Some dude I work with said “man, if they start taxing Bezos more, at what point are they gonna come after me?”
Maybe when you start making billions of dollars? Fuckin idiot
they already coming at that dude with taxes.
the others ain't paying their fair share.
Apparently he hasn't noticed the rate he is already being taxed at. Guy sounds like a genius.
Idk man maybe you should be comfortable paying more taxes if it gets you something worth it. I’d probably be hit by the taxes to get free effective public transit, that’s cool, I’d rather pay my car transit bills into a pool that gets us the metro or subway but free
That dude you work with is beyond clueless.
I truly don’t understand these people. Their life is generally stressful to the extreme and the current system of “trickle down” has been for a long time shown to not work. So why not tax the rich, install some decent social systems, make the world better for the general public and move on?
They've been made to believe things like this:
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They'd be able to make more than they're making if taxes were less. In effect, their employer and wealthier individuals would share the additional after-tax income.
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Job prospects would be better. More promotion opportunities, less layoffs, etc. Also, more vacation time, sick leave, etc would be available.
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Just about everything bad that happens economically can be linked to higher taxes.
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Prices for everything would be lower.
I'm not defending these views, but this is just what some people believe, and it explains their voting actions. I used to be one such person and I still live among people who see taxes like this. Blame Fox, radio, and similar outlets for spreading misinformation
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Have you seen politics in this country before? It's not about logic, it's about being mad at some invisible boogey man because someone on the TV told you to.
I've never met one in real life, I've only heard of their existence through social media.
Do they actually exist or is it an enemy people have fabricated?
The most likely answer is I'm bubbled around good people, which is a result I guess.
You're absolutely in a progressive bubble. If everyone were progressives, Donald Trump would have been laughed out of the primaries. There are a lot of people who are brainwashed or spiteful or both.
I think it can be difficult to verify directly because the concept is more abstract than those implicated are accustomed to dealing with.
Consider the similar scenario where impoverished seniors vote to have the government be more fiscally responsible by cutting the very services their lives depend on. If they understood how they were fucking themselves, they'd probably stop. Should we really expect any sort of meaningful discussion here? It is a deeply fundamental problem whose solution would require much more openness and vulnerability than our society or collective consciousness is currently able to support.
It wasn't too long ago we were seeing a constant stream of folks expressing regret for their vocal opposition to the vaccines, sometimes even pleading to be vaccinated upon learning of their imminent demise. If they were better equipped to think through these issues, they'd be better equipped to participate in constructive discussion, and we wouldn't be talking about this problem.
You may be in a bubble, or maybe you're just a kind and trusting person who tends to give people the benefit of the doubt.
You're in a huge bubble. A large portion of boomers very strongly defend this shit. Other generations tend to see past it, some areas of more educated boomers see past it, but even among generally good people, Reagan etc brainwashed the majority of an entire generation into believing this shit and most of them have not let go.
Friendly reminder that the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is still essentially one billion dollars. Billionaires shouldn't exist
Remember nobody can possible EARN a billion dollars. Nobody is that important or effective. If someone made a billion dollars, it was by taking away from the people below, the ones who actually did the work. Billionaires are thieves and leeches.
We have roughly 8 billion people on earth. If a person's inventions and solutions combined improved the life of every person by a value of 13 cents, then they would have EARNED a billion dollars (because they would have created thta value).
Imagine I made a product that saves the life of 1,000,000 people (from an otherwise deadly desease). Is that not worth 1B dollars?
One million seconds is ~12 days.
One billion seconds is ~32 years.
My dad always says "but then what motivation will they have to make money and innovate." To which I respond, "they'll still be millionaires and far richer than either of us will ever be."
Why is everyone concerned with making humans work? We already have technology to where one human's work can feed, clothe, and house a hundred more, right? So, pay the one human twice as much, as an incentive, and then give a free ride to ninety-nine more. We don't need everyone to be at work all their life.
Well, not starving and being homeless.
Yeah I gave up on scrolling through the 3.2 trillion.
"Yeah? What motivation do I have to work then? Where's my billions?" Tell him that. As if these billionaires work.
Making money and innovation, in our society, are anathema to each other. Innovation has stagnated in favor of cutting costs and cheaping out on everything to increase margins.
Yeah but they will be millionaires either way. If there is a threashold after which you dont get payed (much) for your innovations, then that will be the cap.
Another answer is that if the wealthy pay more into the system and that money is put into universal health care and a more robust social safety net then other, non-billionaires, would have the motivation to innovate and build businesses. Why the fuck is it only the wealthy that we need to motivate to make money and innovate?
Yeah, it's a wealth tax we need. 10% a year of everything over $100 million. Yeah, bitch, I'm including all your motherfucking shares and property as well.
No, we need to tax the poor to the death and all the problems will disappear over time.
ah, so the texan solution, i see
Doing consumption taxation, so Only Save No Spend.
Then creating huge loop holes for consumption that only the upper class can access, so we put downward pressure on the value of labor relative to the value of amassed commodities and capital.
If I defend billionaires online, they'll let me have a mansion on Mars
Dumbasses
The rent will be outta this world.
Astronomical, one could say.
It's just pure propaganda working out. Our society is composed of roughly the same gene pool it was composed of a millennia ago, and education clearly isn't compensation when it gets treated more and more as just simply a place to discard children off to so people can work without interruptions.
I would argue that schools are really just a battery farm for obedient workers. Getting good marks doesn't mean the kid is smart, just means they're good at doing what they're told even if they don't want to, and thus makes a perfect and obedient worker. It also gets kids used to the idea of not having any rights, and having to ask to do basic human rights like eat or go to the bathroom.
US's schools*
To be fair this shitty way to run schools is getting to Europe too, I remember like a few months ago teachers went on strike for a few days against the government because it wanted to cut funding for schools (country wide), and considering we have pretty decent schools here (compared to the US) and cutting funding meant all of the nice things just going away (like no cafeteria, like bring your own food method, which would suck ass since I live far away from my school for example)
Lucky we didn't hear from the government ever again after, since it was basically all the schools in the country, this happened in Czechia btw, just so anyone isn't confused as where this happened
But honestly our government is a shit show and I am not surprised they gave up after 1 day of strike
What does this have to do with the post? We're talking about creating a higher tax bracket, you're talking about genes and why schools exist.
I do not understand people who rent caring this much about someone who owns houses, a cruise ship and a jet just for laughs. I feel like I need to start carrying copies of “so. you’re in love with a narcissist” to give out whenever I run into one of these stupids.
He’s just not into you, sweetheart.
America has a huge "fuck you, I got mine" attitude. Not surprised so many of them worship people like Musk.
Wow, he fucked me and got his way harder than anybody else! Idol alert! Idol alert!
Better get a lot of ebook versions and just hand them out on twitter to all the musk stans.
They’re not temporarily embarrassed millionaires. There’s no such thing, really.
They’re groupies. They don’t care how bad their life is, they’re star-crossed and get a weird vicarious thrill from it. They know they’ll never be that rich, but as long as their star is rising, they’re happy. It’s more like fans of a sports team. If their star quarterback is winning – even if that means they’re personally doing worse – they’re on the winning team.
The false narrative of ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ is detrimental because it’s misleading in how we talk to and about them. I don’t remember who started that, but it’s dead wrong.
e: to clarify, they aren’t supporting this shit because they think it will benefit them someday. If that were the case, they could be reasoned with. It’s worse:
They support this shit because they believe those billionaires are deserving or anointed by god. A fundamental part of conservatism is the belief there is a natural order to society with more deserving people on top, and if that hierarchy is disrupted, all of society will fall into chaos. They believe certain people should naturally be on top, and there’s honour in knowing your place and performing it well. Conservatism was born when feudalism died and the historical lords shifted their ideology from feudalism to capitalism to keep their wealth and power.
That ‘knowing your place in the hierarchy’ bit is a large part of racism as well as their penchant for fascism. The world makes more sense and is thus safer when everyone is in their proper place.
Well said. This is especially evident in places like Appalachia where people are demonstrably hurting and maintain an unwavering allegiance.
I find all these strawmen memes very frustrating but I'm glad there's some actual nuance in the comments, at least
An income tax would be pointless for the wealthy. Most of their wealth is in unrealized capital gains or other investment vehicles, not from salaries.
There would need to be a mechanism to tax unrealized capital gains, or just networth in general.
tax unrealized capital gains
I don’t know that there’s a fair way to do that, since they are unrealized: people can’t really use that wealth yet.
However, let’s worry about taxing capital gains: why is that rate so much lower than income tax
Let’s worry about hiding wealth through corporations to lower tax rates
At one point there were reports that Donald Trump managed his real estate through a network of over 500 companies. While I don’t know anything beyond the news articles, I find it believable that it could be both legal and could be used to hide both income and expenses from taxes and lenders. We need to use things like this as an example of what not to allow
You can just literally take the ownership of a portion of the stocks and investments off them and place them in control of a government run sovereign investment team instead. It's not exactly hard to figure out what these are worth at any moment anyway, realized gains or not, that's what the stock market tracks for us and what they use to estimate worth and use as collateral for loans with banks. If banks trust this way of doing it then so can we.
While I completely agree on your later points, we do have a system already in place for taxing unrealized gains. They're called property taxes. I'm sure we could create a similar system for taxing other types of assets.
tax unrealized capital gains
This actually happened with bitcoin a while back due to its under-regulated nature. A few people lost their pants when the value of bitcoin skyrocketed on one day in december and then plummetted in early January, and the IRS came knocking for those unrealized gains.
Largely, We don't tax unrealized gains because unrealized gains is value that hypothetically can disappear as quickly as it shows up. It's like taxing someone after every hand of blackjack - you can end up broke AND owing 10x your starting money in capital gains taxes. In theory, a stock portfolio can go from way-up to way-down in 24 hours. Ditto with real-estate if there manifests an uncovered loss event or the title gets fucked, or environmental regulation changes in a way that affects the property, etc.
...I'm not saying there's not a way to do it right. It just needs to be done very VERY carefully so as not to bankrupt people. It would likely have to be more complicated than most tax law is now.
I know very little about stocks, unrealized gains, and taxes in general, but wouldn't it be simple to tax the incremental gain or loss of capital assets?
"What? Tax the gain of a gain? What's that?"
I believe that would be called a derivative in math speak. Basically, if there's a "spike" the up-spike would have a positive tax. The "down-spike" would have a negative tax. What you end up owing is the change from before to after.
How would this be done?
That's for someone smarter than me to figure out, but I would think there would be a way to plot the value over time, plot the derivative, then the value at the end of the year is what you owe. If it's negative then you get some back, if it's positive you owe.
It’s not pointless, because there are plenty who make an excessive salary. However, yeah, it’s not really sufficient because the well-off are already paying less taxes by using different types of income.
We also need to fix how low tax rates are on those other types of incone
If you look back on the tax reductions of the last several Republican administrations, you’ll see they predominantly reduce taxes in these non-salary situations that really only affect the more wealthy
They still make liquid money no? Well above what any normal person takes home.
They do, but the point is it’s not those millions of dollars that are mentioned, so that high marginal rate just wouldn’t do a whole lot on its own.
Yes because there's no chance that this would end up having to be paid by every homeowner whose house has gone up in value since they bought it while rich people would just find another loophole to avoid it, while the government would piss all that extra money away on wasteful spending without addressing any actual problems.
Yes because there’s no chance that this would end up having to be paid by every homeowner whose house has gone up in value since they bought it
A chance? Sure. But it would require willful malicious writing of the bill. Many (most?) states have homestead protections for homeowners up to a certain conservative value. That protection could pivot to capital gains trivially. I think it's perfectly reasonable to tax valuation skyrockets in excess of (say) $500,000. The government can depreciate those value skyrockets, and we'd still honestly be paying less than our due since property value skyrockets cause property tax decreases (in most (all) municipalities, property taxes are just the town's expenses divided by property value).
while rich people would just find another loophole to avoid it,
In real state, that "loophole" is a law that exists in most states specifically saying you don't have to pay tax on property gain if you follow a specified process to reinvest into property in the same calendar year. But it's not a loophole if it's the damn law. The only way people are dodging real estate taxes now is because they wrote laws to. A law that says "fuck off, you still have to pay" would absolutely work.
while the government would piss all that extra money away on wasteful spending without addressing any actual problems
Across the world, tax rates are largely proportional to health, happiness, and quality of life of the citizens. I prefer to trust the numbers over someone's distrust of the country they live in.
Should just start by issuing a 80 percent tax in wealth that we haven't hit yet
Say, 400 billion.
That way when they can pass it and say it doesn't impact anyone. It's just there as a buffer.. And when musk or zuck hit that eventual trigger we tax the piss out of them
It won't be Musk. He's almost as unsuccessful as Trump.
Dunno. He's still number 1.
I agree with you he's an idiot, but he's still rich and making money
We (U.S.) should revisit the Alternate Minimum Tax. The whole idea was to mitigate excessive deductions for the wealthy by earablishing a more straightforward way of calculating that their tax must at least match the minimum. I believe it even worked for a few years.
- AMT was not indexed for inflation so affects more people every year with inflation , not just the wealthy
- there are still too many loopholes so “money finds a way”
Measures like these often fail, because a lot of people dream of being these people that earn that much money. They don't want to limit their possibly future unrealistic imaginary self.
This is commonly repeated, but I wonder if the majority of folks are actually against something like a 70% tax rate on $10 million per year in the absence of all other issues.
I think most republicans are actually in favour of such a tax, they just care about the other issues they are told about by their news sources like crime, religion, and immigration more.
There is also a legitimate concern about the tax money being misused or stolen. The amount of taxes already collected per year is already incomprehensibly large, yet society gets almost nothing for it.
but I wonder if the majority of folks are actually against something like a 70% tax rate on $10 million per year in the absence of all other issues.
What do you mean by "absence of all other issues", though? I find figures as high as 62% of Americans favoring a Flat Tax (admittedly, it's all over the place). Many MANY Americans are convinced that everyone paying the same percent of their income is "fair".
Massachusetts, a very left-leaning state as far as that goes, managed to pass a much more conservative millionaire tax by ballot initiative, but only managed to get 52% yes votes. And the vote arguably only succeeded because it was mere a 4% (?!?) tax on income over a million.
And the entire "NO" push was based around "what if YOU make a million for one year? It will devastate you!" And they got 48% of the vote.
This isn't true. They don't do it because they see themselves as rich at some point, they do it because they feel like they're in the rich club just saying this shit.
Also simply because rich people have a lot of ability and incentive to "optimize" their taxes. Increase their taxes too much and they will just move to a different country and not pay you a penny.
I think the thing for everyone not making >$1m/yr to firmly understand is that when top marginal rate income isn't taxed seriously and antitrust laws aren't enforced, they have to bid for housing in markets where the prices are set by top-bidders, and your grocery bill is whatever they feel like charging you and that means your normal $50k/yr income can't afford rent and food without roommates. High inequality means everything becomes expensive.
It's the "low-tax" countries that create unaffordable real estate, the 'free market' countries are where you can't afford necessities. It's the ones that invest in public goods and infra (and regulate their capitalism) that yield high standards of living for most people.
People
cosplaying as folksmaking under $50k per yearFriendly reminder that Joe The Plumber wasn't named Joe, wasn't a Plumber, and was earning well into the six-figure tax bracket before he spent a year on the right-wing freak show talk circuit.
It isn't even temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Its astroturfed outrage by paid performers and fellow grifters, intended to give their wealthy peers cover when they pile out into the suburbs waving No Step On Snek flags from their BMWs and F-350s.
Are there a lot of people like this nowadays? I don't know any, maybe I'm lucky.
Quite a bit. Those that vote against their own interests and don't want the rich to be taxed, for example.
You may live in a more educated social bubble. I recommend joining some poor district or countryside bar or sports club and listen to political opinions to get an idea.
I have some in-law relatives (unemployed) that are not only like this but also live of welfare and Medicaid while being huge Trumper republicans who think all democrats are just socialist out to get their money.
I've never met anyone like this, I'm not convinced there's many.
My theory is the internet loves a common enemy regardless of how prominent they are.
Yeah, I'm thinking of how media skews our view of others.
Also people who dream about earning 50k a year
Guy in run-down suburb making $800 from being on the dole +$100 from slots every month, also this. For some fucking reason.
Vegas neighbor? <3
There are so many loopholes. How do you "tax" on investments? My buddy is a millionaire and takes loans out on his investments and pays no taxes. Like WTF. I'm sitting here pay 35% and he pays almost nothing because the interest he pays can be written off.
You know like when you figure that the DnD rulebook is basically just a proposition, and you don't have to follow it, you can make up your own rules if you want?
If space billionaires becomes a thing, they will get in queue to pay their taxes in time
Depends on your definition of "space billionaire". Musk, Bezos and Richard Branson all qualify by at least one definition 🤷
Why not 85%?
Yeah how the fuck did that happen? How the fuck did we get here?
Remember the trickle down economy shitshow that rich people were trying to sell? Well it's more like a pig farm where all the rich people are put in cages with an automatic belt feeder and a funnel straight into their mouth so nothing can possibly go wrong. This is the real system were under. Society is actively funnelling the money to the 1% and it's obviously unsustainable.
I mean, how did it get to that point? Boiled frog?
99%*
money is a lie, it has no value.
Not really a lie, just an agreed upon standard of exchange. Money has no value in the same way that a gram has no meaning...its simply a measure of value (or mass) that we all agreed to use to allow society to function.
Things fall apart pretty damn fast when the guy that owns the gas station can't sell fuel to the farmer because the farmer only has corn to trade, and the fueler doesn't need corn right now.
Agreed. When I need a medium of exchange, unit of account, and/or store of value, I just use
i too love using throughout my day, it's especially useful during situations.
The value of money is in its utility as a means of translating temporal activities into physical assets. It is a method of accredited accounting and useful as such.
I mean sure money itself is just a token, but it's an evolution from trading goods and services for other people's goods and services, right?
You trade your time for tokens to exchange for something valuable to you, instead of being paid in food/accommodation directly.
I don't think you'd be happy if you went back to the days where you needed to trade actual items to get a loaf of bread.
i mean yeah, this is true, but you should go and try explaining the economics of the stock market, crypto, or government debt to someone from the medieval ages.
The amount of exploitation of the market that has happened since the invention of currency as a concept is amusing.
Unfortunately even if they tax wealthy people, they money will go to the defense budget or to Isreal
Or to the friends, family, or donors of the politicians. I have no idea why you're getting down voted. The only thing I can think of is that people seem to be under the impression that taxing the rich will put more money into their own pockets, which definitely won't happen. The government is too corrupt to allow that to happen. Taxing the rich is a good thing, but it won't help the rest of us, not with the way the government has been run for multiple decades.
The truth hurts I guess.
The memes are funny, but are you sure these people don’t just have rich family that’s going to leave them stuff that does make them millionaires?
I suspect if someone who makes 50K a year has millionaire connections, those connections would have probably helped them by now and not have to wait for them to die.
I could be wrong, money seems to make people selfish and greedy. So maybe the millionaire would rather hoard their wealth than let the 50K person get any before they die. But they're still nice enough to let them have something after they pass?
Er, typically generational wealth requires someone passing it on to you either via death or straight up bequeathing, and the former requires death of the giver. I was talking about the parent to child inheritance scenario, and it’s more likely than not to be the case for a lot of your college friends (at least in the U.S., though also probably in other countries).
I agree with the sentiment but this feels like Wojacking, and I don't think we need to stoop to their level.
Edit: I didn't realize it said you would be taxed 70% on income above 10 million, I was thinking it was 70% of 10 million. Yeah 10 million (or 6.5 after normal taxes) in one year is plenty.
I think America is fueled by the dream of "making it big". I believe we should all have that opportunity and so I think these income taxes should take effect on the second year that your income exceeds the threshold, but that you should pay a lower rate for the first year. People invent things, they write stories, make movies, win at gambling... Those people should be allowed to enjoy their success, not be punished because their payout came all in the same year.
That is why they should teach everyone basic statistics and probability and give them the data and explain to them how much worse life is on average in the "making it big" setting vs a more equal distribution of resources. Sure maybe without the drive to be a world dominating online shopping platform, we wont have a service like Amazon but Amazon is not a necessity it is just a habit which one can live without easily. I would take cheap and good quality housing vs amazon any day. And also with people having more time to spend in their hobbies, I am sure there will be a lot of open source innovations which will be just as useful as amazon.
90% of the things everyone insists is only possible under individualistic capitalism suck balls anyways, domestic services here in sweden are significantly less shit than amazon.
yeah i can't buy a neon green spandex flamingo but why the fuck would i? and i can instead have something actually useful delivered within 3 days usually, at a fair price, without warehouse personnel being forced to piss in bottles.
Wow you're never going to make it big thinking like that /s
Yeah for some poor sod who wins the lottery, publishes his banger novel and gets his oscar worthy multi million dollar movie into cinema and therefore gets an income above 10 million $ that year, I don't think he will be signficantly hurt paying 70 % tax on everything above those 10 million $.
Oh yeah I wasn't thinking about the tax bracket correctly in this case.
3 million (i.e. 30% of 10m) per year is enough, in my opinion.
Also, don't forget the fact that it takes time to be successful, so they'll inevitably pass through the lower tax brackets first, and "earn their bread".That isn't how tax brackets work. In the scenario outlined here individuals would pay 70% tax on everything they earn over 10 million. Which even further reinforces your point, as this is an enormous amount of compensation for anyone in a single year.
I have no problem with the rich being taxed at a significantly higher rate than all of us, but how will this help everyone else? The government isn't going to lower taxes for everyone else. The government isn't going to spend the money more wisely. The government isn't going to give the rest of us money. The government isn't going to improve the existing programs that are in place, or create new programs to help people. What they will do, is find even more ways to line their own pockets, and the pockets of their friends and donors. Just a thought, but maybe we should address that first? Fix the government, and we can fix everything else.
And before someone starts in about how it's a particular party that's a problem, remember that almost every federal level politician is corrupt, and scamming the people. Just take a look at how many significantly increase their wealth while in office. It's staggering, and it's both parties. We need an overhaul of the system. That's where the fix needs to be.
I have a great idea! Let's not tax the rich until we improve our democracy. And let's not improve the democracy until we can get the rich taxed.
Even better, let's do nothing unless we can get all of the things working at once at the same time! Incremental changes are for fools!
/sarcasm
Taxing the rich does nothing until you can fix the government. Fix the government first, and you can fix the rest. The government is the rich, they aren't going to do anything that would impact themselves. Some of them talk a good game, but if push comes to shove, they aren't going to raise taxes on themselves.
There's plenty of historical evidence that runs contrary to this (valid) cynicism.
Our interstate highway system is a very, very large and expensive undertaking that works reasonably well, environmental hazard that it is.
Our freshwater/blackwater systems, while no longer state of the art, were at a previous point an envy of the western world.
A lot of the cutting edge has been lost due to a focus on private industry achievements for individual gains, versus the older (less profitable) model of public service achievements for the benefit of all. This ties into both the tax, and govt overhaul points you're making.
One can just look around the world to see the benefits of the public model Vs private. Universal health care, quality of living standards for the poor (in both developed countries and upcoming counties like China), Norway's national sovereign fund, there are tons of examples where the public model has uplifted and improved the lives of the many Vs the rich and fortunate few.
Yes it's correct that private companies and individuals will run off and stash money overseas if you tax them; that's why public service are public run in the first place so that we aren't over a barrel and can tax these entities appropriately regardless of what they might do. At the end of the day their own greed will ensure they'll want to invest back into our countries where their investments are safe anyway.
Your cynicism is palpable, but misguided. The answer is to tax the rich more AND demand better funded services for the working class. The fight doesn't stop at a higher tax bracket getting created.
A 70% tax rate is insane. All that will do is incentivize taking money out of the country or cheating and lying and hiding all that money (even worse than now) I think a reasonable rate is around 20% or 30% and taxes should be structured where the people who make the least pay the least
What are you talking about, my marginal tax rate is 22% now (I don’t make millions of dollars), and the marginal tax rate for someone who makes millions of dollars is 37%, and taxes are structured so that the people who make the least pay the least.
It's not "insane" it's lerfectly feasable. It used to be at 63%:
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-income-tax-rates-brackets/
In fact it was changed from 25% to 63% in 1932
I'd support higher taxes if the bulk of them went to helping people instead of inventing and perfecting new ways to kill them. Fact is I trust bezos with that money more than the federal government.
The government is effectively owned by billionaires which is why you don't trust the government. But if we get rid of extreme wealth inequality then the government starts working for the rest of us. These two issues are connected. We gotta eat the rich if we want a democracy that actually works.
