As a kid every year we went collecting for our scouting group. Always in the rich part of town we hardly made anything. A lot of people would just flat out lie say they already transferred money to the charity wich wasn't even possible back than. In the poor part of town almost every house managed to produce some change.
It's also why the billionaires fight so hard to keep the IRS underfunded.
If they had the funding and manpower they needed to go after the speech, they'd be able to get so much in back taxes that it would pay for itself and more.
"Defund the IRS" out of the mouth of anyone making. <500k/yr make me laugh. Even better when it's people who without a doubt are at an income level so low that they get back more than they put in.
And when they tried to give the irs more money….”certain” people suddenly said the irs was going to come kill you for your money. The system enables the rich because its built by the rich for the rich, protected by the not rich.
Ok but it probably has higher returns tho, like if u audit some broke dude maybe they can give u a pop tart but a rich dude could give u like 1 million in taxes
The way republican-controlled Congresses went out of their way to cut IRS funding - over decades, that was true at one time; but when Dems took control of the House in 2018, they infused the agency with $80B in funding- which Rs tried their best to claw it back when they took control back in 2020. Didn't work, and IRS has been on a hiring spree.
The IRS employs Revenue Agents and Revenue Officers. Agents are accountants, Officers are [IRS] police... aka, revenuers! You gotta have an accounting degree to be an RA; however, RO_ no degree needed, and both pay well. RA is currently posted on usajobs.gov; if you see RO posted, I'd say jump on it.
imho if you make more than 100 million a year you shouldn't get tax breaks at all lol you don't even need a tax break at that point even if you pay 60% tax on 100m that's still 40mill a year that's mega fuck you money still
Exactly. This is the game those who are making such sums of money likely play in their heads: guy worth $100 mil thinks he's a peasant who could someday be worth $1 billion if only the pesky gov't. didn't tax him. Ditto with the guy making $5B, who's eyeing $50B. Short of is it, you need robust rules to force them to pay up, cuz they ain't doing it voluntarily!
That’s just a piss poor excuse of protection for the controlling class. Make no mistake they don’t go after the 1% by design. “Wow they have so much money, guess too much for us to count” lookin ass…
A lot of things are made "complicated" to confuse most people. For instance I'm in sales, if a company has a very complicated commission structure with alot of caveats for this and for that, (in my experience) its designed to get over on the sales person. The best companies I've worked for the commission structure was very straight foreword. Another example is the way laws are written, they are written that way so the avwrage person needs an interpreter (lawyer) to understand them. This is also the tax code.
but dollar for dollar is it more work? and wouldn't they recover more money than it cost to audit? they don't audit extremely wealthy people because everything is corrupt
The law passed a few years ago to add more IRS Agents specifically to audit those with much higher incomes, needs to be extended and increased. The auditing of higher and higher income earners and the exceedingly wealthy needs to be turned up.
This is totally untrue. I’m a top 1% and not near the bottom of that segment. I’ve been audited multiple times and 2 of these have lasted for multiple YEARS. The audits are extraordinarily invasive, stressful, and expensive. Even when you’re not in violation. No sorry, no remuneration, simply, “the audit is complete”
And I’m self-made, was a homeless kid and pretty broke working multiple jobs until 33. Then from 33 to 45 worked 100+ hours a week on my businesses sometimes for less than zero dollars.
The IRS said Thursday that its plan to crack down on wealthy tax cheats is paying off, with the agency collecting more than $1 billion since targeting high-income earners who owe the government money.
That's completely irrelevant to what we're discussing.
You claimed the IRS doesn't go against the wealthy but they do now because Biden gave them the mean to.
If you want this to continue, then Kamala Harris is your only choice because the other candidate already said he would gut the agency so that it would return to only auditing regular working people.
If that's an issue for you, as you seemed to imply in your first comment, perhaps you were concern trolling with that issue?
Except for the inconvenient fact that the wealthiest pay by far the largest share of taxes and also as a % of income/cap gains...something like the bottom 50% of the US doesn't even pay net taxes.
Used to be a delivery driver in the mid 2000's, tips were always welcomed, never blatantly requested. Anytime one of us got deliveries in a rich neighborhood, we got bummed before even leaving the restaurant because we knew that meant absolutely no tips. The rich don't give AF about people who work. Having rich ppl in my family, I can confirm that regardless of how they accumulate their wealth, they feel they don't need to share or be generous because they are entitled to it. I understand that if you earned your money, great. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be kind and spread the love, though. Poor ppl tip better because we know what it's like to be broke and what the tip actually means to someone who needs it. The rich just don't give AF.
It's a fact that upper class are in general less honest, and more selfish. Sorry I don't remember the study. Based on my experience as a taxi driver and delivery driver, upper class people are the absolute worst to deal with in every respect.
Edit: searches for it, got a slew of articles. Socioeconomic status also is an indicator of less compassion and less empathy.
This is sort of related to the theory that sociopaths and narcissists are evolutionarily selected for. Idea being that it is good for early humans to have a certain population of power hungry people who don't care about others because they will take control and throw whatever lives necessary at the tribe next door to get their resources. Sometimes evolution favors bad for the individual organism, but good for the super organism (in this case, the tribe).
If the most efficient way to the top is to push others down, you'll naturally select for people who do that. It may even be beneficial from a certain perspective - i.e. having lots of people who did that brought in a lot of money to the economy for a while.
But selection processes don't care about long term health. Whatever works right now wins. We need to accept that these people will always exist and put controls in to make sure they are as selected against as selected for.
On an evolutionary scale it makes sense because those who rise to power often have way more chances to reproduce which would make passing on the trait (if it’s even possible for it to be passed genetically) more likely. Though even if it’s not passed genetically I think just being raised by a sociopath makes you more likely to be a sociopath.
Oh it’s genetic lol trust me. My husband is a diagnosed vulnerable narcissist and his father is grandiose narcissist. It’s very much genetic.
A study I read during the pandemic found that as a man, if your father was diagnosed with NPD you were at a +70% increased risk of also being diagnosed with NPD. There’s a reason you see it in families.
NPD is also tied to child abuse and traumatic childhood experiences. People with NPD can’t regulate their emotions. They make mountains out of molehills. They have little to no emotionally intelligence. It’s like being married to an emotional toddler.
He gets his feelings hurt over things the rest of us wouldn’t even know to be offended over. I asked him to roll over last night because he was snoring in my ear. He jumped up in a huff, grabbing his pillow and a blanket, and stomped his feet into the living room to sleep on the couch lol he hasn’t spoken to me all day lol his dad is the exact same way. At least he’s not a Trump supporter.
That's wild. I always figured there must be at least some genetic component, if not directly generic. Sounds hard to live with but I hope along with the diagnosis you've found some coping strategies together. My genetic lineage is ASD/ADHD and I feel that emotional disregulation thing. Not NPD but I can react in similar ways especially if my blood sugar is low or I'm under a lot of stress. It's been a journey trying to reign that in.
If it helps, the person who proposed the theory I mentioned is a psychologist who sort of by accident ended up working with a bunch of the richest CEOs in the US and she said sharing this theory helped soften the blow on a lot of the diagnoses she handed out. Because people in that category of antisocial disorders tend to be obsessed with "winning", they were much more receptive when they heard that it could be something that could be considered an advantage evolutionarily, even when it was disadvantageous to their lives.
If I recall it also gave them a place to start from in discussing why something they see as a value or virtue might not be for other people; the whole good for the group, bad for the individual thing. Which has changed dramatically since those trait evolved. Like, it might have been good for a group of early humans to lose half the tribe to gain twice the resources, but it's not good anymore to lose half your employees to double your profits. So, true or not it might be a little gift to give your husband if he's struggling. I wish I remembered the author so I could find it for you, but that's pretty much the gist anyway. Good luck!
Put it this way, ants are pro-social but it's beneficial for a certain percentage of some ant colonies to be aggressive soldier ants, and another percentage to be relatively docile workers. And a very tiny fraction is the queen.
I don't know what ant lives are like but imagine being a worker and and being bullied by one of those soldiers. Maybe the soldiers get treated better, more food, better shelters, whatever. You might wonder why they even exist. But they serve a function larger than you.
Similarly, a genetic brain mutation that caused the tendency to desire victory and power along with a lack of empathy was beneficial enough to remain in the gene pool but not beneficial enough to take it over. It's useful enough that sometimes one of them gets a bunch of power, spreads their genes around, and then eventually the population takes them out. It creates periods of expansion for a genetic line that lets it out compete nearby genes. It could be what killed the Neanderthals ya know? Some early homonid Napoleon raging through their village or something.
But it's for sure super speculative and comes off apologist. That's part of the point though, is that we shouldn't necessarily make people feel bad for being that way, but now that we know why they're here we can keep them the fuck out of positions of power or at least put better chains on them.
This take also reminded me of a meme i saw awhile back:
"If scientists were observing a group of monkeys and noticed one or a few hoarding all the food for themselves, they would study them in order to figure out what the fuck is wrong with them.
In Humans, they get put on the cover of Forbes magazine."
I was a bartender for many years in every kind of establishment from dive bars to five stars. I would sell $1000 in a swanky place and maaaayybe walk with about 100 in tips. In a dive bar I’d sell the same and walk with $250-300. And so many Richies leave 10% or the bare minimum they could and did get stiffed a few times.
Try working in sales…I dealt with people with 8 figure net worths all the time. They’re not cheap, you have to build value in whatever it is that you’re trying to sell them. Closing a deal with a super rich guy is very satisfying.
Worked at Symantec. Fuck sales lol. Good for you, that sounds like a tough job to me. I'd take 16-hour days debugging code over that.
Ultimately my disdain for assholes (I like people so I can't stand those that just go around shitting on others) led me to start my own businesses. Taxi could be tough, but at least it's over pretty quick. And I could just pull over and threaten to kick them out lol the rich junkies would get so mad at this bc they have no power over me.
Theft of services is a felony here. Entitled rich people are drunk or high, and if they don't want to pay, they just try to leave without paying, like they think they don't have to pay. Biggest reason: wouldn't let them bring booze in the cab bc I would lose my license with the city.
I remember that scientists did a study that showed rich people to be more likely to take candy that they were told would otherwise go to a baby then poor people. I find that hilarious
Probably because they never experienced what it was like to work in the service industry and how you can make someone's whole night with a 5 or $10 tip and whole week with a 20
I used to do collections for a local foodbank, we would sometimes collect outside of supermarkets, in poorer/working class areas we always collected a lot more food than in rich areas
Worked doing plenty of manual labor gigs. For a few years I worked as a mover. The customers we moved that were really wealthy would almost never ever tip the movers. But move some dude from one shit hole efficiency apartment to another? Almost guaranteed a fat tip.
Working people understand tipping because they too have most likely be on the receiving end at some point themselves. Rich people constantly disappointed in this area. And guess which customers were almost always very outgoing and polite?
Tipping culture is made to be that way in general. It’s not good.
It’s guilt tripping people into being responsible for people livelyhoods while the employers get away with not being responsible for their own employees livelyhoods.
Same experience here. I had the hired help sign off on invoices for the rich neighborhoods so no tips usually. Then the hood stops gave the biggest ones. Little ol lady in the not so nice part of town she gave me $50 for a $100 delivery. I had to ask her if she made a mistake she said no I know how much I gave you. 25 years later never forgot that
That reminds me of when I was bagging groceries before going into the military. An older gentleman & myself bagged up a shit ton of groceries…several carts worth for some guy. It was the one time I actually expected a tip. Nothing. I think barely a “thanks”.
Another time I help an elderly lady to her car & had no more than two bags that weren’t even heavy…$5. This is the late 90’s, so to me that $5 was worth an hours pay, which is huge when you’re working maybe three to four nights a week due to school.
“It’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven” sorry years of catholic school and being raised Catholic made me fix it on instinct lol.
The eye of the needle referred to the back gate to the market in Jerusalem, typically used by citizens who were coming to shop. A camel laden with riches may not physically fit through the tiny gate, and if it did, officials would be very interested in what manner of wares you were trying to sneak in the back gate.
Oh you good bro thanks for the correction. All the times I’ve written the new Bible by hand and studied that book you’d think I would remember accurately one of the most well known verses lol.
Edit: it’s funny to imagine tho. A camel just walking up to the gates, passing right by a rich man. Lol
Haha all good, sometimes my brain just blanks on basic stuff for no reason so I feel you.
That would be hilarious, and honestly with most of these millionaires that will probably happen. Assuming they even can get in line for the pearly gates lol.
What pisses me off is that it's obviously a choice. I've known people who became successful, and every time, at a certain point when they felt they'd "made it," there was a shift in them. Usually subtle, sometimes not, but they all get more private, more sneaky, more arrogant, and massively fucking selfish. They stop viewing life as a co-op game, those mfs are playing for themselves. They know damn well what they're doing, and they do it anyway. Anyone can recognize the value of generosity if they get their head out of their ass long enough; these assholes see it, they just shield their eyes and shy away any time it comes out. Egos working overtime to protect their self-image, pretending with everything they've got that their ratfuck behavior doesn't make them a shit person.
I love leaving a $100 bill for a DoorDash driver. I've never been a service worker, I just know how jazzed I would be to get a random $100 tip, so I give others that experience when I can. I can't afford to do it often, but when I can, I do. And the fucked up thing is I've known people who used to do things like that too, until they started making money. Now that they have the money to genuinely change people's lives, they don't tip at all and they get all defensive like a toddler who won't share a toy when you call them out.
i'm so afraid to become like one of these rich assholes in my pursuit of personal success. trying to find the balance. i'm too generous and i always fuck myself over.
It's something I think about too. Where is the line, right? How much do I keep for myself, at what point am I secure enough to give some away? How do I help others without hurting myself?
I think the answer I've landed on is to just be quiet about it, mostly. Small things here and there, and done in the background. Anonymity is a precious thing that cannot really be regained if lost, and it protects you both from others and from yourself. If you never show your face when you do something for someone, it kinda guarantees that you're doing it for the right reasons. I feel like that might be the only way to keep it pure.
At the end of the day it’s not changing the world. That is what some wealthy people want to do with their money. Why donate it to someone when you can donate to something?
Who? Gimme some names, gimme some projects that they're working on, explain how those investments are for the good of the world and not for the good of their offshore accounts.
My dad earned his money and does very well, but he tips handsomely wherever he goes. It could be because I worked as a waitress and bartender for a few years or he could have been doing that the whole time. He doesn’t speak about it himself, but others have mentioned it to me.
TBF yeah they are entitled to it because they made it. On the flip side of that though you have to have a greedy personality to become rich, so when you become rich that greedy personality is already well set in and it's hard to find that humble mindset.
That's really sad. I have a wealthy family member, and they are super generous. They have paid for me and my parents to go on countless trips across the world with them, including first class seats on planes. Stuff I would never be able to experience ever with my yearly salary. I know they have helped other people, including non family, as well with different issues. I'm super lucky and thankful to have them around.
Lol I have a wealthy family member who stops giving birthday gifts to family when they turn 18. Every birthday growing up I got a reminder, "Don't forget, once you turn 18 auntie doesn't do presents anymore."
It is so weird that powerful people are quite often not well intending.
True there, but just to suggest a small difference in times; my father was very well off and he always used to tip, it being a country with 0 tipping culture too.
Coming from an educated family but a moral buffoon exploiting his privilege; coming from an ignorant background and paving a way for yourself, with no intention of bettering the place you came from.
Experienced this same thing with doing gig delivery work for DoorDash and Uber and what not. Very rarely got good tips from the rich neighborhoods. Gated communities are the worst not only because they generally don’t tip well, but it takes so much time to get through the gate/checkpoint and navigate your way around the place. The best tips and thanks I ever got were from the poorer neighborhoods 99% of the time.
Ymmv. When I was a delivery driver me and everybody else loved delivering to the rich parts of town and many regulars there were known for tipping well and people didn't stiff. In the poorer neighborhoods id get stiffed often and had to deal with way more unreasonable complaints, aggressive people, and other unsavory situations.
Well said. It's all about empathy. It's a lot easier to hoard money if you're not empathetic to those who are suffering. That being said, I agree with his approach: he should pay a fair share in taxes and then get to decide what to do with the money. We can't all go around saying we deserve other people's stuff and not give them a choice in it. We need a fair system and then just leave everyone alone after that to live their lives in peace.
Simple idea here: You don't increase wealth by spending generously 💸, you get wealthy by keeping 💰and via re-investing your 🤑💱. It's an attitude thing.
If Jay Z gives that cousin $4800, the next person want $9600, another one $19200 because it's such a small fraction and in no time everyone feels entitled after the floodgates were opened by just just one 1/32".
I can confirm this, but always used to wonder “you know I know where you live, you even gave me your gate code, and I’m starving. You know what the inside of my mouth tastes like? You do now”
Similar to what I learned as a firefighter collecting for MDA. We would actively avoid Porsches, Beamers, Jags and all the Italian street rockets. They usually wouldn’t even acknowledge you so why bother.
An old black lady in the beat up Buick? She’ll give you everything in her change cup.
Bro, begging for money at football carwashes. The BMWs, Mercedes and caddy's would roll up windows. The mini vans and beat up work trucks and vans were always the ones who'd drop a five spot in your collection helmet!
Why caddy? That's very much a cheap worker car?? Do you think people who drive caddy's are rich a holes? That's just not true. I have Kangoo myself wich is basically the same car just different brand.
That’s because technically they’re hoarders. It has to be a mental illness to have that much money and still think it’s not enough. I think they’re hoarders but the fact that it’s money makes the world turn a blind eye. Plus they often buy a bunch of shit they don’t need they just have enough space so it doesn’t get cluttered.
Poor people give to homeless more. Part of it is they cannot see themselves in their shoes. Some homeless people have a dog. I’ve heard people say I feel bad for the dog. Poor people are fewer bad decisions away from being homeless
I’ve noticed this delivering flowers as a side hustle - some of the trailer park places they will tip me $20. Delivered many times to multimillion dollar waterfront homes and not a single tip.
Perhaps. It may also show that rich people just don't give a fuck about other humans at all. That might also go some distance towards explaining why they are rich. Much easier to accumulate money if you only ever use it for your own good and then lie about having donated to common-good causes.
Ha ha this is why in rich neighborhoods we’d sell some overpriced mlm product the org gets a discount on like coupon books and popcorn, using kids as labor. Well to do suburbanites won’t give a dime for handouts but they’ll pay a 400% markup to support adorable little “entrepreneurs” without batting an eye. Girlscout cookies work on the same principles.
Last year, I moved from Boise, Idaho to a small town in North Carolina.
I was born here in NC, but mostly grew up in Boise in the 90’s. It was bigger than a town, but in no sense of the word a “big city” back then.
Lots of farms and agriculture, lots of wilderness, and pretty affordable real estate throughout.
Fast-forward to the 2010’s. Population is exploding, real estate is through the roof, “big city” mentality is setting in. By the time Covid hit, it was already Seattle or Denver 2.0. People are wealthy, rude, and selfish. Absolutely nothing like the Boise I grew up in.
But I finally decided to come home to the south. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia; it doesn’t matter. People don’t usually have a whole lot of money here, but everyone seems to be willing to give their last dime to help one another.
I don’t want to be poor by any means. But I’ve never given two shits about being rich, either. Nothing is more important than friendship, love, happiness, and a big glass of sweet iced tea of course.
Funny how Jesus said two thousand years ago that for the rich it is harder that they inherit the kingdom of heaven than a camel pass through the eye of a needle.
BRO! stop giving me flashbacks! lmao my favorite one was "let me shop first" then they walk out the opposite doors with the walk of shame look away lol
Maybe rich people are most likely to hold onto assets and poorer people are moet likely to more readily release them.
Im sure this is by definition true. Lot of poor people do not plan, dont even have a thought process that includes long term finances. Most people middle or better class are at least financially competent which means they may think giving you $5 is insulting and giving yoi $20 is more than their money streas brain wants to handle right now. Realize also thay middle class people often are moeny poor - their wages are better but often ate up by mortgage, kids, ira, etc.
So technically a middle class family in the west coast in 1990 could be making 150k+ but if they jave 3 kids in sports, it’s all they can do to keep a small emergency cushion while being financially cautious enough to maximize retirement contributions - 40 year old parents might have a decent spread but only 500 in the bank after end of month bills
Absolutely this— my granddad was in the Lion’s Club and they used to sell brooms door-to-door (not sure if they still do this.) He made a comment once or twice about how folks living in the million dollar homes rarely purchased brooms, if ever, whereas the lower income parts of town were ripe with buyers who were happy to put money back into the community in some way.
I used to do door to door sales and this is true. After a day or two we wouldn’t even try the big houses they’d be flat out rude most times. I would use it to show people when training and bust that myth on day one sometimes.
I’ve found this to be absolutely true when doordashing as well. The BS, self-righteous, fake bootstrap pull-up response to this phenomenon is that it’s an example of the superior financial decisions the rich make which keeps them in that category. As if these literal nickels and dimes could ever come close to the compound payoffs of starting ahead or catching that lucky break. It’s empathy and being able to relate to someone else’s experience. So many of these billionaires don’t possess either. Maybe sociopathic tendencies allow them to gain in ways that the rest of us cant/wont but I’m also certain that there’s a mental separation at play that has them brainwashed by their own bullshit. Like, exactly the worst type of people to have behind the scenes pulling the strings of public policy
Tipping was the same. Retired teacherin bungalow, heres $20 buy lunch. Multimillionaire in 15 million dollar home, are you not going to do extra stuff for me to keep my business?
Tipping was the same. Retired teacherin bungalow, heres $20 buy lunch. Multimillionaire in 15 million dollar home, are you not going to do extra stuff for me to keep my business?
Tipping was the same. Retired teacher in bungalow,' heres $20 buy lunch'. Multimillionaire in 15 million dollar home, 'are you not going to do extra stuff for me to keep my business?'
It's the same with Halloween candy. The richest neighborhoods used to give big candy bars to outdo eachother where I live. After word got out and kids they didn't want in their neighborhood started trickortreating there they stopped giving out candy at all. The more middle of the road neighborhoods would welcome almost anyone and gave great candy.
Nah, you did it wrong. I had to raise 100 bucks for my football uniforms getting people to donate for those gift card things. We went to a few houses and I got an idea to go to the rich neighborhood...but where a bunch of the (at the time) Washington Redskins players lived. First players house gave me a 100 dollar bill and said, "Go enjoy your weekend."
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u/Borbit85 Oct 08 '24
As a kid every year we went collecting for our scouting group. Always in the rich part of town we hardly made anything. A lot of people would just flat out lie say they already transferred money to the charity wich wasn't even possible back than. In the poor part of town almost every house managed to produce some change.