This article was going viral: Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors
Americans in the top 1 percent, and especially the top 0.1 percent, have seen their wealth and income multiply in recent decades as the rest of the country’s share of the economic pie shrank. Since 2000, a recent study found, the top 1 percent have made those gains almost entirely on income from capital, especially corporate stock—not on labor income. One reason may be the financial options of the wealthy: Business owners can lower their tax bills by paying themselves in dividends rather than in salary, for example.
This is probably why some Trump supporters are at best lukewarm, if not outright hostile, to Trump’s tax cuts proposals, deeming such cuts as only being beneficial to the wealthiest of Americans, or a distraction from more important issue. [1] As recently as a decade ago, tax cuts were a major selling point for the ‘right’, but not anymore. Immigration and trade are of greater importance to voters, and Trump seems to be dropping the ball thus far on those [but given the GOP’s control of Congress, I don’t see why Trump cannot simultaneously cut taxes and implement drastic immigration reform].
But back to the article, yeah, look at Bitcoin, Bay Area real estate, tech stocks (Google, Tesla, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Sales Force, etc.)…it would seem like ‘assets’ are kicking the asses of wages. People are getting rich buy & holding assets and with speculation than ‘building and making things’ (except for Tesla). And the low long-term capital gains taxes to boot just makes it all the sweeter.
Now obviously, doctors, coders, and lawyers can do very well too. To get to the stage where you can live off assets, you need income.
[1] But the wealthiest also pay the most in taxes, and half the country pays no taxes at all.