Published on: 07/01/2021
In this edition of Chart Talk, Tony Ogorek and Jeff Viksjo take a look at the income taxes paid by the top 25 wealthiest Americans from 2014 to 2018.
TRANSCRIPT:
TONY:
I’m Tony Ogorek and I’m here with Portfolio Manager, Jeff Viksjo. And Today we are going to ask the probing question, Jeff: why do the rich get richer and we don’t? Jeff, you know I think Somerset Maughman said it best when he said, the rich are different than you and me. And the rich, what we’re talking about is people who are Billionaires. We have a chart here which talks about just how different they are and we’re going to see if we can get into an explanation of why that is the case. So, let’s take a shot at it, what do you see here?
JEFF:
The chart looks at the top 25 wealthiest Americans from the period of 2014 to 2018, and it looks at just the change in their wealth. So, the top 25 Americans amassed $400 Billion additional in wealth between those years and they pay just $13 Billion in taxes. That’s an effective rate of about 3%. The reason is this wealth doesn’t come from where everyone else gets their wealth from, their income. They don’t make a dime in income, typically, they’re making everything in the stock market.