Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

[mrstickball]

Jereel Hunter said:

irstupid said:

yes they can be selfish as you said in company picnics or in jets, but does not this company picnic hire catererors? or how about the company that makes teh jet, do they not ahve employees to pay?  if no one is buying jets tehy go out of business.  or the people who fly the jet for him, or stewardes, ect.

i mean hell look at those insane billionaires that have yachts that are like 300 yards or something rediculous.  they have hundreds of people working on that yacht. 

even teh most selfish looking things in the end do serve a purpose.  one rich person spending is equal to a vast number of normal people like us spending.  Do you think us going and buying a $15 dvd is going to save the economy and put people to work?  hell no, as one we are nothing.  no amount of spending could i do that would put a dent in anything.  i coudl go as far into debt as i could and spend every penny i have and it still would not create one job.  us normal/poor people need to ALL act.  meanwhile a millionair/billionaire can do some pointless selfish spending and be beneficial to many.

also in regards to company picnic or anything that goes to employees, any business class will tell you that happier employees perform better.  a better performing company sells more and so on.  so these selfish employee picnics do serve a purpose.

Not company picnics, executive retreats - where a few execs spend vast amounts of luxury getaways at company expense. Do they add money to the economy? Sort of. The problem is, instead of coming from the pockets of these execs who can afford it anyway, it comes from the business, and becomes deductible. So while they are putting this money into the economy, a big chunk of it is essentially paid by what would otherwise go to taxes.

And yes, a billionaire buying a yacht causes people to work, but lets be clear, buying a $150 Million yacht creates a lot less jobs than a quarter of that amount spent growing a business and adding employees. Now obviously you as a person have no real impact on the economy, but in the lower and middle class, the impact on the economy had to do with volume - and there's a big impact when a large percentage of those people are out of work. Now, I don't think rich people need to be taxed into the ground. Billionaires will still have their yachts and catered affairs - But there are those at the top, who's assets grow at a rate of hundreds of millions per year, while paying a MUCH lower % of taxes overall (via earnings + capital gains), and putting relatively small amounts back into the economy, compared to regular folks. A normal person earning say... $40,000 a year might pay around 25% of that to total taxes, but pretty much every penny  of the rest gets spent on living expenses - every penny is going into the economy. People who are worth $10 Billion this year, and will be worth twice that in 15 years contribute less beneficially, relative to earnings, than the average working American.

Your numbers are off significantly. According to the Tax Foundation's research into 140 million tax returns, the tax rate among the super-rich top-1% was about 100% greater than those making $40,000/yr.

And according to your logic, the fact is that the people making $40,000/yr and spending everything they have on living expenses aren't going to grow the economy. They will pay into goods and services, but cannot invest in new opportunities. Therefore, it is the right thing to ensure that those that have more money aren't robbed of their monies so that they can invest into businesses and ventures that can create jobs - rather than be taxed. As much as you'd love to argue that a yacht creates few jobs, I shudder to think how many jobs are created by the government's taxation of the same amount of income. In most cases, the only jobs created from that have a horrible rate of return.