Wealth and income are very different. In 2007, top 1% of household income earners started at $350K. The top 1% of wealth started at $8.6 million. If you make $350k, save aggressively (40%) for 25 years, it still isn’t enough to climb into the wealth 1%. Very few without the wealth will be on the top 1% of earners for that long, or maintain that investment rate.
The top 1% have 40% of the wealth, and total wealth (networrth) is just north of $80 trillion.
The last proposed U.S. Federal budget was $3.9 trillion, roughly 5% of totals wealth. Luckily were taxing income because anyone doing financial independence knows what happens when you start spending 5% and growing of your networrth each year. You go broke. And that’s just federal.
We can talk about who pays, however in the end, the problem still remains that our spending is outstripping our income and wealth.
This goes back to the commodity fetishism that Marx discussed as being responsible for distracting the masses.
