8 ms·

Of course they do! Just look at the chart here: http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article9349178.html http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases

Of course they do! Just look at the chart here: http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article9349178.html http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article9349178... and the referenced franchise tax info. I am really tired of seeing sensationalist headlines like these. The top 1% of income earners earn an absolutely massive portion of all income in the state, but only pay 45% of taxes. We should be asking if that's enough, not implying that the wealthy are somehow propping up the state's finances when inequality is accelerating every year.

devereaux 11y ago
Only pay 45% of the taxes? What do you want?? Should they pay 70% of the taxes??? At which point will you be happy precisely???? 90%????? When the top 1% pays for about 50% of the infrastructure, it is time for them to think about seceding. I mean, the top 50% move together, poof they can have something like half of what is provided by the state, without the 99% bothering them anymore.
- quonn 11y ago
  I think he meant that if the top 1% has 99% of the wealth, we should expect them to pay 99% of the taxes. However, that wealth is not just income, so the argument is not quite correct. This is a democracy, so how much ones owes in taxes is decided by the people. As far as seceding is concerned, good luck with that.
- ska 11y ago
  It is a surprisingly common fallacy to believe that income is generated in a way that is not deeply coupled to the system in which it was generated. This is just muddy thinking if you are talking about the "1%" or your own IRS bill. I think that the comment you were responding to was suggesting that the tax load should be directly proportional to the income fraction, which I suppose you could make a cogent argument of.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    Yup. As one of my economics professors likes to say (paraphrasing): There is no 'natural' equilibrium. The economy develops based on the set of laws already in place. People earn money based on the 'system' already in place. So the idea of 'fairness' is already an artificial construct. It's far easier to make a billion in a society like the US, than say, Vietnam, or Argentina, or Romania. So in a very real way, US billionaires do 'owe' something to the system that allowed them to attain that wealth in the first place (and that 'something' is pretty much 'everything'). If wealth could be attained completely independently of the 'system', then the distribution of billionaires would be completely different than it is right now.
- orbitingpluto 11y ago
  Someone's been vigorously rubbing Ayn Rand novels against his privates again. The real question is how does wealth manage to concentrate so highly so quickly and by those who actually contribute so little. edit: this guy is literally pulling an Atlas Shrugged. If you think you as the owner of the company 'make all of the money', I heartily suggest you try going it alone.
  - solipsism 11y ago
    Just make sure you use the paperback!
  - janpieterz 11y ago
    I never got why people read and get this 'owner of the company makes all the money' narrative from the book. She is obviously glorifying these man, making them the 'hero', but don't we do exactly the same in every other fictional book? It's been a while since I read a book about John and Jane that details their virtuous lives that is not played out, one way or another, on a high level (either starting or becoming a hero etc). My take from the story was more that these people exist at every level. I remember parts (I might be grossly mistaken here, but this is what I took from it) where Rearden talks about and with his most valued employees, or where Dagny has her valued associates, where the train men that 'stand their ground' are praised. I'm not sure the 'owner makes the money' story is what she wanted to portray, or possibly I just took my biased view and ran with it while reading ;)
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    "How" is that the people who make the money control the measurement methods for it. Governance is hard. CEOs once upon a time made "too much salary" so pay for performance was used. Now this.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  I suspect that without having a 99% to take advantage of, they wouldn't earn so much.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- p4bl0 11y ago
  > without the 99% bothering them anymore. Do you really believe the 1% richer would earn so much money without exploiting the work of the 99% others you want them to get rid of? That's ridiculous.
- GavinMcG 11y ago
  Given that it's only those at the top that receive the benefits of economic growth (FTA: the bottom 80% of Californians saw no growth in their adjusted gross incomes between 1994 and 2013) higher is absolutely better. They're clearly skilled at harvesting the economic contributions of those worse off than them.
- LeifCarrotson 11y ago
  If they secede, they will still need the goods and services provided by the 99% - I doubt that many janitors, mechanics, painters, secretaries etc. are in that 1%. They'd need to have these servicepeople commute in and out of "rich California" every day from far off, and they probably wouldn't want unsightly public transport, enormous highways, high-rises, or low-income housing cluttering up their little paradise, so commutes of an hour or more would become normal. That would never work.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    I know an electrician who has been close to, if not in the 1%. And then there's the bad years. I've had this conversation three times: "What'd it take to get you to move to California?" "More than you have." So there's that.
- ska 11y ago
  http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
auntienomen 11y ago
What fraction of income do the top 1% of earners actually earn?
- maxmcd 11y ago
  Looks like in 2013 the top 1% earned 21% and paid 41% of California's taxes. https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/Personal_Income_Tax/B-3.pdf https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- hammock 11y ago
  According to the data in the article, $281b out of $1,104b, or 25%.
  - danjoc 11y ago
    Meanwhile, Apple alone has > $190b sheltered offshore. I suspect these numbers are skewed in the 1%'s favor.
    - baddox 11y ago
      It's not "hiding." They can't bring it back (i.e. spend it in the US) without paying taxes.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Until then it does not show up as income, so it really is hiding. Further, you can send money off shore by paying off shore subsidiary's for arbitrary costs, in no way does that money purely represent off shore profits outside of pure accounting magic.
        Goronmon 11y ago
        It seems strange that your definition of "hiding" is "not present in the US". Is most of the population of the world then a "hidden" group of people? That sounds a bit condescending.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Thriptic 11y ago
Did you read the article? If anything it talks far more than it should about income inequality. Frankly I find the tax disparities astounding: 45% paid by 1%? 90% paid by 20%? That is crazy.
- sp332 11y ago
  Do you think tax should not be tied to income? Maybe each person should owe the same amount in tax or something?
- mdorazio 11y ago
  Yes I did. My comment was specifically in reference to the headline (which doesn't even match that of the article), not the article itself.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  From the article I get that the top 1% pays tax at 2x the rate per dollar earned than the bottom 99% does in aggregate. That seems like a reasonably progressive rate to me.
Randgalt 11y ago
"earn an absolutely massive portion of all income in the state" - it's not as if the money is just sitting there and 1% are taking most of it. Wealth is _created_. The top 1% _create_ most of the wealth in California. How is it just that they are required to pay so much in taxes? Before I left California, my marginal tax rate (including Federal) was over 52%. Super-high earners in California have marginal rates over 60%. How is that just?
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Money is created from bank loans. Wealth may be slightly different, but at any given time there is a fixed amount of money in existence and the only way to increase it is to originate more bank loans.
  - Randgalt 11y ago
    Money changes hands in exchange for something of value. I give Apple $300 and I get an iPhone. Apple takes that $300 and gives it to someone else in exchange for something they value. Money is merely a medium of exchange. The wealth is the products we produce and trade for.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      Yes, but where does $300 come from in the first place?
      - Randgalt 11y ago
        I got it by trading with someone else. You seem fixated on the money supply, which is (mostly) irrelevant in a discussion of wealth and income.
        jsprogrammer 11y ago
        Wealth and income are denominated in dollars, or other bank currency generally, so they are bound by their availability. For example, you cannot have $2,000,000,000,000,000 in annual income, simply because $2,000,000,000,000,000 do not exist. >I got it by trading with someone else. If you examine the transaction in its historical context, there will be a chain of trades going back to a bank loan (or multiple). You seem fixated on the trade of dollars, while seeming unconcerned about how dollars come to exist.
entee 11y ago
Wow that chart is astonishing, and in the context makes the headline a little misleading. Having a such a small percent pay such a huge share is toxic. I've heard people who pay high taxes say incredibly entitled things about "paying for" things. It destroys a sense of shared investment and purpose. Clearly the solution has to be to ensure income is more evenly distributed, though I don't know how to do that exactly. Education and learning skills necessary for high paying industries would certainly help, but every time I hear that it feels like kind of a weak solution. That said, I don't really have a better one. What are some interesting off the wall ideas for reducing income disequilibrium?
- kspaans 11y ago
  Remember that the chart only deals with income, not the net wealth of tax filers. It's probably harder to get reliable statistics on call Californians' net wealth, but I bet that would be a much more interesting graph. (I am not suggesting a California wealth tax.)
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    Would it be interesting mainly for how much rationalization of envy it would provoke? I can't imagine what else could be drawn from it.
    - JauntTrooper 11y ago
      There'd be a lot of overlap, but it would also highlight the very wealthy that pay low taxes (likely landowners and retirees) and high earners with few assets that pay high taxes - the top 5% to 0.5% - that are often politically vocal and frustrated at their relative tax burden and the difficulty they face to accumulate wealth despite high income.
- solipsism 11y ago
  There's no magic bullet. Runaway disequilibrium takes concerted and relentless effort across a wide array of arenas. This goes for income inequality as much as it does for climate greenhouse effects. In both cases the alternative is that it goes until we hit a breaking point. The millionaires and billionaires of today are betting that this breaking point won't happen in their lifetimes. They're probably right.
11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
What is missing is that the total income in the state in 2012 was $1.1 Trillion. So the top 1% earned 28% of the income, but paid 45% of the total taxes: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/Personal_Income_Tax/B-3.pdf https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/...
- daveguy 11y ago
  As they should. That's what happens when you have a progressive tax structure. Do you think we should we shift some of that tax burden onto people who make less than $25k per year?
  - aantix 11y ago
    I never understand why the term "progressive" gets painted in a positive light? If I eat a steak, the restaurant doesn't come to me and say "Hey, you make 10% more than the guy two tables down, so you'll pay 10% more for your steak". Why did this sliding rule ever get enacted for taxation? If you use something, you pay for it at the established price.
    - matthewmacleod 11y ago
      Oh, come on. I know you get it. Taxation is a generally accepted necessary evil way to fund projects and services for the common good. A progressive tax policy recognises that a person with a high income can bear a greater burden; taxing a minimum wage earner 30% of their income would have a much higher proportional effect on quality of life that someone earning, say, 200k. We seem to accept progressive taxation as fair, in the sense that it causes no more inconvenience to low earners than high earners. The comparison with a private commercial service is flawed, in the sense that engagement with it is an entirely personal choice.
      - msandford 11y ago
        > The comparison with a private commercial service is flawed, in the sense that engagement with it is an entirely personal choice. That's exactly what a lot of people are up in arms about, they get taxed hugely but get no real say in how the money is spent. Sure they get a vote, but if your candidate loses it's not as though you're exempt from paying taxes. In some way these people are right; if they choose to engage in commerce they aren't being forced to do anything and as such "whatever the market will bear" is a good metric. Taxes aren't about "whatever the market will bear" though because you don't have a choice to not consume and therefore not pay.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
are those numbers including all the tax dodging?
judah 11y ago
>> "but only pay 45% of taxes. We should be asking if that's enough" How much is enough? We often hear that the wealthy should "pay their fair share." But we rarely hear a concrete figure. Look. I work 3 jobs and bring in about $200,000 per year. I work hard and diligently for that money. I use it to provide for my wife and kids and our future. And I paid nearly $60,000 in taxes in 2015. I don't want to pay any more. I'm fed up with how much of my hard-earned income disappears by way of taxation. More taxes subtract from my kids' future. More taxes subtract from dates with my wife. More taxes subtract from my retirement when I am old and unable to provide for myself. How much tax is enough? What, exactly, is my "fair share"? Everyone likes to demonize the rich 1%, but few concede the reality that we in technology are all rich. Heck, even the poor in the US are rich by the world's standards. We "rich" people are not all demons whose money is an infinite fountain waiting to be sapped by those without. No: we work hard for that. And we have families. Some of us hold multiple jobs in order to provide for ourselves and our kids. So I ask, how much is enough? Give a specific tax percentage you think I, as a husband and dad of 2 children, ought to pay to the federal government, and please tell us compellingly why you feel entitled to take my hard-earned money away from me and my wife and kids.

devereaux 11y ago

Only pay 45% of the taxes? What do you want?? Should they pay 70% of the taxes??? At which point will you be happy precisely???? 90%????? When the top 1% pays for about 50% of the infrastructure, it is time for them to think about seceding. I mean, the top 50% move together, poof they can have something like half of what is provided by the state, without the 99% bothering them anymore.

quonn 11y ago
I think he meant that if the top 1% has 99% of the wealth, we should expect them to pay 99% of the taxes. However, that wealth is not just income, so the argument is not quite correct. This is a democracy, so how much ones owes in taxes is decided by the people. As far as seceding is concerned, good luck with that.
ska 11y ago
It is a surprisingly common fallacy to believe that income is generated in a way that is not deeply coupled to the system in which it was generated. This is just muddy thinking if you are talking about the "1%" or your own IRS bill. I think that the comment you were responding to was suggesting that the tax load should be directly proportional to the income fraction, which I suppose you could make a cogent argument of.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Yup. As one of my economics professors likes to say (paraphrasing): There is no 'natural' equilibrium. The economy develops based on the set of laws already in place. People earn money based on the 'system' already in place. So the idea of 'fairness' is already an artificial construct. It's far easier to make a billion in a society like the US, than say, Vietnam, or Argentina, or Romania. So in a very real way, US billionaires do 'owe' something to the system that allowed them to attain that wealth in the first place (and that 'something' is pretty much 'everything'). If wealth could be attained completely independently of the 'system', then the distribution of billionaires would be completely different than it is right now.
orbitingpluto 11y ago
Someone's been vigorously rubbing Ayn Rand novels against his privates again. The real question is how does wealth manage to concentrate so highly so quickly and by those who actually contribute so little. edit: this guy is literally pulling an Atlas Shrugged. If you think you as the owner of the company 'make all of the money', I heartily suggest you try going it alone.
- solipsism 11y ago
  Just make sure you use the paperback!
- janpieterz 11y ago
  I never got why people read and get this 'owner of the company makes all the money' narrative from the book. She is obviously glorifying these man, making them the 'hero', but don't we do exactly the same in every other fictional book? It's been a while since I read a book about John and Jane that details their virtuous lives that is not played out, one way or another, on a high level (either starting or becoming a hero etc). My take from the story was more that these people exist at every level. I remember parts (I might be grossly mistaken here, but this is what I took from it) where Rearden talks about and with his most valued employees, or where Dagny has her valued associates, where the train men that 'stand their ground' are praised. I'm not sure the 'owner makes the money' story is what she wanted to portray, or possibly I just took my biased view and ran with it while reading ;)
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  "How" is that the people who make the money control the measurement methods for it. Governance is hard. CEOs once upon a time made "too much salary" so pay for performance was used. Now this.
EliRivers 11y ago
I suspect that without having a 99% to take advantage of, they wouldn't earn so much.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
p4bl0 11y ago
> without the 99% bothering them anymore. Do you really believe the 1% richer would earn so much money without exploiting the work of the 99% others you want them to get rid of? That's ridiculous.
GavinMcG 11y ago
Given that it's only those at the top that receive the benefits of economic growth (FTA: the bottom 80% of Californians saw no growth in their adjusted gross incomes between 1994 and 2013) higher is absolutely better. They're clearly skilled at harvesting the economic contributions of those worse off than them.
LeifCarrotson 11y ago
If they secede, they will still need the goods and services provided by the 99% - I doubt that many janitors, mechanics, painters, secretaries etc. are in that 1%. They'd need to have these servicepeople commute in and out of "rich California" every day from far off, and they probably wouldn't want unsightly public transport, enormous highways, high-rises, or low-income housing cluttering up their little paradise, so commutes of an hour or more would become normal. That would never work.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  I know an electrician who has been close to, if not in the 1%. And then there's the bad years. I've had this conversation three times: "What'd it take to get you to move to California?" "More than you have." So there's that.
ska 11y ago
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif

auntienomen 11y ago

What fraction of income do the top 1% of earners actually earn?

maxmcd 11y ago
Looks like in 2013 the top 1% earned 21% and paid 41% of California's taxes. https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/Personal_Income_Tax/B-3.pdf https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hammock 11y ago
According to the data in the article, $281b out of $1,104b, or 25%.
- danjoc 11y ago
  Meanwhile, Apple alone has > $190b sheltered offshore. I suspect these numbers are skewed in the 1%'s favor.
  - baddox 11y ago
    It's not "hiding." They can't bring it back (i.e. spend it in the US) without paying taxes.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Until then it does not show up as income, so it really is hiding. Further, you can send money off shore by paying off shore subsidiary's for arbitrary costs, in no way does that money purely represent off shore profits outside of pure accounting magic.
      - Goronmon 11y ago
        It seems strange that your definition of "hiding" is "not present in the US". Is most of the population of the world then a "hidden" group of people? That sounds a bit condescending.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Thriptic 11y ago

Did you read the article? If anything it talks far more than it should about income inequality. Frankly I find the tax disparities astounding: 45% paid by 1%? 90% paid by 20%? That is crazy.

sp332 11y ago
Do you think tax should not be tied to income? Maybe each person should owe the same amount in tax or something?
mdorazio 11y ago
Yes I did. My comment was specifically in reference to the headline (which doesn't even match that of the article), not the article itself.
aidenn0 11y ago
From the article I get that the top 1% pays tax at 2x the rate per dollar earned than the bottom 99% does in aggregate. That seems like a reasonably progressive rate to me.

Randgalt 11y ago

"earn an absolutely massive portion of all income in the state" - it's not as if the money is just sitting there and 1% are taking most of it. Wealth is _created_. The top 1% _create_ most of the wealth in California. How is it just that they are required to pay so much in taxes? Before I left California, my marginal tax rate (including Federal) was over 52%. Super-high earners in California have marginal rates over 60%. How is that just?

jsprogrammer 11y ago
Money is created from bank loans. Wealth may be slightly different, but at any given time there is a fixed amount of money in existence and the only way to increase it is to originate more bank loans.
- Randgalt 11y ago
  Money changes hands in exchange for something of value. I give Apple $300 and I get an iPhone. Apple takes that $300 and gives it to someone else in exchange for something they value. Money is merely a medium of exchange. The wealth is the products we produce and trade for.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Yes, but where does $300 come from in the first place?
    - Randgalt 11y ago
      I got it by trading with someone else. You seem fixated on the money supply, which is (mostly) irrelevant in a discussion of wealth and income.
      - jsprogrammer 11y ago
        Wealth and income are denominated in dollars, or other bank currency generally, so they are bound by their availability. For example, you cannot have $2,000,000,000,000,000 in annual income, simply because $2,000,000,000,000,000 do not exist. >I got it by trading with someone else. If you examine the transaction in its historical context, there will be a chain of trades going back to a bank loan (or multiple). You seem fixated on the trade of dollars, while seeming unconcerned about how dollars come to exist.

entee 11y ago

Wow that chart is astonishing, and in the context makes the headline a little misleading. Having a such a small percent pay such a huge share is toxic. I've heard people who pay high taxes say incredibly entitled things about "paying for" things. It destroys a sense of shared investment and purpose. Clearly the solution has to be to ensure income is more evenly distributed, though I don't know how to do that exactly. Education and learning skills necessary for high paying industries would certainly help, but every time I hear that it feels like kind of a weak solution. That said, I don't really have a better one. What are some interesting off the wall ideas for reducing income disequilibrium?

kspaans 11y ago
Remember that the chart only deals with income, not the net wealth of tax filers. It's probably harder to get reliable statistics on call Californians' net wealth, but I bet that would be a much more interesting graph. (I am not suggesting a California wealth tax.)
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Would it be interesting mainly for how much rationalization of envy it would provoke? I can't imagine what else could be drawn from it.
  - JauntTrooper 11y ago
    There'd be a lot of overlap, but it would also highlight the very wealthy that pay low taxes (likely landowners and retirees) and high earners with few assets that pay high taxes - the top 5% to 0.5% - that are often politically vocal and frustrated at their relative tax burden and the difficulty they face to accumulate wealth despite high income.
solipsism 11y ago
There's no magic bullet. Runaway disequilibrium takes concerted and relentless effort across a wide array of arenas. This goes for income inequality as much as it does for climate greenhouse effects. In both cases the alternative is that it goes until we hit a breaking point. The millionaires and billionaires of today are betting that this breaking point won't happen in their lifetimes. They're probably right.

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

What is missing is that the total income in the state in 2012 was $1.1 Trillion. So the top 1% earned 28% of the income, but paid 45% of the total taxes: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/Personal_Income_Tax/B-3.pdf https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/...

daveguy 11y ago
As they should. That's what happens when you have a progressive tax structure. Do you think we should we shift some of that tax burden onto people who make less than $25k per year?
- aantix 11y ago
  I never understand why the term "progressive" gets painted in a positive light? If I eat a steak, the restaurant doesn't come to me and say "Hey, you make 10% more than the guy two tables down, so you'll pay 10% more for your steak". Why did this sliding rule ever get enacted for taxation? If you use something, you pay for it at the established price.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    Oh, come on. I know you get it. Taxation is a generally accepted necessary evil way to fund projects and services for the common good. A progressive tax policy recognises that a person with a high income can bear a greater burden; taxing a minimum wage earner 30% of their income would have a much higher proportional effect on quality of life that someone earning, say, 200k. We seem to accept progressive taxation as fair, in the sense that it causes no more inconvenience to low earners than high earners. The comparison with a private commercial service is flawed, in the sense that engagement with it is an entirely personal choice.
    - msandford 11y ago
      > The comparison with a private commercial service is flawed, in the sense that engagement with it is an entirely personal choice. That's exactly what a lot of people are up in arms about, they get taxed hugely but get no real say in how the money is spent. Sure they get a vote, but if your candidate loses it's not as though you're exempt from paying taxes. In some way these people are right; if they choose to engage in commerce they aren't being forced to do anything and as such "whatever the market will bear" is a good metric. Taxes aren't about "whatever the market will bear" though because you don't have a choice to not consume and therefore not pay.

LoSboccacc 11y ago

are those numbers including all the tax dodging?

judah 11y ago

>> "but only pay 45% of taxes. We should be asking if that's enough" How much is enough? We often hear that the wealthy should "pay their fair share." But we rarely hear a concrete figure. Look. I work 3 jobs and bring in about $200,000 per year. I work hard and diligently for that money. I use it to provide for my wife and kids and our future. And I paid nearly $60,000 in taxes in 2015. I don't want to pay any more. I'm fed up with how much of my hard-earned income disappears by way of taxation. More taxes subtract from my kids' future. More taxes subtract from dates with my wife. More taxes subtract from my retirement when I am old and unable to provide for myself. How much tax is enough? What, exactly, is my "fair share"? Everyone likes to demonize the rich 1%, but few concede the reality that we in technology are all rich. Heck, even the poor in the US are rich by the world's standards. We "rich" people are not all demons whose money is an infinite fountain waiting to be sapped by those without. No: we work hard for that. And we have families. Some of us hold multiple jobs in order to provide for ourselves and our kids. So I ask, how much is enough? Give a specific tax percentage you think I, as a husband and dad of 2 children, ought to pay to the federal government, and please tell us compellingly why you feel entitled to take my hard-earned money away from me and my wife and kids.