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Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

SillyCon Valley is a National Security Threat. It's destabilising. It has tons of cash but it has no clue how to spend it. The greatest misallocation of capital in the history of mankind.

They are not going to build a city on this land. Only a fool would believe that.

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Unfortunately you're correct, but in general we can say that about most big companies and wealthy people. Everyone can solve their own problems with money, but they don't want to provide for us, they would rather own us and that's situation similar to the Great Depression in 1929.

What's even worst, all these wealthy people in US can pay 20% or even less tax on their income and how much workers have to pay from their income? There's no way to compete, they have capital that can give them huge gains and they share almost none of it.

People on low incomes often pay very little tax, maybe 10-12%? There are good reasons for saying that the poor have an unreasonably hard time, but I don’t think income taxes are specifically where they get hit.

The people who I think pay the highest percentage are salaried professionals.

You get those low kinds of numbers for low income looking only at income taxes. You need to add Social Security/Medicare taxes (both employee and employer), sales taxes, property taxes, gasoline taxes, car registration fees, alcohol and cigarette taxes, etc.

The 20% thing is misleading because that's just the final ding via dividend taxes on a dollar that was earned and taxed in a corporation already. When you look at total taxes paid on that earned dollar it is very similar to total taxes paid on dollars earned and taxed at the individual level. This butt hurt about taxes thing needs to die in most cases because in most cases it is not true.

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