How do we define “struggling people” in America?
People born into and remain in poverty in America are afforded a few free things like healthcare, food and money through a stipend that is painfully low and housing when it is available. Their education system, which is supposed to be equal to the rest of the country is not because there is an air of fear and worry about violence in addition to the overworked teachers and overcrowded classrooms. We see schools, stores, and buildings in poor neighborhoods having so many security devices like metal detectors, bars, metal gates, etc. This level of struggle is real but so compartmentalized into a voting block that no one really sees them except those who live there.
People born into and remain in the middle class work for most everything they have. When things are going well, they have money to live and extra to save, which the majority don’t, or to spend on the many things this country has to offer. I need not go into the details of what accounts for the middle classes spending habits. The problems happen when the work goes away and they are sent careening into a wall of struggle that begins with unemployment that is painfully low in most states to draining their savings which most have little to none set aside for a stormy day.
Yes, there is the reality that people should be saving when times are good but too many things catch their eye and most live paycheck to paycheck.
The middle class accounts for most of the taxes collected in this country which is sickening compared to the wealthy corporations and families who earn millions per year. I am all for building wealth that allows you to retire well but there is too much left over for those who never built it. I am not a socialist in any way and people who are trying to help those who struggle should not be labelled as such but I say that a person should not be allowed to hand over their wealth to their children or others and not be taxed for it and it shouldn’t matter what that wealth looks like. If a person is being handed a trust with control of a block of money. It should be taxed on the full value, not what is actually in hand. Whether that is 50% of the next five years interest or an outright 75% of the fortune being handed to them. There is a provision in my thinking for a rebate if they are serving in the military, government (not elected) , or created or work in some charity that directly benefits the poor. This tax is for those fortunes over $1,000,000.
Just handing fortunes over to children who have nothing but time is a recipe for crime, drugs and abuse. The devil loves idle hands.
The second thing is that no corporation should be entitled to hide money from being taxed. There are 35,000 businesses who earn more than $100,000,000 in the US. There should be an absolute 10% tax on these businesses gross net profit. The revenue would be $350,000,000,000 or more but most of these companies barely pay 1%. The same should go for earners over $50,000,000.
I would leave the details to the politicians but they are all trying to figure out how to get 2% of what they are allowing corporations to avoid.
Aside from all this, which is speculative at this point, I don’t think we can classify who is struggling into social groups and deny or allow help because of defined social classes. We must create a system that works like some countries who give all their people a living level of help ($$$) until they earn over that in their job at which point they are giving back into the system. This would be cost effective compared to having to spend billions on redefining the local, state, and federal systems (people and infrastructure) whenever pandemics, acts of God, or war occur on their nation.
It can’t be said enough that a country is only as good or as strong as its weakest people. It is more than obvious that those who claim to be on the side of the worst off have done nothing to really help except charm the votes out of them.
The struggle is real and if our leaders allow only the wealthy to be comfortable, then the lower economic classes will just become the poorest and will stop trying, stop buying, and start killing. Anarchy always begins when a rich country fails its struggling classes.
