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in my experience. Certainly not in my city. Around here taxes like this are meant to be regressive. In other words, they disproportionately impact the poor and working class so that the wealthy don't have to pay taxes for the services they use. It lets states cut income taxes for top earners without sacrificing services that either go to those earns or that are too popular/essential to cut.

Lotteries, Sales Tax, flat Vehicle Taxes (and flat taxes in general, like alcohol tax) are all good examples of regressive taxation. The goal is to have a tax system that applies (mathematically) equally to all while ignoring the very real differences between a millionaire and the lower working class.

People die. People are born and inherit this wealth.

This is actually at the core of the problem of income inequality. As Thomas Piketty points out in Capital in the 21st century:

Piketty's Main Claims
1. The Return on Capital is Greater than Growth.
Piketty claims that r, the average annual rate of return on capital, is in the long-run greater than g, the growth of the economy (i.e., the annual increase in income or output).

r > g (1)

And, "If . . . the rate of return on capital [r] remains significantly above the growth rate [g] for an extended period of time . . . , then the risk of divergence in the distribution of wealth is very high."
[pg. 25]
2. Inherited Wealth Grows Faster than Income. If r > g, then inherited wealth grows faster than output and income. The reason?
"People with inherited wealth need save only a portion of their income from capital to see that capital grow more quickly than the economy as a whole." [pg. 26]

When a tiny fraction of the top 1 % owns nearly half of everything, and the bottom 90 % owns practically nothing besides their residences (and 75 % of all publicly held debt (source)), and the above conditions being true this division is only going to grow unless something is done, it should be clear that this model is not sustainable.

"Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime's labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels - levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies." [pg. 26]

Assuming we can figure out who these people with "too much" are, and how the government is going to tax it from them, how is this wealth going to get in the hands of the middle class? Do we just have the government write out checks to everyone?

Or, or you could do any number of things other than 'writing checks'. Secondly of course it makes no sense to tax it away entirely, no-one's even proposing that. Through your history you've previously had high marginal rates for those making the most money, and despite that people still kept investing and making money because as long as you don't tax a 100 % of it, there's still going to be an incentive to make more. You could tax inherited wealth / dividends above say tens of millions at a marginal tax rate of something like 70-80 % and use said money to provide for example universal health care and education to the lower and middle-classes which would not only significantly improve their quality of life, it would also allow increased social mobility by allowing people to educate themselves without having to take massive amounts of debt in a situation wherein a degree is a requirement - but no longer a guarantee - of getting a well paying job. Not to mention all the other possibilities such as reducing the amount of debt the government has to take, funding infrastructure building, research, etc. Eventually automation and AIs will make most current jobs (even the white-collar ones) obsolote, at which point if you wish to maintain domestic demands for goods and services, the only way for that to happen is via something like universal basic income. The companies need less and less paid staff to run their operations going ahead, but at the same time less and less staff means less and less demand for products as less people are getting paid unless something is done. You can't stop the technological progress causing machines to overtake humans in efficiency, so really the one thing you can change for more easily is taxation.

Of course I'm not American but neither is the nature of this problem: income inequality is going up nearly across the board in the west, the US is just the case wherein it has gone on for the longest time.

It's like they're printing money trying to stimulate demand in a consumer economy, but it gets snatched away by corporations before it ever gets to consumers.

This is largely the case bacause the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth.

Piketty's Main Claims
1. The Return on Capital is Greater than Growth.
Piketty claims that r, the average annual rate of return on capital, is in the long-run greater than g, the growth of the economy (i.e., the annual increase in income or output).

r > g (1)

And, "If . . . the rate of return on capital [r] remains significantly above the growth rate [g] for an extended period of time . . . , then the risk of divergence in the distribution of wealth is very high."
[pg. 25]
2. Inherited Wealth Grows Faster than Income. If r > g, then inherited wealth grows faster than output and income. The reason?
"People with inherited wealth need save only a portion of their income from capital to see that capital grow more quickly than the economy as a whole." [pg. 26]

Piketty's Pessimistic Conclusion: patrimonial capitalism. If the above conditions hold, then capitalism will lead to a distribution of wealth that resembles an aristocracy. Such a distribution is incompatible with the values fundamental to modern democracy

"Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetimeâ(TM)s labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels - levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies." [pg. 26]

-Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century

I remind you as a non-American that while wealth inequality and its continued rise is an issue faced by all advanced economies, the US is at a level of its own in this regard because nowhere in the world is the inequality as massive as it is in the States. The top 1 % owns nearly half of all national wealth and the rest is held almost exclusively by the following 9 %, because the bottom 90 % doesn't own much besides their residences. The bottom 90 % also owns almost 75 % of all privately held debt. (source)

And the trend shows no sings of stopping, in fact the current republican 'tax reform' is a massive handout to the ultra-rich at the cost of the bottom 90 % in the long term.

With these stats in mind it is exceedingly hard not to call the USA in its current socio-economic state an oligarchy. And the system they have setup to protect themselves ideologically speaking is massively effective. You had 1 left of center candidate in the presidential primaries that took this issue with any seriousness, and Sanders was labelled a lunatic and a 'communist' for merely talking about introducing systems that are already in place in many western societies like universal health care and education.

This just goes to show how effective of a grip the ruling class has on the society overall. The 2 party system, the primaries and the electoral college all appear to me as an outsider to be things which do not serve the interest of the general public but rather the interests of the above mentioned oligarchs in that they allow for a great level of control over what options are given to the american people in national elections especially.

"(a) we (the electorate) have busily shaped the societal and legal environment in which Wall Street could become what it is now."

No we haven't. The vast majority of the population has been too busy working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. The concentration of wealth created by Wall St has become self fulfilling, since that wealth makes it possible for banking interests to influence politics directly through lobbying, or bribery. The democratic process is significantly distorted and representation is no longer proportional.

This is part of the problem.

Ideas like those here are part of the solution.

Start with Wealth Inequality since this is a useful proxy: if you own all the wealth you can just buy all the land. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn of some discrepancies, perhaps related to old land holdings that can't be sold, typically "owned" by royal families, etc...

$15 per hour wouldn't even be the highest it's ever been. $15 per hour isn't a high number.

It looks like the mimum wage was historically the highest back in 1968:

"The minimum wage reached its (inflation-adjusted) historic high in 1968, when it was raised from $1.40 to $1.60 per hour. Adjusted for inflation using the BLS online inflation calculator that would come to $10.55 per hour in 2012 dollars."

http://inequality.org/minimum-...

Clearly, whatever mimium wage society thinks is appropriate, it should really be indexed somehow to inflation or agerage wages or something like that.

I have always liked the idea of setting mimimum wages as some fraction of the top wage in a company, or as some fraction of the wages of politicians - though that would not work well in states with underpaid legislators.

Wow. You know... and I mean this in the nicest way, there are some decaffeinated alternatives that are equally tasty on the market.

The parent poster says that the average millionaire is based on dynastic wealth and it's not true of about 3/4 of millionaires. What he said is true of about 1/4 of millionaires.

About 95 percent of millionaires in America have a net worth of between $1 million and $10 million.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/...

A million 1950 dollars is worth $9,847,966.80 today. (CPI calculator)

However, the average wealth (net worth) of the top 1% is 19.1 million dollars. (IRS)

That's the wealthy elite.

4% of americans have a net worth of a million dollars or higher. But 3% of them have small amounts of money compared to the wealthy elite.

People can *easily* have a million dollars for retirement. I did. My mom was a high school drop out. My best income never exceeded low six figures and that only for about 5 years. My net worth is well over a million dollars. I retired at 51.

I think this article is more to the point the pp was trying to make:

http://inequality.org/selfmade...

I think he set the bar too low on wealth. That was my entire point.

It was not my intent to piss in his or your cheerios so take a chill pill.

Makes sense when rising to the top is based on personal qualities and leadership abilities. However, today rising to the top is more or less decided by who your daddy is. A huge percentage of the ultra-rich are in that position by chance of birth.

Inheriting is actually even more likely to get you into the top 1 percent by wealth: 45 percent of those in the top 1 percent by net worth only have ever inherited (Source: http://inequality.org/meet-ame... ). Essentially about 50% of your likelihood of being 1 in 100 is decided by birthright.

There are a number of studies that indicate that a middle class squeeze has occurred in the US. http://inequality.org/inequality-data-statistics/ isn't a bad place to start for some aggregate results. I don't agree with some of the conclusions they draw, but their data seem to be in order.

Okay, you've given your anecdotal evidence which includes by your own words "guessing".

Googling "ceo" "salary" "ratio", you might want to look at two out of the first three hits: this article and this one.

Psst. The very, very rich are not like you or me. Their mythology states that they're just regular folks who worked hard and made good, but it ain't so. The oligarchy that is the very, very rich is different. Do some reading. And note that while pretty much everyone's real income doubled between 1947 and 1979, the bottom-income quintile's went up by only three percent between 1979 and 2001.

It's true, we've constructed a previously unknown sort of society, with such grand experiments as the GI Bill, enabling upward mobility, a rising tide lifting all boats, etc. But it's not stable. Don't assume it is.

It is always amazing how people bash high labor costs. You're right, high labor costs are good for the US.

Economic historians often point out that throughout the latter 1800s the US had very high labor costs (and strong tariffs) compared to most European countries. Those high labor costs were a key to attracting immigrants from Europe, and those high labor costs also played a key role in automating American industry.

Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR.

This is quite true. See www.inequality.org for some illuminating stats about what percentage of the stock market is owned by the ultra-rich.

What always amazes me is how the corporate mass media report "productivity" increases. Productivity increases, like the gains in productivity by using computers, are great. But the mass media never talks about who benefits from those productivity increases. Look at the percentages of corporate profits over the past 20 years -- the gap between the rich and poor or the gap between the rich and middle-income workers is not increasing for nothing!

If those productivity increases are so great, how come I'm working over 40 hours a week?!