastards (those with merely less than $4 million) aren't so sympathetic.
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The top 20% of wage earners in the US pay about 70% of total taxes.
Is that FAIR? Depends who you are!
