Universal health care, while imperfect, is generally a good idea for for low income and middle income people. In the United States, the richest 5% of tax payers pay 56% of federal income tax
Even putting aside the talk of universal health care, almost all people in the United States are net beneficiaries of taxes from the ultra wealthy, all because the ultra wealthy pay the majority of taxes.
"The top 5% of households, three quarters of whom had two income earners, had incomes of $166,200 or higher."
That means in a lot of those cases, each person in a two-earner family earned an average of $83,100 per year. Not exactly ultra-wealthy.
However, there are a few dozen families who ARE ultra-wealthy, and this year their tax rate fell BELOW that of the middle class for the first time.
It's sick that the ultra-wealthy have bought our government representatives and had laws passed that give them ever greater wealth while simultaneously having laws passed that give them lower tax rates.
They game the system so that money is extracted from the lower classes and passed up to them....whether it's through stagnant wages that give them unprecedented corporate earnings and bonuses, predatory lending practices that keep the poor in debt and paying exorbitant interest rates, creating a gig economy that keeps workers from getting benefits, and any other number of nefarious means.
Honestly these talking points are just propaganda by ultra wealthy elites.
People need to understand that what the top 10% or 5% pay is irrelevant. Pretty much anyone outside the top 1%-0.5% is one cancer diagnosis or other negative life event from the street (in the US).
The top 1% have 40% of the wealth in the US.
The difference between one million dollars and 1 billion dollars is approximately 1 billion dollars. You can get paid $2000 per hour for 40 hours per week for TWO HUNDRED YEARS and still not have a billion dollars.
It's infuriating that people will throw out stats like most millionaires are first generation (not that I've actually seen even that stat convincingly backed up) when millionaires are a distraction. The people out there paying no tax and sponging up government payouts aren't the poor, or even the top 10-20%. They are the top tiny fraction of 1% who own almost everything and fund think tanks, politicians etc. to keep us all fighting each other and looking the other way.
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