Throughout the past several decades, people have begun to question the rate at which the rich pay their taxes. People in lower economic classes will argue until they are blue in the face about how the upper class should take on more of the burden, and wealthier classes insist that the rates should be equal for all Americans. While some of the population is unnecessarily wealthy, upper class citizens earn higher salaries due to hard work and thousands of dollars worth of student loans. Wealthier citizens should not be charged with higher levels of taxes unless they earn over $1,000,000 annually in order to keep the American economy from veering towards socialism while still lowering the income gap between the middle class and the top 1% of Americans. …show more content…
However, this isn’t always true. People who have professions that earn a higher salary work twice as much or as diligently to earn the amount that they do. A friend of my father’s is an anesthesiologist, who earns close to $400,000, which places her in a higher economic class than most people. She works 80 hours a week on average, went through 8 years of school and 5 years of residency, and accrued close to $200,000 worth of student loans. With this amount of work and effort poured into a career, a higher salary is warranted, and would be discriminatory to force a higher tax level because of it. Raising the tax levels on higher earning individuals is not only inequitable for those who invest a higher level of ambition into their career, but also acts as a disincentive for others to put in the effort to acquire a higher paying …show more content…
The tax system should be organized in a way that allows the wealth to be redistributed evenly throughout the economic classes, which promotes the belief that the wealthy should be taxed at a higher percentage. Taxing at a higher percentage is fallacious, as it skews the income proportions being paid into taxes. If a person were to earn $40,000 annually, and pay 25% in taxes, they would be contributing $10,000 to the government, while someone earning $400,000 that was taxed at 25% would be contributing $100,000. These different incomes are taxed at the same proportion, which consequently changes the amount that have to pay in taxes based on their income, while still allowing them to have fair compensation for different levels of work done. Taxing incomes at the same percentage still promotes equality without removing
The “Fairness of Taxation or Wealth Tax” is where taxes are calculated by the net worth of the person or the couple (household). This would be hard for tax collectors to determine each and every component of net worth of a person.
Should the American tax system remain the same, where individuals’ income is taxed based on how much one makes with loopholes and deductions? Should we consider a system that would eliminate progressive income taxes, taxing everyone at an equal rate through the Flat Rate Tax, or should taxes be collected through national consumption of retail goods and the Fair Tax System? Our current system of taxation is a varied percentage rate based on different income brackets. Many say that it violates our constitutional rights through unequal taxation. Multiple deductions, loopholes, special rates, and a complex system of regulations all characterize our Federal Income Tax System, prompting many to question why it is still being used (Peters, 2013).
There are many opportunities in America that can improve one’s wealth and power, thus leading to the mass amount of immigrants coming to American. Most immigrants that come to American usually are categorized as the lower class immigrants, but they take any opportunities to improve their economic status. In an article by Howard P. Chudacoff, it states “immigrants generally chose upward paths that led from manual labor into small proprietorships” (Chudacoff 1982: 104). This explains the reason why immigrants choose to come and stay in America. They start out small as laborers then over time they will work to own a small business. Even though immigrants gets to grow to move from the lower class to the middle class, the natives will be always
In the United States there are four social classes : the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class. Of these four classes the most inequality exists between the upper class and the lower class. This inequality can be seen in the incomes that the two classes earn. During the period 1979 through the present , the growth in income has disproportionately grown.The bottom sixty percent of the US population actually saw their real income decrease in 1990 dollars. The next 20% saw medium gains. The top twenty percent saw their income increase 18%. The wealthiest one percent saw their incomes rise drastically over 80%. As reported in the 1997 Center on Budget's analysis , the wealthiest one percent of Americans ( 2.6 million people) received as much after-tax income in 1994 as the bottom 35 percent of the population combined (88 million people). But in 1977 the bottom 35 percent had about twice as much after tax income as the top one percent. These statistics further show the disproportional income growth among the social classes. The gr...
Paul Krugman 's New York Times article “We Are the 99.9 Percent” and George Packer 's Foreign Affairs article “The Broken Contract” both share similar points of view. Krugman 's article discusses the large wealth gap between America 's middle class and super rich and how we need to raise taxes on the country 's richest to close the gap. Packer 's article explains how the United States reached a point of such a wide wealth gap, how political power imbalance came into play, and subtly states ways we can fix the issue.
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
Inequality exist and is high in America because the amount of income and wealth that is distributed through power. In America the income distribution is very inequality and the value of a person wealth is based on their income with their debts subtracted. “As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff, 2011). In contrary the poor do not get ahead and the rich get more. Americans are judged and placed in class categories through their home ownership which translates to wealth. Americans social class is often associated with their assets and wealth. “People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure, and to live long and healthy lives” (Domhoff, 2011). Power indicates how these “values” are not distributed equally in American society. Huge gains for the rich include cuts in capital gains and dividends and when tax rates decrease for the tiny percent of Americans income is redistributed. Taxes directly affect the wealth and income of Americans every year.
Income inequality has affected American citizens ever since the American Dream came to existence. The American Dream is centered around the concept of working hard and earning enough money to support a family, own a home, send children to college, and invest for retirement. Economic gains in income are one of the only possible ways to achieve enough wealth to fulfill the dream. Unfortunately, many people cannot achieve this dream due to low income. Income inequality refers to the uneven distribution of income and wealth between the social classes of American citizens. The United States has often experienced a rise in inequality as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, increasing the unstable gap between the two classes. The income gap in America has been increasing steadily since the late 1970’s, and has now reached historic highs not seen since the 1920’s (Desilver). UC Berkeley economics professor, Emmanuel Saez conducted extensive research on past and present income inequality statistics and published them in his report “Striking it Richer.” Saez claims that changes in technology, tax policies, labor unions, corporate benefits, and social norms have caused income inequality. He stands to advocate a change in American economic policies that will help close this inequality gap and considers institutional and tax reforms that should be developed to counter it. Although Saez’s provides legitimate causes of income inequality, I highly disagree with the thought of making changes to end income inequality. In any diverse economic environment, income inequality will exist due to the rise of some economically successful people and the further development of factors that push people into poverty. I believe income inequality e...
The current tax system that the United States uses contains several flaws. First of all, it is very complex. It is comprised of many various variables that can create loopholes. These loopholes can cause two equal income families to be paying very different tax rates. In fact, there are 480 different types of tax forms (Website). The current tax system is also very unfair for the wealthy. Because it is a progressive tax, it is higher for people who have higher incomes. People should not be punished for being successful. If a flat tax policy were instituted, then it would simplify the complicated tax system, create fairness within the economy, and promote a desire to thrive financially.
Everyone is France that is classified as “middle-class” pays the same tax, no matter what if their income is on the lower or higher end, promoting social equality within a certain tax bracket. However, the part of their system that is undemocratic is that the rich pay a much higher percent of their income, and people that have very low income do not pay income tax. The United States’ system is similar on the latter, but they have more broken down tax brackets that have the lower part of “middle class” citizens pay a lower percentage than the higher
It is perpetuated by the way wealth, power, and prestige are distributed and passed on from one generation to the next
The world contains a lot of societies, cultures, and classes. Each household belongs to some social class that represents their level of education, their work position, and their financial status. These different classes have created a conflict between people. It fills rich people's minds with the thought that poor people are criminals, and that conflict ended up with creating poverty. The authors Gilbert, Kahl, Magnet, and Gans are discussing the important causes and reasons that created poverty in comparing and contrasting these points with each other.
This essay aims to argue that an all-inclusive national identity in Australia is able to provide for a largely migratory, hence multicultural society. It will attempt to explain how Australia was able to transition from a predominantly ‘white’ nationalist framework to one in which is multicultural yet upholds Australian values. National identity as defined by Parekh (2008), indicates both to the personal identification towards a national political community deriving from membership, and to the identity of a political community that distinguishes one nation from the rest (Parekh 2008, p. 56). National identities comprise exclusive compositions of ethnicity, religious beliefs, myths, language, territorial connections and political values (Smith
Income inequality continues to increase in today’s world, especially in the United States. Income inequality means the unequal distribution between individuals’ assets, wealth, or income. In the Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes, a liberal journalist, states the inequality gap between the rich and the poor are increasing widening, and there need to have things done - tax the rich, provide better education - in order to shortening the inequality gap. America is a meritocratic country, which means that everybody has equal opportunity to be successful regardless of their class privileges or wealth. However, equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcomes. People are having more opportunities to find a better job, but their incomes are a lot less compared to the top ten percent rich people. In this way, the poor people will never climb up the ladder to high status and become millionaires. Therefore, the government needs to increase all the tax rates on rich people in order to reduce income inequality.
Social Class Stratification There are a variety of jobs around the country in various industries and depending on which industry you ultimately end up at that will set the tone for your future. There are many disadvantages and advantages for being in a certain social class as an applicant, and how an employer regards them. Many factors to these different social classes include ascribed stratification systems, “characteristics beyond the control of the individual (Ballantine and Roberts, 193), and achieved stratification systems “earn positions through their ability, efforts, and choices” (Ballantine and Roberts, 193). These lead to social stratification, “Stratification is a hierarchy of positions with regard to economic production which influences the social rewards to those in the positions”(Social Stratification).