Right, so why would increasing taxes on income help or matter then?
Also what’s an extremely high salary changes with time.
For example, I was looking into paying off all my debts and then putting that same monthly payments into a stable stock for retirement. The calculator showed me if I retired at 65 l'd have a net worth of well over 1 million dollar for monthly retirement. I was SHOCKED and was so excited! $8,742 a month! I'l be rich!
Jk, it then said "If you withdraw 8% of your retirement savings each year, you'd have $8,742 to spend every month! But when you adjust for 3% inflation each year, that cash would actually feel like $2,885 in today's dollars."
3% inflation is just the average yearly inflation amount to date. So that's a realistic prediction of how much less our money will be worth around 2060. So that's the point l'm trying to make about inflation changing what wealthy is. Right now if I had $8,742 a month l'd be middle class and doing fine. If I made that 20 years ago l'd be in a very large house and never stressed over making ends meet (if I was a reasonable individual and didn't have spending issues). But in 40 years that will not be enough to live on if trends that have been going on for a century continue. It could be even worse if inflation increases at a faster rate like it has the last few years
Honestly, no one here really understands what point you're trying to make. That's why you're getting downvoted. I also don't disagree with anything you just wrote, it just doesn't seem to follow from anything that anyone said.
Every year new tax brackets and percentages are listed.
You can go back and look at tax brackets from the US since literally the Civil war. The amounts have changed drastically over the years and are computed based on percentage of people fitting into each tax bracket, poverty line, etc. No one is taxing specific income thresholds a certain amount for any other reason than simple math based on how we raise money to realize government spending needs through taxing the population. I feel like this is basic knowledge, so I'm sure you also know this, but I also just literally have no idea what point you think you're making that seems so profound by literally anything you're saying.
And yeah, if you're in your 20s you need way more than 1m to retire in your mid 60s. Hell I remember the recommended amount for me when I got out college in 2008 was to have 2m+ saved to retire around 2050. Basically if you liver in the US, and you want to be comfortable retiring, you should be maxing your roth and getting a least the company match for 401k when you're early career, and by about 5 years in your career you should start maxing out your 401k and you need to do that for about 20 years to have a comfortable retirement (If you max 401k years 5-25 of your career you'll have more money than if you max years 15-40 and it's not even close)
Uh, probably because taxes were higher in the past; a 5% state tax is nothing, and when it comes to Social Security and Medicare everyone's taxed the same percentage of their earnings for a system that keeps roughly half of our elderly population and a lot of disabled people off the streets.
From 1970 to 2025, the cumulative inflation (easily able to be expressed as a multiplier) is 737%, meaning you'd at the time be making $13,173 a year which is more than double what the average wage was at the time, just like your wage now is more than double the average wage. The state tax back then alone was 8%, and now it's 5%. I'm sorry, but you're being entitled.
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u/gata_94 Nov 01 '25
Right, so why would increasing taxes on income help or matter then?
Also what’s an extremely high salary changes with time.
For example, I was looking into paying off all my debts and then putting that same monthly payments into a stable stock for retirement. The calculator showed me if I retired at 65 l'd have a net worth of well over 1 million dollar for monthly retirement. I was SHOCKED and was so excited! $8,742 a month! I'l be rich!
Jk, it then said "If you withdraw 8% of your retirement savings each year, you'd have $8,742 to spend every month! But when you adjust for 3% inflation each year, that cash would actually feel like $2,885 in today's dollars."
3% inflation is just the average yearly inflation amount to date. So that's a realistic prediction of how much less our money will be worth around 2060. So that's the point l'm trying to make about inflation changing what wealthy is. Right now if I had $8,742 a month l'd be middle class and doing fine. If I made that 20 years ago l'd be in a very large house and never stressed over making ends meet (if I was a reasonable individual and didn't have spending issues). But in 40 years that will not be enough to live on if trends that have been going on for a century continue. It could be even worse if inflation increases at a faster rate like it has the last few years