No. of Recommendations: 4
Most of the largest fortunes in the U.S. have been accumulated this way. People generally don't become billionaires by having a billion dollars or more in taxable salaries over the course of their careers. They become billionaires through the appreciation of assets. Which means that Biden is correct, in that billionaires generally don't pay very much tax on the money they've earned. They do pay tax on the portion of the money they've earned that takes the form of realized income, but given how small a proportion that typically is, their overall tax contribution is very small as a proportion of their overall earnings.
What an insanely myopic view. Name a multibillionaire accumulating earnings into some company she started. Now eliminate all of them who have done that without employing 100s of thousands of employees. Now eliminate all of them who have done it without creating BILLIONS of dollars of valuable products that their customers were enthusiastically overjoyed to receive at the prices they were sold for.
Damn it, you didn't hardly eliminate any any of those billionaires! So maybe you want to somehow account for all the productivity (and therefore income) enhancing products, all the savings on groceries, picnic tables, and clothing from the retailers, and yes, lets give them a little bit of credit for the income taxes that their millions of employees pay, and maybe a tip of the hat to the SALARIES their millions of employees live lives of quiet enjoyment off of.
You don't get to be a billionaire without providing at least a few billion in value to your customers, investors, and employees.
If you think a world without Microsoft, Walmart, Costco, Google, Apple, and Facebook is a better world than the one we live in then explain why all their CUSTOMERS who actually put their hard earned cash up disagree with you.
R:)
