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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Some here won't understand what I write below, perhaps think I am going off on a tangent, etc - to you, in advance, stop reading. I know what your responses would be.
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Don't mistake disagreement for misunderstanding.
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There are reasons why some want to pay more taxes and others do not, outside of greed or pure selfishness. Put simply, one reason is that some actually know that they can more efficiently allocate capital for the greater good than government. Some things government is exceptionally good at, and others they are not, people I know have no problem with taxes going to those things government is exceptionally good at.
to give an example of what I mean - If I have $10,000, that could either go to the government in the form of taxes or used by me in my business - I believe I can do greater good for society than the federal government under our current circumstances. I would invest the money in business growth. Leveraged through my business, I would create jobs, create taxable income, and increase current consumption through my business.
I believe the government would simply waste the money and have absolutely nothing to show for it.
Given, that - why on earth would I want to voluntarily pay more in taxes? I would not. However, assuming I have the ability as described above (and I believe most "rich" people really feel the same way), why would I start a PR campaign to increase my taxes? In order to achieve alternative goals! People who can not accept the reality of that, have my sympathy.
The dangling question is can I actually do what I say I could do with the $10,000? I have done it in the past and I can do it in the future. Every dollar I save in taxes and invest in business growth will improve my community to a greater degree than if I sent that dollar to Washington.
This is not rocket science (complicated), or voodoo economics (without a basis in what is real) - "rich" people in particular know this. People who have created wealth Vs. those who had wealth handed to them know this. those who don't know it now, but one day actually start creating wealth will come to know this.
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I have a couple of responses.
First, anyone who is focused solely on efficiency is likely a bad businessperson (but maybe a good investor).
Second, anyone who'd be affected by a "tax increase on the wealthy" likely has or could easily come up with $10,000 in cash. If I make a million pretax and I'm taxed at the currently unrealistic rate of 40%, that leaves me $600,000, of which $10,000 is 1.6% of my annual take home pay. That's nothing. Anyone with that kind of money probably has people investing it for them and could have $10,000 within two business days with a phone call. Anyone with that kind of money currently has no reason not to invest it where they see fit, which means that if you were currently making that kind of money, the only reason you haven't already invested it in the growth of your own business would be because you chose not to because you saw better prospects elsewhere.
So the hypothetical you has all this money and you're not investing it in your business. Why not? Probably because you've determined that you could make more elsewhere. Are all of these alternative investment strategies automatically contributing to the greater good? Probably not. If hiring people were a good investment right now, corporations wouldn't currently be twiddling their thumbs over trillions of dollars of cash while unemployment hovers around twice what it was ten years ago.
But these tax increases aren't directed at corporations, they're directed at individuals, so the idea that they will inhibit hiring is bullshit, because businesses hire people, individuals don't (they do, but not really in a way that's germane to this discussion).
Besides, your whole canard about what you'd do if you had $10,000 is bullshit anyway, because if it really was a good investment, you could find one of those savvy investors you're always going on about to give you the money. Right? I mean, those people make efficient deployment of capital their living, if you have a viable way to make money, they'd be all up in that. Which is just another way of saying that those gurus of market efficiency looked you over and shook their heads. Which is just another way of saying that your business is not an efficient instrument in which to deploy capital. Which is just another way of saying that by continuing to run your business you are implicitly failing to uphold your self-professed love of efficiency.
I think that you're a small fish who thinks he understands big fish solely by virtue of the fact that you're a fish too.