Reply #83: really? because I get a fair amount of discounts

[hfojvt]

and I am not even that rich. However, my credit card gives me 5% off on gasoline and 2% off at restaurants and 1% on everything else. Discover card sorta shows how the rich benefit. I cannot remember the exact levels, but their rebate structure looks like .25% for the first $1,000 and .5% for the next $9,000 and 1% after that. Hence, the rich, who spend more, get bigger rebates.

When you are rich, you can afford to spend more and thus get the discounts. a free this or a free that for every purchase over $1,000.

There's also the tax code. The rich can afford to put more money in their IRAs or their Roth IRAs. The rich get tax deductions for a) their property taxes, b) the interest on their mortgages, c) their health care expenses. You might say that those deductions are there for everybody, including the upper middle class, but below a certain level they are meaningless because they are less than the standard deduction.

Then there are utility prices. They start with a base rate. For the gas company, it is almost $15 they charge you every month even if you use no gas. But the rates per kilowatt hour or per therm or per gallon of water, typically go down the more you use. So the mansion can use 5 times as much electricity, natural gas or water than the shack does and not pay 5 times as much. The discount is built right in. And watch what they do when they increase rates. The base rate will go up by 10% and the rate for the big users will go up by 1%. The media will typically not tell you this though. They will just talk about "the average customer" even though the small and likely poorer customer just got hit with a bigger percentage rate increase that the bigger and likely richer customer.

Amd those are just the examples that I know about. See, for example "The Screwing of the Average Man" by Powers Hapgood.