They’re not smart enough, they’re powerful and wealthy enough.
Anybody would be ‘smart enough’ to say ‘hey, if I had accountants to do this work for me and lobbyists to manipulate tax policy just like all the other rich people than I could stay absurdly rich and make sure that generations of my heirs barely have to work a day in their life.’
They’re not unusually smart as people, and for every ‘smart’ rich person there’s tens of thousands of nurses, engineers, developers, and makers-of-things who barely get by or who are only modestly rewarded for their efforts and who are a bit of bad luck away from being thrown to our safety nets that are filled with holes made by the ‘smart enough’ people you were referring to.
I know you are playing to the crowd here but you still haven’t shown how this “secret” tax system is “separate”, you are just saying “some people don’t know about it or can’t afford to access it”.
I’m saying that people who aren’t already wealthy can’t access the benefits of the system, yes.
And if the ‘crowd’ is 'the bottom 99.99% then yes, that is indeed who I’m playing to. I’m not talking about the top 1%, that’s a red herring and confuses people. Lots of the to 1% are just fine and deserve what they have.
I’m specifically talking about obtaining wealth and power that is several orders of magnitude greater than what an ER Trauma Surgeon earns. The top .01T and .001% and beyond. Nobody in that top band works harder or contributes more to society than those guys, and most of them provide less value than your average nurse or social worker.
This is not even close to meritocratic, and ‘being able to earn money’ isn’t supposed to supplant ‘being able to produce’.
As an alternative, consider, “Lawyers and accountants who should know better are paid to help people who inherited disproportionate wealth and advantage to cynically game the tax code …”
No, you’re selectively interpreting a word in a way that has more than one meaning while ignoring the context around it.
Now, to add some context (i.e THE ARTICLE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT )
The article (did you read it before you posted that ‘Separate’ was ‘horse shit’?) hits on quite a few points, but I’ll just hit on one or two for brevity.
from: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Now, not every American has 450 billion (or any billion) to send over to a hedge fund in Bermuda. Most of us barely have the opportunity to save as is. Not only that, but this isn’t something I can just do with my extra money. I need lawyers and accountants to pull this off, each of which costs money out of my limited disposable income.
You’re arguing that separate only means that ‘nobody else can legally access it’, which is true with one of the word’s many definitions and while ignoring the greater context. However the context of the article makes it clear that separate is used to mean that it is not accessible to the vast majority of America’s population. On top of that, the article makes it clear that another aspect of this is lobbying for benefits that only apply when one is exceedingly wealthy (estate tax reductions, etc.) that’s another thing that’s not an option for your average citizen.
Not only that but if we were to become extremely wealthy then these options would be open to us, we would however also fall into the part of the venn diagram that includes ‘rich people’,
So basically you’re splitting hairs in order to call something ‘horse shit’, and that just doesn’t stand up to the sniff test.
Seriously, this is why we have sentences instead of just throwing out words randomly and hoping for the best.
No you just believe in irrefutable proof that someone you’ve heard of is trying to be someone else you’ve heard of, and is up to something… while other people back away.
Totally different from those people who wear tinfoil hats. Entirely. Yep.
Oh, I wouldn’t call @enso /Albill a trolley, just really grumpy and frequently inappropriately sanctimonious in this here forum. He might be really neat in person IRL. Stranger things have happened!
