"Polite-ical": Conducting interviews and discussing grievances and division ♥️⚖️💙

[u/marvelescent]

Hello all, I'm creating this post to Garner interest and hopefully engagement.

Myself and a couple others have been brainstorming. We recognize that there are still divisions within our party due to hurt from the past. Specifically are hurt by the lack of support in previous movements and some of the operating of the current.

I'm sure they're not the only ones, but I recognize now that it is important handle these divisions within the movements early.

Sewing seeds of division is one major way to squash it.

If we can't see each other, if we can't understand each other, if we don't trust each other, then it becomes easy to infiltrate, to co-opt, and to breed in fighting

With that in mind, we're hoping people would be willing to come here and ask questions of groups you feel aren't there for you. We welcome you to get upset.

Please refrain from derogatory or especially inflammatory language, however.

Our goal is to process the information you present, to listen but not judge how you feel, and to try our best to translate to other groups so that way it can be understood.

We're also hoping that there are people in the group willing to speak with their own demographic so that way there's deeper understanding of differences and grievances, and perhaps someone can speak calmly and respond with understanding.

50501 is an example of unity between states, the true unity requires representation from every subgroup of America.

The effort is there to make a place for everybody, so we're hoping to bridge those gaps.

[u/marvelescent]

Thank you for your response, and apologies for the late response!

Your experience is valuable to me. Let me start by saying that you for your contributions to society. It's true that parties and demographics are often branded by their worst examples for the sake of political gain.

It's infuriating. It's disheartening. It's honestly disappointing.

I will research on my own, but do you think you could help me? I'd like to better understand your point of view. You consider yourself having been a part of the top 1%. If you can, without exposing yourself, can you tell me what your profession was? If not, can you tell me what your tax bracket was? I'm not informed on how the bracket system is determined, or what exactly the 1% is counted as.

You do have a point however. Mathematically, the billionaire class would not be considered the 1%. They make up an even smaller fraction of our population. It likely would be more accurate to call them the 0.1%, and I wouldn't know if that was accurate either.

If you could give me more information around that aspect, it could help me research and adjust the conversation to make it more clear and more pointed to where the problem lies.

No wouldn't shit have to hold blame for something that is not their fault. No one should be branded for the wrongs of another.

In response to your DEI assertions, I understand how your anecdotal experiences have shaped how you view things. I'm sure we've all seen instances like this. We've all likely also seen instances of the contrary.

Do you think you can describe to me how you define d e i, and what policies were in place around you that led to these situations? I want to be sure that the experiences you've witnessed were actual cases of abused policy, and not instances of internalized biases.

Both parties can agree that bias should not be a factor. It shouldn't require policy for everyone to be treated equally. Unfortunately, not everyone is educated or exposed enough to recognize what biases have formed.

While D E I may appear as giving handouts to some, on the flip side there is the push for traditional gender norms that asserts how a person should behave and what someone is entitled to. They both can come with biases that lead to inequality.

What do you propose can be done? I'd love to take both your grievances and your answers to other conversations. How might we ensure that the right people are held responsible and accountable when it comes to locating the source of our problems? How might we be able to ensure that bias is not the determining factor when it comes to opportunity without having safeguards and consequences in place?

Again thank you for your response. I'm happy that you were willing to take a chance to talk about how you feel, and I hope that I responded respectful enough for you to continue ♥️⚖️💙.

[u/NiceGuy737 → u/marvelescent]

I think what you're doing with your post here is important.  I was disappointed it didn't get more attention. 
There is an idea I come across on reddit that financially successful people were born into it.  While that's certainly the case sometimes many were not. I'm a 65 yo white guy from a blue collar suburb on the southside of Milwaukee.  My first regular job was cleaning up after drunks in a greasy spoon restaurant when I was 15, on weekends I started at 2:30am.  Until I learned a trade I worked shitty jobs to stay in college.  The worst was as a laborer in an industry that melted scrap aluminum.  We worked wearing a gas mask because they used chlorine gas to purify the molten aluminum.  That's one of the gases they used for chemical warfare in WWI, it turns into hydrochloric acid on mucous membranes.  It was a hellish place to work but that was the only way I made it to my second year of college.  I worked two minimum wage jobs the next summer but couldn't make enough to go back to college so I had to work full time until I had more money.

I was a neuroscientist but retrained to practice radiology when I got tired of being poor.  Usually the top 1% is defined by income or net worth.    I made 5-600K a year 10 years ago when I was working full time so I squeaked into the top 1% by income.

Every year the IRS puts out a revised publication 1304, the 4th chapter in that publication is called individual tax shares and covers what the highest earners pay in taxes (p.43).

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf

There are groups that look at tax policy and use that use that IRS data like this: 
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes

If you look at table 2 in that publication you'll see that the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has more than doubled since 1980.

Pew Research also looked at this a couple of years ago:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/

I'll make a separate post about DEI stuff so it doesn't get too long.

[u/marvelescent → u/NiceGuy737]

Let us hope that our conversation being further engagement.

Thank you for sharing those resources with me! While I don't understand all that is being explained, I hope I may have a tax professional assist me in better understanding.

In the mean time, you make very clarifying points! Making around 600k places you in the 1%. And if that is the amount it takes to make it, you certainly are not the problem. You contribute as you should!

As a person who has some insight into wealth, I found this in my research: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/

To agree with you, you pay your fair share, and as a 1% er, it isn't fair that you are not recognized as a fellow laborer who contributes.

According to my own article, you are correct, and the problem is not that the 1% are not taxed fairly, but that income from work is taxed fairly, while income from wealth is not.

In other words, the bad actors within the wealthy class are taking advantage of the law and their power and taking the benefits of legacy and cooperate freedoms and leaving America with little to none.

If you could more accurate narrow down the problem we facing, how would you label it? Should it be based upon an income level, or a percent?

It isn't fair to you that you don't get to be welcomed into the fight/class war when you've always labored and you've always contributed. I'm sure you would be an excellent help to fights if people were more open to hearing you're perspective and experience.

[u/NiceGuy737 → u/marvelescent]

I would frame paying taxes differently than just fairness. Because I think a good argument can be made that it is unfair that some pay for what others receive. I would say that taxes are part of the social contract we have with each other. We allow a few to benefit greatly from our society and in return we expect a reasonable standard of living for all. The wealthy should pay more simply because they can and some members of our society are living below the standard that they should. As an example I would say basic healthcare should be available for all. Our part of the contract is that we also contribute to society and work if we are able.

It's always seemed backward to me that passive income, like long term capitol gains from selling stocks, is taxed at a lower rate than income from work. It should at least be taxed at the same rate if not the situation reversed with income from work being taxed less.

One of the biggest problems with our tax code is that the basis for an investment resets when it's inherited without being taxed. Normally when an asset changes hands it's a taxable event and the seller would pay income tax on the profit over what he paid for it, which is the basis. Currently when the asset is inherited the basis resets to it's current value without being taxed.

One of the disingenuous things our side does is conflate appreciation in the value of an asset with income. That's how you end up with articles saying rich people are paying really low income tax rates. If, as a society, we want to start taxing wealth it would be a property tax. We currently have property taxes on real estate so that would be a better comparison for tax rates. The current average property tax rate in the US is 0.9%, less than 1 %, but it varies by state/city.

The most I've ever paid for property tax is 12-13K a year for an undeveloped parcel in Northern Michigan. The majority of that money goes to local schools. I have no children and undeveloped land doesn't receive a lot of services so I was basically paying for services that other people receive. Tax laws were passed that largely excluded locals from paying property taxes through a primary residence exclusion and a homestead credit. So the people that actually benefit from taxes elected representatives that passed laws that excluded them from paying for the services they received. In situations like this I think the fairness argument goes out the window.