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With tomorrow, April 17, being tax day, Gallup is out with a new poll showing the country evenly divided about the amount of taxes they pay. Roughly half the country, 46%, thinks they play too much, and roughly half the country, 47%, thinks the amount they pay is about right. From Gallup:
Looking at the chart it is interesting to see what a big impact the Bush tax cuts had on these perceptions. Ironically by finally succeeding with implementing that part of their agenda, the Republicans ended up undercutting what was one of their stronger political selling points.
This poll suggests why the Democrats have made tax season all about the Buffett Rule, instead of taxes in general. From a purely political perspective it has been a fairly successful PR operation. If the past week had been just a general discussion about taxes rates, it would not have favored the Democrats. The Democratic position, that the tax rates for a vast majority of Americans should remain unchanged, is neither particularly popular nor unpopular.
Instead the Democrats successfully made the media conversation this tax season almost exclusively about what millionaires pay. On that small subset of the overall tax issue, Democrats have a clear advantage.
61 Comments
I am the 46%er who “plays” too much. Typo.*g*
If I think I also qualify as a 47%er who thinks its fair, does that make me a 93%er?
I got a idear:
Set aside a specific state and make it a “pay what you think you should pay” state. People who live in that state will pay only what they think they should pay in taxes.
They will get no federal monies, nor monies from other states, to maintain their infrastructure, schools, etc.
People moving there must first settle their tax bill with their current state so you don’t get people moving there for a week to avoid paying taxes and then hotfooting it back to a state where they have “plumbing” and “roads”.
I totally get what you are saying. How I feel is relative to how the government is acting or not acting on my behalf. It’s hard to think that what you are paying is just right when you are constantly barraged with the fact that your government is ignoring the plight of average Americans and siding with business interests.
Just imagine what kind of society we could build with all that money if the pentagon didn’t spend half of it blowing shit up in the deserts of the world.
We’ve got one. It’s called Texas. (Except for the federal monies part).
From the Gallup link, the segment of the population that pays nearly no income tax, thinks they pay too much. Meanwhile, the methodology doesn’t say whether any respondents actually pay income taxes.
Heh.
Income segment less than $30k per year; 50% think their taxes are too high.
Income segment above $75k per year; 48% think their taxes are too high.
Where’s the relevancy in your comment?
As for your question as to whether respondents actually pay income taxes? I helped someone file taxes for the first time yesterday. 1040EZ, 21 years old, so he doesn’t qualify for earned income credit (gotta be between 25 and 64). He made less than $13k last year (only worked part of the year) and ended up (after refund) paying about $600 in taxes.
Tell me how someone is supposed to live on less than $12,500 a year? Why does that person have to pay any taxes?
I’ll explain this slowly for you. Income taxes are not our governments sole source of revenue. If it were there would be a large sum of money sitting in the Social Security trust fund instead of IOUs from the Treasury.
So even those that do not pay income taxes have been funding our government.
Also, there are those pesky regressive sales taxes, tolls, property taxes… those types of things. Poor people have to pay those just like rich people.
And I shall explain to you slowly in turn, that the survey is about income taxes
My 19 year old son made $18,500 and some change(The kid put in serious hours.) He ended up owing the state government $170 on top of what he already paid($380). The government refunded $600 of his income taxes but that is because he overpaid. His taxes for the year were over $800 not including the $900 or so odd dollars they took out for social security and medicare(and lord only knows what those programs will look like by the time he hits retirement age.)
So technically even though he made under $20,000 he paid over $1700 towards our federal government and another $500 towards our state. That means he was expected to start a household on less than $17,000 a year. Good luck with that.
??? So the kid could live on $13k but not $12.5k? What?
Meanwhile, in aggregate, people making under $30k pay little to nothing in support of the entire Federal Government. Nothing for administration, defense, interest, or welfare. And here you are on about this kid paying 4.5%. Tsk.
Everybody should pay something, even if it’s only a dollar. We have the most progressive income tax system already, and something like the millionaire’s tax won’t help. (That only covers 11 hours of Govt operations).
You are full of crap. Quit repeating your crap talking points about anyone making under $30,000 not supporting the Federal government. The Social Security and Medicare taxes alone are over 4.5% so your 4.5% is a bullshit number. Or are you going to lie and pretend that money isn’t going into general revenue.
MY problem is not how much I pay, but what the federal government DOES with it. I’ve seen figure asd high as 40 cents on the dollar are wasted on unecessary projects, over priced programs, and downright theft and graft.
Anybody here agree?
I don’t think too many people around here are going to support you on your assertion that Social Security and Medicare taxes go into the General Fund.
He can’t really live on $13k. But in order to qualify for any government assistance he would have to make less than $9k.
You’re missing the point. If you want to continue in your willful ignorance, that’s fine. As for your assertion that he (or anyone else) pays nothing; social security and medicare/medicaid taxes are not returned or refunded, no matter how little you make. This same individual I reference above paid over $1,000 in SSI and Medicare/Medicaid contributions.
$2,554 in total tax contributions, on income of $12,709. He’s getting back $1,004 in income tax. That still leaves a total contribution of $1,550.
He doesn’t qualify for government assisted health care. He doesn’t qualify for income assistance or food programs. His employer offers no health care, no PTO, no dental or vision.
He can’t afford to provide for his own basic needs. But he still paid $1,550 in taxes last year. Plus every penny of gas tax, sales tax, and tolls (in Texas you’ve gotta take a toll road everywhere).
After federal tax contributions (minus the refund) his net income was $11,159. Figure half of that was spent on consumer goods and services. That’s equal to $5,579.50. Tax that at 8.5%. That’s $474.25. That leaves $5,105.25. He takes a toll road to and from work each day. $3.50 each way. He worked this job for 5 months. Figure an average of 22 working days per month, at $7 a day. That’s another $770 in taxes. That leaves $4,335.25.
Now shooter; I challenge you to go out into the market, find health insurance, groceries, gas, utilities, clothing, automotive maintenance, and any other consumer goods and services needed for a 5 month period, and do it for less than $870 per month.
Also, add up the above numbers. In total contributions, after a $1,004 refund of federal income tax, this individual still contributed roughly $2,800 in various taxes. (Roughly..).
If you take the net income after federal contributions ($11159) and calculate $2,794 as a percentage, you get 25%.
This all, of course, is assuming this individual could also pay rent with the other half of that income.
Doesn’t seem very fair, equitable, or feasible, does it?
Social Security Trust Fund income has been almost completely tapped to cover shortfalls in the General Fund.
SSI Contributions over the last few years have only made a pit stop in the SS Trust Fund before being borrowed by Congress.
They can dislike the fact that excess monies collected were considered part of the general budget but it does not negate it as factual.
We would not be discussing cutting Social Security and increasing age of retirement if it were not for the fact that the trillions in excess paid in to the Social Security trust fund by regular workers like my son or that worker KrisinTX talks about has been spent.
The irony is he probably pays about the same as a percentage as someone like Mitt Romney who makes most of his money off investing in the labor of others and is in the top bracket. In 2010 Romney made 21.7 million and paid 3 million. He was in the top 1% bracket. He paid 14%. Meanwhile shooter is whining that a guy who made less than $13,000 ONLY paid 12%. Gotta love the logic.
Your worker friend should totally go for the Sheila Bair $10 million dollar loan program. Than he could e like Mitt Romney and sit home and play video games and collect the money off of the labor of others AND pay low taxes.
Yup, that is the big “problem” with Social Security – now that it is no longer something that hides how much the tax cuts for the “job creators” are costing the American public and the treasuries that are the IOUs that Congress has parked in the fund must actually be paid, we can’t afford Social Security. My answer to that is that the day you default on paying China or Saudi Arabia for their ‘investment’ in the US is the day you can default on the working people of America. Fuck Pete Peterson and the various financial wizard assholes who think that that they shouldn’t contribute a great deal of their unearned income to the running of this country. When their essential tax rate is actually lower then their secretaries they not only aren’t paying enough, they aren’t paying enough by a vast margin. As for corporations, well they need to be treated the same as they are in Germany – and they pay taxes there – including on income earned in other countries. Think of it this way, for once we really need to have people act like work is important, small businesses are important. That means that our tax system is upside down. And everything the right wing hacks support are the lies meant to keep the status quo – Exxon and Goldman pay little or nothing, but the locally owned hardware store on the corner pays through the nose and working people pay more in taxes and fees then the hedge fund managers and vulture capitalists shipping jobs to indonesia and siphoning cash from pension funds. And the things that should be a given for the public in this country are too expensive…
That’s what I mean by relative. Am I happy that our income taxes are going for neverending wars while programs like WIC are cut? No. Am I happy that I am spending money on agencies that are supposed to be responsible for food safety or verifying that businesses have a plan b for drilling and that they have essentially signed off on the idea of self policing? No. Would I be comfortable with the amount I paid if we had a functional government that had priorities that matched my own and spent more time promoting the general welfare rather than engaging in warfare and actually policed the business community to ensure that profitability didn’t trump the safety and welfare of others? Yep.
I guess you missed this post by Jon Walker.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/04/06/looking-at-our-budget-and-our-actual-needs/#comment-169726
Most people at FDL were arguing that SS and MM should not be counted as part of the budget. But if you say it does, then over 50% of the US budget goes to SS, MM, and safety net programs. Only 20% goes to defense. Is that the way you want to count it?
SS and MM are not counted as part of the budget. Repayments to the fund for monies borrowed are part of the budget. It’s a pretty simple distinction, alan. Please stop trying to mince words. You’re being obtuse. I have come to respect you, even though we disagree a LOT on politics and principal. Here you’re acting a bit like a common troll.
And by the way, yes we would be discussing cutting Social Security and increasing age of retirement if it were not for the fact that the trillions in excess paid in to the Social Security trust fund by regular workers has been spent.
In the annual Trustees Report they acknowledge that there is currently a $2.6T surplus in the SS Trust Fund. Whether you call it IOU’s or T-Bills or whatever, there is a surplus, but that surplus will be depleted in 2036 even if all the IOU’s are paid back. That’s the reason to talk about making changes now so they don’t have to be so big later.
I think we agree. I was responding to #13 above who said of SS, “Or are you going to lie and pretend that money isn’t going into general revenue.”
My response at #15 was: “I don’t think too many people around here are going to support you on your assertion that Social Security and Medicare taxes go into the General Fund.”
I may be saying it wrong, so I’ll pipe down lest I be called names.
Whether someone feels they should or should not be counted as part of the general budget is irrelevant. At this point IT IS counted towards the general budget.
To coin Rumsfeld, we go to war with the budget we have, not the budget we wish we had.
I’m completely okay with 50% of the American budget going towards Americans. I actually served in the military. I was there during September when there was a rush to spend money so that it would be there the next year so I’m totally fine with less than 20% with the caveat that cuts do not come from diminishing programs meant for morale and instead come from creating an aresenal to blow the world up 15 times over. In 2011 we spent more money on defense then any other country. We outspent China, who actually has more people to defend, by about 6 billion. We outspent India, who also has more people to defend, by about 10 billion. So I consider the word ONLY somewhat inaccurate in regard to our defense funding.
Apologies. Apparently my reading comprehension skills need some polishing today. I read cwaltz’s original comment as meaning SS and MM funds are essentially part of the general because congress snatches those funds up constantly.
The borrowed funds don’t have to be paid back by the people from whom they were borrowed (wage earners). It can be paid back by the people who benefitted from the loans. (War profiteers, drug companies, bailed out banks, and people who earn their income in ways that result in lower tax rates than those for wage earners would be on my list of who should pay back the loans.)
The Social Security Trust Fund was established in 1939 to receive monies collected for Social Security through payroll taxes. The monies in this fund are managed by the Department of the Treasury; they are not, nor have they ever been, put into the “general operating fund.”
However, the Social Security Act specifies that the monies in the fund may “be invested in securities backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal government,” such as treasury bills, treasury notes, and treasury bonds, as well as special issue bonds. So, essentially, the government can “invest” Social Security funds by lending them to itself, then spending that money on programs not related to Social Security (e.g., defense, foreign aid, education). This has always been the case.
During the Johnson administration, Social Security and other Federal programs that operate through trust funds were counted officially in the budget. This did not mean that it was actually part of the general fund, rather that it was finally recorded as part of the budget.
Perhaps this will help you out Alan. The government “invested” monies in the Iraq war rather than force people like Mitt Romney to pay more. That is why we are having a discussion on raising the retirement age and cutting benefits. Otherwise the government might have to come up with the money it owes the Treasury for the excess funds spent and LENT to it. The big “crisis” is that the government does not want to have to come up with funds to pay back the money it borrowed.
That is exactly what I meant.
Let me borrow your crystal ballbecause I feel fairly certain that alot can and will go on between now and 2036. People will be born and people will die. People will enter the workforce and people will leave it. Jobs will be created and jobs will be destroyed.
Just like “nobody could have ever imagined a war” or “nobody ever could have imagined that bankers would blow up the economy” I feel confident there will be more nobody could have ever imagined.
It is always amusing to me though that we can print money to bail out the bankers but it is totally unacceptable to suggest that we could do that to satisfy our obligations to the elderly. It’s totally an example of what I mean by suggesting that government priorities are not mine. Go figure.
I am glad you stated it that way. To call them IOU’s is buying into the meme that there are worthless IOU’s in the SS account and therefore it needs to be “reformed” Messaging is important. It should be stated that way all the time. *g*
You don’t need a crystal ball. Here’s 340 pages of methodology, which takes into account everything you listed and more.
Long-Range OASDI Projection Methodology Intermediate Assumptions of the 2011 Trustees Report
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2011/documentation_2011.pdf
Heh, and to think I was just being lectured to, about being nicer to people like you. Meanwhile, back at reality, the cash flow has reversed and SS shortfalls are now funded by general revenues. So no, SS does not contribute to Federal Govt operations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-debt-fallout-how-social-security-went-cash-negative-earlier-than-expected/2011/10/27/gIQACm1QTM_story.html
Give me the cliff notes version did they use ARIMA or a Lee Carter model for life expectancy? Oherwise it’ll be a couple of days before I dissect 340 pages of charts.
There’s a basic flaw in your anecdote, he only worked part of the year. Regardless he’s going to have to put on his big boy pants, and pay taxes like the rest of us. If you want to protest that we all pay too much in taxes, I’m with you. If you think some people should be excused from paying Federal taxes because they aren’t making enough, you’re addressing the wrong issue. Why did he make so little?
I’m sure I’ll cry myself to sleep tonight because you were mean on the internet to me. Pu-lease. I’m made of sterner stuff than that.
Hmmmmmmmm I wonder why they aren’t using that 2.6 trillion dollar surplus they have ? Oh wait they aren’t using it because they invested in a lousy war that wasn’t needed.
You did read the part where they mention that surplus by the way I hope.
Oh and for the record I’m much more comfortable bailing out seniors with my tax dollars than banking magnates with million dolllar salaries.
I have to ask, where do you think the Govt would get money to pay back what it owes to the SS trust fund? Something other than general revenues?
My favorite part of the article you link shooter is this.
“I don’t think anybody envisioned a 30-year retirement,” Freedman said. “That was never really the goal. And it certainly doesn’t make any sense today.”
People retire at earliest by 62. The life expectancy for a person is somewhere around 71.
Let’s do a little math.
71 which is the average life expectancy minus 62 which is the earliest that a person can retire is a) 9 years or b) 30 years.
As for your response to 38, my answer is that the Congressional deadbeats can go to the Fed. After all, it’s been completely comfortable with printing money to keep the bankers and investors afloat.
NOT that I was there when they wrote it, but “The Constitution” and subsequent amendments seemed like a pretty good plan there, for a while.
Where did it ALL go wrong????? I’m thinking around 1980, give or take.
I’m still reeling over the fact that we pay 6 figure incomes for Congressmembers. I sure wish I could get a six figure paying gig where I could go “whoopsie, my bad I totally didn’t read the whole bill before voting on it or who could have imagined that a for profit industry would be interested in their bottom line instead of the economic interests of those who they service. Who knew?”
It’s as priceless as Mr. six figure Dimon being stunned that in hindsight it was a bad idea to lend money without getting documentation that ascertained a person could pay it back.
I totally missed the bus on being overpaid AND incompetent apparently.
My son worked the full year. He made $17,590. He paid $1818 in taxes including his Social Security and Medicare. In other words, he paid 4% less than Romney in terms of a percentage of his substantially lower income.
I don’t believe the Romney number had SS and Medicare added in, just federal income tax.
Payroll taxes on $17,590 = SS at the happy Obama rate of 4.2% and Medicare at 1.45% he would have paid $993.84 in SSMM, from $1818, that leaves $824.16 in federal income tax. Or about 4.68%, apples to apples.
As far as cliff notes go, they use a host of methods and both ARIMA and Lee Carter are mentioned (I admit here that this is getting a bit over my head).
https://www.socialsecurity.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v65n1/v65n1p26.html
This article suggests that because of the type of income Romney would have paid “almost nothing” (item #3) in payroll taxes. Don’t know if this is accurate, but it seems plausible.
Most of his money came from investments so it did not get taxed for Social Security or Medicare.
I’ll take a longer look at what you posted tonight. 340 pages is alot to delve through. For the most part though I’m not a big fan of prognostication because quite often there are factors that aren’t considered or things that are weighted that change over time.
I daresay the people who came up with the formula for the poverty level(also actuarials I’m sure) knew that when they created the formula for it that housing would eventually consume more of a person’s income then food would.
Yep and it looks like that 13.9% number from this year includes Social Security and Medicare taxes.
So let’s sum things up, a guy making less than $20,000 a year paid over 10% of his income in taxes. Meanwhile the guy who made over $20 million paid 13.9% of his income. Which one is the deadbeat again?
We are paying our taxes directly to large corps.
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/04/12/taxed-by-the-boss/
Across the United States more than 2,700 companies are collecting state income taxes from hundreds of thousands of workers – and are keeping the money with the states’ approval, says an eye-opening report published on Thursday.
Thanks for the link. It’s an interesting article. My state is not on the list but I know that it gave away millions for a for profit to create an intermodal. Meanwhile my son, in addition to that 10% he paid in Federal taxes paid another $550 to the state. It’s only 3% but it is still ridiculous when you consider he makes under $20,000. If I had to choose to subsidize those making under $20,000 or billion dollar corporations I choose the former over the later.
Well let’s see, your son contributed $800 to our common debt, and Romney contributed $3 million.
$800, $3 million. Hmmmm.
The good news is that some day your son will get a real job and make enough to support a household.
Well, since the guy who earned $20 million then had some $17 million left to live on, and the guy who made $20,000 then had some $17,000 to live on, Romney should be starting to create some of those “real jobs” pretty soon now with all that money.
Ok, so how much should the $20,000 guy be allowed to keep? Will you feel relieved if he keeps $17,500? How much should Romney be allowed to keep?
reply to @51
How much they “keep” is a strawman. I don’t know the young man who made $20,000 personally, but speaking generally, the path we’re on now may result in him or others in his position never getting a “real job” and “keeping” more, no matter how hard they work. Some reasons for this: Some jobs have gone overseas and will never come back unless U.S. workers are so desperate that they will work for slave wages – that $20,000 may itself be a thing of the past. Public service jobs won’t come back because state funds are going to (see sunshine @47 above). There may be some skilled, professional jobs, but college is pretty much already beyond the reach of any but the wealthy, and “working one’s way through school” is becoming economically impossible because of few jobs, low wages, high tuition.
I doubt that simply tweaking the tax code is in itself a way to solve our problems and put us on a sustainable path, that and much more is needed. But your dismissal of everyone who has less than you as not willing to work hard is not only insulting to people about whom you know nothing, but shows no real desire to understand the situation and come up with real solutions.
As you say, changing the tax code won’t help him, nor will dissing Romney. The only solution to Jr’s problem is preparing himself for something else other than what he’s doing now. It’s up to Jr, nobody else.
I said the tax code wasn’t in itself a solution. The rest of your reply shows you either don’t understand the economic, financial, and political system as it exists today and where it’s leading, or somehow think you will be exempt from the harm it is doing and will do to all of us.
We’ve been on a path for at least 30 years of increasing concentration of wealth and income to a very small percentage of the people. They, and their apologists, never think that concentration has gone far enough. They present endless reasons why those who have the most should have more, and those who have the least should have less.
I gave you several reasons why hard work and individual initiative aren’t the issue in whether people can earning a living. That’s a reality built into the system as it exists today, regardless of any one individual’s own hard work and initiative. You apparently will defend that reality no matter how much devastation results, and think the devastation will somehow never touch you personally.
My son has a “real job.” It’s Romney that makes his income off the wages of others labor. It’s your type of thinking that is driving youth like my son away from this country and seeing it as a crumbling empire.
My son was able to save $7,000 of his income(because he lives at home). His game plan is to save enough and look into expatriating. Can’t say that I blame him. Why should he invest time and energy on a country that sees him laboring day in and day out(caring for other people’s children) as not a real job because the income for his job is not quite the equivalent of amoral executives? Why should he put his energy,time and resources into a country that doesn’t believe educating it’s youth is as important as bombing the crap out of other countries? He may indeed have what you term a “real job” but it won’t be here and it won’t be this country that benefits from his labor. Pity. I figure when all is said and done folks like you will have their bones picked when keeping 17 million is not enough for folks like Romney and they increasingly pick all you rubes off and insist that the share YOU pay isn’t nearly enough.
Shooter is one of the apologists you speak of.
The fact that he sees things in terms of income(no matter how earned) rather than value added to an economy speaks volumes to that fact. He didn’t even bother to find out what the job was before declaring it “not a real job.” It might interest him to know my community has volunteer firefighters. Only the chief draws a paycheck. The firefighters make nothing(and lately they’ve had problems attracting labor willing to work for that.) The teachers in our area start as teacher’s aides for $9.00 an hour. An E4 over 4 makes under $30,000. The deputies in our area start at $33,248.
In other words, a firefighter, teacher, police officer, soldier all collectively don’t add the value that Mitt Romney does by the mere fact that Romney contributed 3 million and they did not.
It’s absurd but that is the prism that he chooses to view the world through. It’s the exact reason as you so eloquently have stated that our country is going to heck in a handbasket. All of these services will diminish as people like Romney insist that their share is just “too much.” People like shooter will be left on their own. I sure hope he’s up on his basic firefighting, security, and other survival skills. It’s a brave new frontier in America where it will be every man and woman for themselves because the Romneys of the world are too greedy and cheap to pay to live in a country that benefits the majority rather than just them.
Ah. I’ve been talking about taxes, and now we’re talking economic opportunity, yes? I can certainly agree that our place in the world has changed quite a bit in the last 30 years. Buggy whip manufacturers had the same problem, as does the car makers in Detroit who displaced the buggy whip makers. The only constant is change, yet some people think we should pay people to make buggy whips.
Life is indeed harder than 30 years ago, and for reasons we have no control over. You can’t tell the Chinese to stop working cheaply. You can’t tell oil producers to lower prices. Just like in relationships the only thing one can control is ones self.
Cwaltz is correct I’m an “apologist”. So you can discount what I say or consider on your own whether my points ring true.
* Whatever Romney makes has no bearing on what that boy makes. Income is not a zero sum game.
* Whatever Romney pays in taxes has no bearing on what the boy pays in taxes. Even if Romney pays more, the boy will not pay less.
* Even if Romney pays more, it won’t change our economy or our relative world position.
* The global economy is a free market, there is no central global authority. We are either competitive in that global market or we aren’t, and that means declining living standards for some.
I’m sorry but that’s the reality that no politician can change.
Your son is a baby sitter? He has no skills?
Good luck with the expat thing, I think America has all the baby sitters we need.
We certainly do not have enough people caring for the children, because schools, libraries, daycare centers, playgrounds, community centers, clinics, are being shut down or “privatized” for the simple reason that rich people aren’t rich enough yet, and think that all funds must go only to them and all institutions must serve only them.
Your words don’t “ring true” at all. There’s no “free market” and “global competition.” There’s the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the history of humanity, and those that hold this wealth and power are using it to acquire all the land, water, access to minerals, governments, colleges, security forces, media, genetic control of the world food supply, public assets, and public spaces. You may call the system by a pretty name like “freedom” or a harsh name like “plutocracy.”
The problem isn’t that one particular individual hasn’t acquired a particular skillset that serves the plutocracy so well that, at least for now, the plutocrats are willing to pay that individual a decent wage. The problem is a system that (1) only transfers wealth upward, not into jobs that do anything except enrich the rich (2) ensures there will be few jobs at any skill level that pay a decent wage, and (3) convinces people – you seem to be one of them – that as long as someone somewhere can find one of those few decent jobs, then all is well, that they are somehow safe, that nothing else happening in the world matters, and that there is nothing anyone can ever do to build a better system.
(I’ll check back once or twice in case you decide to reply. But it’s late in this thread, so if you reply, you’ll have the last word, I think we’ve gone round this circle enough for now,)
typo: should say rich people think they aren’t rich enough