I think the fair thing to realize, as a society, is that corporate profit taxes just make sense. If a company is operating in a high profit margin line of business it has more than enough money to invest in future growth, fairly compensate employers and owners _and_ provide a societal benefit for all those other community members that work in less high profit margin societies. Sure, you've got good healthcare and what not, why not make sure your barista has the same access before buying that third house.
I applaud anyone who decides to do this of their own volition, but I think we can agree this makes sense societally and it'd just be easier if a third party was responsible for shifting the money around as needed and made sure everyone was paying proportionate to their ability.
I can't understand how people don't realize that putting some of our massive, massive wealth towards building a better society would not benefit them.
Can you imagine how many more inventions and advancements there would be if everyone had access to good education? Didn't have to worry about going bankrupt or dying because they can't meet medical expenses?
If we put money into things that don't necessarily directly directly go into corporate bottom lines by next financial quarter? (roads, transportation infrastructure, clean water and air...)
I think you probably meant to say:
"I can't understand how people don't realize that putting some of our massive, massive wealth towards building a better society would benefit them." (removing the extra 'not')
When you're super rich, you already have that better society, it just costs a bit more (nothing you can't easily afford). Who cares about the rest of the hoi polloi.
That's how our society works and we applaude it by promising the potential to become one of the super rich, when much of obtaining that degree of wealth isn't earned through hard work and innovation but instead, pure situational luck and ability to curb your morals and ethics to climb over people and pull the ladder behind you.
You know, this, and you see this in the way the super-rich politicians elected to represent most of the country act.
"We want to grow the pie, rather than redistribute anything, so everyone can live the American dream" -- when in reality, the pie is plenty big but verrrrry badly distributed when you're among the working poor.
There was also a great video making the rounds recently about Rep. Katie Porter grilling Jamie Dimon about the base wages at his bank in Irvine, CA. She got out a posterboard and did the math on a hypothetical single mother working full-time as a teller ($16.50 an hour). After some very straightforward math, the hypothetical single mother is in the hole $587 every month. She kept pressing Dimon for how he expects that role to be filled, and he had no answer (repeating "I'll have to think about it.") Obviously, on some level he doesn't give a shit, but I think it's the sort of thing where he's also simply never confronted with the reality for someone who doesn't make $31 million a year plus whatever other non-cash he takes home.
I applaud anyone who decides to do this of their own volition, but I think we can agree this makes sense societally and it'd just be easier if a third party was responsible for shifting the money around as needed and made sure everyone was paying proportionate to their ability.