> I feel like there is too much outrage fueled by a complete misunderstanding of how our tax system works right now.
Honestly, there is no benefit in fixing that because everyone is a useful idiot perpetuating the status quo and not even realizing it.
The best populist uprising starts off with this observation and ends with salaried workers getting a slightly higher tax and never touching the rich who obtain goods and services very differently.
The framing always starts about "the rich" and gets deflected towards the top 5% of wage earners who will become masqueraded as "the rich". Everyone involved will agree for two reasons: 1) it's the best they'll get from Congress and they feel like they're "doing the thing" and participating, 2) because they are wage earners and that's the only form of taxation they can relate to or even really somewhat know about.
For example, in a thread like this, someone will quote some flawed study about diminishing returns of an undefined form of "happiness" after making $75,000 a year, and then someone will talk about cost of living disparities as if that's an insightful addition to the conversation (wow, complex topic there, Champ), and all of this is being used for wage earners to fight amongst themselves about why they shouldn't have any feelings for the person that got a six-figure salary, when that new target wasn't even the person that their angst was originally directed towards.
Yeah, and in my opinion the level of happiness doesn't start diminishing until after $150k. I would straight lose my shit if I had to live on $75 k again.
Honestly, there is no benefit in fixing that because everyone is a useful idiot perpetuating the status quo and not even realizing it.
The best populist uprising starts off with this observation and ends with salaried workers getting a slightly higher tax and never touching the rich who obtain goods and services very differently.
The framing always starts about "the rich" and gets deflected towards the top 5% of wage earners who will become masqueraded as "the rich". Everyone involved will agree for two reasons: 1) it's the best they'll get from Congress and they feel like they're "doing the thing" and participating, 2) because they are wage earners and that's the only form of taxation they can relate to or even really somewhat know about.
For example, in a thread like this, someone will quote some flawed study about diminishing returns of an undefined form of "happiness" after making $75,000 a year, and then someone will talk about cost of living disparities as if that's an insightful addition to the conversation (wow, complex topic there, Champ), and all of this is being used for wage earners to fight amongst themselves about why they shouldn't have any feelings for the person that got a six-figure salary, when that new target wasn't even the person that their angst was originally directed towards.