Fairness

For many people, income inequality is a matter of fairness and that is why there are those who do not favor canceling student debt. They say what about those who never went to college or those who paid their own way. Fairness is what people want but not all the way. The average family income is $60,000. If the laws were change so that every family made that it would be the ultimate in fairness. All those making less than $60,000 would be for this but those making more than $60,000 would be opposed. If we passed a law that took all the money from the rich the lower income people would not be any better off but would they feel better. People often describe the depression as a time when everyone was poor and they weren't that aware of the rich. They only time they saw the rich was in movies but that was like make believe. The compromise is to bring the upper incomes down a notch or two and for many the best way is to tax the rich and give the money to the poor. Thus the income tax which began in 1913 is the way society has chosen to close the income gap. This is not working as well as intended since much of the wealth of rich people is not dependent on income. The Walmart family wealth is $240 billion and their income is derived from the 1.4 billion shares of Walmart stock that they own. Each share pays $2 so their annual income is $2.8 billion dollars. If you taxed this at 90% they would still keep their wealth along with $280 million in dividend income. The most recent answer is to tax wealth. Senator Warren has suggested a 6% wealth tax each year which means the Walmart family would pay $14 billion per year in wealth tax. They would sell stock to pay that. Walmart stock goes up that much each year so they would maintain their $240 billion.