Now, without the chaos and distractions, in my discussion of wealth and the Middle-Class, I meant to post WEALTH inequality, not INCOME inequality. Either do reinforce the same point, however.
Wealth inequality in the U.S. is greater than in any other democracy in the developed world.
Income inequality in the U.S. is one of the greatest of any democracy in the developed world.
Both the Federal Reserve and OECD have the stats.
In other news, apparently a growing number of Congressional Republicans now think they went to far with the SALT deductibility limitations. Talk about the gang that couldnât shoot straight.
Wealth inequality is a little difficult to make inferences from in many respects though. Some of it is about personal choice. Even with people with high income, if they choose to spend everything they make they show up as $0 wealth. This doesnât make them poor compared to people with lower income and who save much. We need to then tax these lower incomeâs assets to give to the higher income over spenders? This even ignores the ânegative wealthâ category.
Itâs an aggregate.
If 50% has zero or negative networth, then me having $1 makes my networth alone larger than 50% of the population combined. The same is true whether you take someone with $1 networth or $10M networth. The negative and zeros all add up to a negative number, so any positive number is bigger than the aggregate.
Itâs standard to see articles with some nonsense statements like that, âthe top X people have more wealth than YZ% of the population COMBINED!â. Now if instead itâs the top 1% compared to the top 2-10% or similar, then it maybe makes a little more sense.
Edit: depending where you look, between 20-50% have a zero or negative net worth in the US. You could even say someone with a very large Negative net worth has more wealth than the lower 20% combined, since that single personâs negative number is smaller than adding up millions of small negative numbers.
OK, but not sure what any of that has to do with wealth and income being concentrated at the very top.
Where in the world is âwealth and income not concentrated at the topâ?
How do you define a âsession?â
Shouldnât professional gamblers have hundreds of losing sessions each year? Iâm not doubting that the increased standard deduction could hurt gamblers. But will it really hurt that much for a true professional?
If thats your definition of a boot heel then youâve really got nothing to complain about.
Iâm not sure what you are trying to say. There were a lot of people that were under that âboot heelâ that absolutely had a legitimate complaint about how much they had to spend on health insurance they otherwise wouldnât buy. Are you saying that they âreally had nothing to complain about?â
If you think that a health insurance mandate = boot heel then your life is pretty golden. As clearly you donât know what a real boot heel is all about.
In that sense, yes, I think youâve got nothing to complain about. Relative to those who have real boot heels on their necks.
Not to say that expensive insurance doesnât suck. But there are 1000âs worse things in the world.
A proper boot heel applied properly does not make you get health insurance. Thats not really what boot heels are about.
Are you saying an additional $200-400 a month expense for someone waiting tables hoping to save for a house/wedding/family isnât a boot heel to them?
Yes its not a âboot heelâ in my opinion.
If you want to see actual boot heels in action look at North Korea or similar.
Expensive health insurance is not in the same ballpark as actual boot heels.
Back to the tax topic:
Do I understand it correctly that originally proposed by Senate $300 tax credit for self and spouse did not make it through final version, but (other than qualifying child) all dependents will get $500 non-refundable credit ?
Uhhhhh, I donât think he meant âboot heelâ literally.
Not literally, Just poorly.
Yes
Child credit is now $2000
And theres a new $500 credit for non-child dependents
No, you have to choose your datasource, then sort.
It wonât hurt pros that file a schedule C. The only real drawback is owing SE tax.
But it gets pretty ugly with losses as an itemized deduction, The big killer is that slot or video poker jackpots, some frequent and as small as $1200, come with W2Gs, so you canât solve it by using a longer session time or (incorrectly) just reporting the net. It wouldnât be unusual for a full time pro that plays high-limit machines to have millions in w2G jackpot reporting but a much smaller net win or loss. Mine routinely filled a shoebox. It sucks.
Itâs even worse when you consider some states limit itemized deductions, and the feds have AMT.