Josh Allen, fresh off an MVP campaign, just got paid as the Buffalo Bills announced a six-year extension, which reportedly is worth $330 million with $250 million guaranteed.
www.foxnews.com
I have a master's and did OK career-wise. Allen will make as much for 1 game as I made in an entire career. Let's not get into Juan Soto. It isn't just sports, the rich continue to get richer and the vast majority of Americans are either stuck in place or going backwards.
Let me give my opinion with a way too long multi part response. [this could be a current events board response]
1. It is easy as many in this thread have done to justify Allen's salary in terms of TV/stadium revenue, revenue to the city etc.
2. I read your question to be a philosophic one regarding income inequality. I do think that is a legitimate concern in the context of human history. I also think sports are just a microcosm of society. I won't get into all the reasons but in a nutshell almost all "things" we use requires less and less labor AND where labor is required the global labor supply still provides relatively cheap labor. As a result the "idea" guys get richer and richer while the workers stay relatively flat.
3.I strongly applaud the efforts on Musk and DOGE because until we can restore sanity to our spending habits it will be very difficult to convince any of us higher taxes might be part of a solution. Ex. Much has been made of DOGE finding $100 billion in WFA. We are spending between 1,000 and 2,000 billion more than we collect EVERY YEAR. Based on the spending examples we've heard about you would need to be nuts to think we need more taxes.
4.I digress slightly. Here is where my solution losses support. I think the best way to collect required taxes reduce income inequality [a little at least] is wealth tax. HOWEVER not in addition too but largely in lieu of income tax.
I ran these numbers about 5 years ago but they remain pretty good
. reduce income tax to a flat 10% for everyone. No deductions except charitable contributions
. eliminate SS taxes [part of the above 10%]
. eliminate corporate income taxes
. replaced with a wealth tax of 4% of your net worth every year with a $500,000 deductible
That would result in a yearly balance budget.
BTW you could buy a 4% govt bond and your NW would never go down.
IMO this
encourages work [low income tax]
encourages companies do business in US [no income tax]
ensures everyone has some skin in the game
greatly simplifies the tax code
The argument that this is a form of double taxation is true. We already have many many examples of DT
The argument that identifying ones net worth is super hard is bunk. 95% of net worth is cash, stocks bonds and real estate.
Grandpa's famous baseball card collection is immaterial.
Long answer to your question.
Shorter answer. History hasn't been kind to empires with ever expanding gaps between the rich and the poor.
