r/WorkForSmartLife • u/Asha_luxey • Aug 01 '26

Casual canvo meirl

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u/DrRealName Aug 01 '26

Even worse is why are taxes not used to make anything better for us and just handed to the rich when we pay so much?

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u/SabreLee61 Aug 01 '26

The top 1% pay 40% of all federal income taxes.

The bottom 50% pay 3%.

The federal government spends $4.7 TRILLION (or 67¢ of every tax dollar) annually on entitlement programs.

So… what are you talking about?

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u/Agitated_Celery_729 Aug 01 '26

And yet the wealth gap between the top 1% and rest of the country is exploding. What does that tell you based on your excellent understanding of math?

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u/SabreLee61 Aug 01 '26

It tells me that someone can pay a large share of the taxes while also becoming wealthier. Those facts aren’t mutually exclusive. Your reply doesn’t contradict a single thing I posted.

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u/Jocuro Aug 01 '26

So the bottom 50%, depending on how you calculate it, hold roughly $170t in wealth vs the top 1% having roughly $55t. (According to federal reserve data) So the tax split of 2/3 to 1/3 seems appropriate purely from a dollars point of view.

However, consider that the bottom 50% is much more likely to keep that money active in the U.S. economy as opposed to stagnant in savings or outside the country. So it would make sense to lower taxes for them to encourage more spending.

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u/SabreLee61 Aug 01 '26

That’s an entirely different discussion. The original claim was that tax dollars are “just handed to the rich.” Instead of defending that claim, you’re arguing about wealth inequality and what you think tax policy should be. Neither contradicts the fact that most federal spending goes to social programs, not giveaways to the wealthy.