200 Billion is nothing compared to the budget.

Also Once implemented government over time will ask for more and more and more Till 60+%

"American wealth inequality is staggering. "

???? Stated as if that is a bad thing.......

Don't give the crack addict more crack.

Simple solution: remove entire tax code and implement a high universal sales tax.

There you go....the best way to stop people from hoarding wealth is to only tax them when they spend it....brilliant.

It is.
Ever hear of the French revolution, from which we got the saying "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich." That's the end result of staggering wealth inequality.

Yes, I have heard of the French Revolution. You seem to imply that the main cause was wealth inequality, but you have not offered any reason as to why you think that.

Many believe that the biggest contributor to the French Revolution was widespread poverty. Peasants were starving.

This condition does not exist today. Especially in the US, the poor are not suffering in the same way they were in France in the mid 1700's.

In France, it was necessary to riot in order to eat. Today's poor in the US have a hard time getting up from their TV sets.

Poor can't afford TV's now that there's no free broadcast stations anymore.

It's their phones they can't look away from.

Kids starving? Yep. Homeless? Check. Deal drugs and/or pimp yourself out just to survive? Sure, but you'll pry my iPhone from my cold, dead hands.

Are you implying the peasants would still have revolted and executed the ruling class if the ruling class were having an equally difficult time getting enough to eat?

Your one-sided view of an obviously two-sided equation is disingenuous at best, utterly moronic at worst.

Nope. I am implying that in the late 1700's, the wealth inequality in France was combined with widespread poverty and starvation, and such conditions do not exist today in the US. The suggestion (Newtboy's) that we should fear a revolution today is unsupported. Back then, half of all children then died before the age of 10, many due to the famine they were experiencing. We just don't have the kind of poverty today in the US that the French peasants endured in 1780.

Yes, widespread poverty, largely because of insane wealth inequality. (I'll elaborate if you wish) The rich had plenty to eat, and as the dismissive "let them eat cake" implied, had no concern for those who didn't. It was that disparity paired with the dismissal of the peasants plight by the ruling class that tipped a bad situation into civil war/revolt, imo.

Yes, poor are going hungry in the United States, maybe not starving to death often, but suffering to death from ailments caused by the only diets they can afford, which barely qualify as food. No, it's not to the extent of 1700 France, but we wouldn't tolerate anywhere near those conditions today, so that argument is ludicrous.

The real poor in America don't have roofs or electricity, where are these TV'S they're parked in front of exactly? The homeless problem is growing exponentially...those are the real poor surfs in this analogy, not just people like me who can live fine on $15k a year.

There are problems in the US that may eventually make the US more likely to fall into a revolution, but I doubt that the type of wealth inequality we have today is high on the list.

We have had a few riots in some of the larger cities. Poverty and lack of opportunity are definite contributors to these riots. However, these localized riots never seem to spread, even though we have the income disparities you mentioned. At least for now, I don't think we can expect a "French Revolution" type event to occur, even though there are quite a few millionaires and billionaires living within a few dozen miles of the poorest people.

The point was that excessive wealth inequality is a bad thing, so bad it has led to revolt in extreme cases, not so bad it causes a revolution every time.
You seem to be agreeing with that.
I'm glad we agree.

The revolution will come when the US elects the sort of government they used to have before Murdoch, Fox and the Bush era GOP. Simply going back to 50's-60's (Republican!) tax policy will feel revolutionary and solve most problems. But many of the powerful will fight tooth and nail.

Wrong goal. Hoarding is useless if you can't spend it everyone needs to buy or invest and if the tax rate is high enough, it will cover govt expenses.

Yes, I totally agree that EXCESSIVE wealth inequality is a bad thing.

On a related note, drinking EXCESSIVE amounts of water is a bad thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

But what if it comes to you even if it wasn't your goal?

Well, then your position changed 180 degrees from your original statement....so why the snark?
Or is "staggering" not "excessive" in your mind?

Dogboy49 said-
"American wealth inequality is staggering. "

???? Stated as if that is a bad thing.......

In excess?.....charity.....finish off the Guinea worm and buy PETA a "sorry" cake.

Can we put a squirrel skeleton on top of the cake!? Huh? Can we? Can we? Huh?

My position hasn't changed. Contrary to the assertion in the video and the summary, wealth inequality here in the US isn't "staggering", nor is it even remotely excessive.

The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first, and now agree. Your position changed....and so has your argument now from 'staggering wealth inequality isn't a bad thing" to ' wealth inequality isn't staggering'.
Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion.

Wiki- in 2014 the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent".[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour"
If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog (at a job that is life and death for her customers, platelet donation, her department keeps our only local blood bank open as the only money making department, she doesn't make fries.)...Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?! Also, because he only pays taxes on what he spends, he pays less in taxes than we do.
Thpp!....Ack!

What about the money already invested?
"Conservatives", allergic to paying their share for government, will simply keep their money growing where it is, avoiding taxes, and take (tax free) loans out on their stationary wealth, allowing them to spend without selling, again avoiding taxes. They do that now.
Give conservatives a way out of paying their share, they'll take it every time and brag about it. Guaranteed.

In my scenario people/businesses are all taxed the same, regardless of their wealth, but only when purchasing something. Gov't adjusts the "sales tax" % as needed.

I think I just explained how that does nothing to address wealth inequality and leaves the poor paying the maximum percentage of income in taxes while letting the rich only pay a tiny portion, only the set sales tax percentage (on what they legally buy in the U.S. and report).
Your plan would probably have to set sales tax at near 50% (it's already over 10% with all the other tax revenues), meaning the poor, who spend all they make, pay >50% in taxes (and over 90% of all taxes with around 10% of all income), and the rich, who would spend <1% of their income taxably (I know that's not a real word) pay about 1/2%. Sounds like a great solution to wealth inequality, doesn't it?

"The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first"

<Sigh> Pedantry is tiresome. Tell your friends.

My original statement had to do with my belief that wealth inequality is not a bad thing. It had little to do with OP's assertion that he foolishly sees current wealth inequality as "staggering".

"Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion. "

You are free to heed whoever pleases you. If you crave my
forgiveness, consider yourself forgiven.

"If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. "

I too have to wonder what "excessive" wealth inequality actually looks like. I don't think I have ever seen a large scale example. So, I'll just pull a number out of the air: under most distribution models, I would say that I consider a Gini coefficient of, say, .9 to be "excessive".

"My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog....Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?!"

I thought we were talking about wealth distribution, not income distribution. Anyhow, to answer your question, the answer is "No", I do not consider that to be "excessive".

You might have missed my original statement where the entire tax code was abolished. Income taxes go away. There are no loopholes, breaks, tax credits or deductions, etc. Rich people/businesses purchase more goods and services than poorer so they would pay more taxes proportionally (in sum not percent). I am not looking for wealth equality I am looking for taxation equality. Look at Amazon's taxes again this year.

As a percentage of income, businesses and the rich pay nothing compared to the poor, who can least afford it.

I'm all for simplification, no loopholes or special deductions, including religion (wow, would that fill some coffers!), I could even go for one tax rate on all income (edit: including inheritance), with a huge standard deduction. I absolutely agree what we have is a convoluted mess that benefits the rich and penalizes the poor and unconnected....particularly business taxes. I also think they should be simplified and standardized, with no more special tax handouts to any businesses added as new law, and any bailouts should be pure stock transactions nationalizing any businesses that need bailouts, paid at current market rates.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned, I think going to only national sales tax effects the poor in a way that's not equal or just, even if you include businesses, and puts excessive additional burden on those who already need help.

*sigh....passive aggressiveness from someone who keeps changing the argument is tiresome, ask your friends.

Your original statement ....""American wealth inequality is staggering. "
???? Stated as if that is a bad thing......."

Clearly indicating staggering wealth inequality isn't a bad thing.

Now..."I totally agree that EXCESSIVE wealth inequality is a bad thing",
so unless you misspoke, you must be parsing the difference between staggering (acceptable) and excessive (unacceptable)....but staggering >= excessive.

Wealth/income inequality are tied....and now who's being pedantic?

Well, I'm glad you aren't running the economy then, sadly the one most in control thinks the same, that one person making (not earning) >10000 times what another makes for < 1/10000 the work isn't inequitable, and neither is one person owning more than 10,000,000 average fully employed countrymen thanks to an accident of birth and/or criminal/dishonest business practices.