You were griping about how much money Jeff Bezos types have and how they ought to get him to cough up such and such a percentage of it because he's not paying his fair share and yada yada yada.
That's because as a kid you sat around on Saturday mornings watching cartoons and reading comic books instead of going out to find something else to do.
You watched Scrooge McDuck walk into rooms full of piles of cash and gold. You think Zuckerberg has a whole airplane hanger full of money and dubloons. You think that's what big money looks like.
That's not what money looks like. That's what cash looks like.
Any commercial fisherman that has ever hauled fish out of the ocean or oilworker that's ever wrestled oil out of the ground knows what money looks like firsthand. It may just be a pile of fish or a bunch of oil to the unitiated but that's actually just plain money. In fact in both cases it's new money. Nobody has ever seen it before.
When you sell it you convert it into cash. What you pay your axes with is cash. You can't pay your taxes with fish and oil.
One's net worth is not necessarily calculated by the amount of readily available cash he has. It's the sum total of the value of all of their assets. This includes various properties.
Let's say some guy with no cash to his name inherits an island somewhere that's worth 30 million dollars, his net worth is now 30 million bucks. He can actually be well be worth 30 million and not even have enough cash in his pocket to buy himself a hamburger for lunch.
To tax the wealthy as was suggested by someone would mean they would have to sell off some of their assets. Uncle Sam ain't going to take the title to a Ferrari or a plot of land to satisfy a tax bill. Uncle Sam wants cash.
If someone decides to sell an asset then it becomes income and is therefore taxable.
To me, cash is what you have in the bank and can readily take it out right then and there tax-free. To me anything on paper really isn't cash. We once had some stock that was worth $10,000. Market turned sour and we lost the whole 10,000. So don't tell me oh I'm worth so-and-so unless you can actually count it in your hand. I truly also don't understand inheritance tax. That money has already been taxed to death and you don't wind up with exactly what you're supposed to get. "Tax the rich and feed the poor 'til there are no rich no more." Words from "I'd Love to Change the World". Look up the words to the song. It is a timeless piece of music. People think that people who win prizes on game shows get it all for free. What they don't realize is that they have to pay tax on it and if they don't have the money to pay the tax on it then they have to sell it. No matter how you cut it Uncle Sam always wins. I just sold an IRA for $2,500. I decided to cash it out because it wasn't making anything anyway. You know what I wound up with $2,000. But it was enough to pay my car off. I don't care that I inherited old money, but to me it's new. Semantics. We may not like it but the Bezos of the world probably built their empire on old and new money. Who cares they earned it. sr
ReplyDeletePretty much this.
ReplyDeleteSome of these so-called super rich have a net worth that fluctuates my millions each day as the value of their assets fluctulates.
Besides, it they earned it it's theirs. To take it away from them is robbery.
Flat tax for all!
Not just robbery it's called socialism as well. That is what the present administration would like to turn us into. I don't agree with a flat tax. Let's say it's a flat tax of 15% across the board. To the rich 15% is nothing but to people of middle class that's a large amount. A flat tax is a system where everyone pays the same tax rate, regardless of their income. ... Some drawbacks of a flat tax rate system include lack of wealth redistribution, added burden on middle and lower-income families. I am very much taken aback that you would even suggest a flat tax. sr
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