These Billionaires Received Taxpayer-Funded Stimulus Checks During the Pandemic | Talking Points Memo

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1393198

I don’t give two shits about a handful of BILLIONAIRES getting a few thousand bucks. This is America and we are all in this together.

I do care that we can’t seem to tax BILLIONAIRES. That is something worth trying to understand.

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Really wishing I wasn’t eating lunch when I read this story. Our inability to tax billionaires makes me sick to my stomach.

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America. Where we tax the sheep, to pay the wolves.

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So an automatic process which was supposed to move fast swept in some people that the purity pony people can complain about.

The whole point was to have something extremely simple and automatic. A few thousand dollars to a handful of rich people is a waste of time to worry about (and a waste of time and money to pursue).

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Who CARES??? This was a process to get money to people that needed it quickly. OUR ‘house’ didn’t need it but we took it and distributed it to those who needed MORE.

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The issue is not that billionaires got stimulus checks, it’s that those billionaires didn’t pay much in taxes. It’s a powerful argument for a wealth tax.

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These Billionaires Received Taxpayer-Funded Stimulus Checks During the Pandemic

They should have been the ones giving money to the rest of us. And they still would have had plenty left over for yachts and mansions galore.

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No, it is an argument for tightening up the tax code in already functional areas. Wealth taxes have a shit track record globally and are massively complex to administer (which is why they’ve mostly been dropped in EU). Inheritance, capital gains etc.

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Exactly.

Either one can move fast and with least pain OR one can put in tons of rules and screening and then move slowly and with a lot of pain…

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My wife and I know a moderately wealthy man who gives his SS money to charity.
He gives a lot of other money too, bless him.

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It’s the same as food stamps tighten the regs to make sure cheaters don’t get thru and deprive lots of people of timely assistance, or any assistance because of the rules, or let some cheats get by to make sure the most get help.

The sad part is that most of them wouldn’t even know they got it, but that once having found out wouldn’t turn around and return it to the IRS or at least donate it.

The George Soros, he’s trouble I tell ya!

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Speaking of the pandemic, there seems to be a little too much “yee haw” (and not enough LUV) on the flight deck at Southwestern these days.

No prize for guessing which side of the pro-mask/anti-mask debate the pilot was on.

ETA: Wonder if this is the same guy.

Oh yes, there’s people who will game anything, but one does not throw out the baby with the bath water. We have at least one “soup kitchen” in our town that feeds the homeless. I try to send coupla of bucks periodically. Yet, I’ve hear assholes say that some who are not really needy go there. Damn, but I despise the people who say that. I tell them to drive by, then tell me you would trade places with anyone in that line for a meal.

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The problem is WHY they qualified for the stimulus checks. Their taxable earnings show exactly how they make money. They are not salaried workers and taxed out of their paycheck (most don’t have a significant paycheck). They can loophole their way out of any significant tax rate. Fucking billionaire grinches with no sense of societal responsibility.

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Ask them how much food they put down the disposal each night when they’re done eating.

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Paul Krugman used his column today to give his thoughts on why billionaires, who have more money then they could possibly spend, are so hell bent on both not paying taxes and sucking every dime they can get from Government subsidies.

From the article:

"Elon Musk doesn’t think visionaries like him should pay taxes the way little people do. After all, why hand over his money to dull bureaucrats? They’ll just squander it on pedestrian schemes like …balling out Tesla at a critical point in its development. Musk has his sights set on more important things, like getting humanity to Mars to “preserve the light of consciousness.

Still, the determined and so far successful opposition of incredibly wealthy Americans to any effort to tax them like normal people raises a couple of questions. First, is there anything to their insistence that taxing them would deprive society of their unique contributions? Second, why are people who have more money than anyone can truly enjoy so determined to keep every penny?"

The entire article can be read at:

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Piketty makes a good case for them. Basically, wealth taxes ended the reign of the aristocrats in many countries. Because leaving a small class that owned much of the country’s wealth made it hard for anyone else to build equity. Right now, we have billionaires with competing rocket ships and states like mine where nearly half of the pubic school students qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

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They clean their plates, go back for seconds.
These kitchens will also get donations of food close to its sell date.

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There are close to 6 million millionaires in the US. ~ 300 cases… how did the IRS manage such a low error rate?