I am not an economist. I just play one on the Interwebs. And sometimes in video games. That said, I have an opinion on all this talk of increasing taxes on the rich. Like anyone else with such an opinion, I just can't keep it to myself. MSNBC hasn't returned my calls, so I'll lay it out for you here.
On one side of the argument, we've got a bunch of stuffy rich white people screaming to the high heavens "Do not tax me, brother!" accompanied by the politicians and talking heads they've bought and paid for. On the other side, we've got poor people who don't think Scrooge McDuck needs another money bin accompanied by the politicians and talking heads who are trying to curry their favor. Despite the negative effect raising taxes on the rich will have on my plans to marry some rich old broad and move into her giant yacht, I've aligned myself with the latter.
The main argument against such a change is straight out of Ronald Reagan's playbook: taxing the rich, the people who own the companies that give us jobs, will mean fewer jobs because they won't have as much money to invest in said companies. Trickle-down economics at its finest. And its most short-sighted. Reagonomics is to economic theory what Starter jackets are to fashion, what MySpace is to social networking, what single-ply is to personal hygiene, what excelling at the Macarena is to picking up women: it's just not relevant anymore. In an economy based on manufacturing, where the only way to make more money is to make more and better shit faster and cheaper, Reagonomics makes sense. You need people to make the shit, and the more people you have the more shit you can make. Ours is not a manufacturing based economy. It's built on shit that doesn't really exist, on intellectual property and patent portfolios and suing the shit out of people and stock options no one understands. You don't need a huge workforce for any of those things.
It's that last item, specifically capital gains, that lawmakers who pretend to like poor people are targeting. You see, capital gains are taxed at a rate of 15%. Joe Blow Middle Class's income is taxed at a rate closer to 30%, depending on his state of residency. No one will ever convince me that INVESTING (you should read that word in a ridiculous high pitched voice with your pinky out, because that's the way I'm saying it in my head every time I write it) is any better than heading on down to Mohegan Sun and dropping $20 on red. If my number comes up, I owe the Man 30% of it. If I screw over a bunch of poor people by INVESTING in a bunch of shit ass mortgage-backed securities and then selling them at a profit to some dumb schmuck, the man gets 15%. The idea here is that the rich fuck who made that money INVESTING is going to turn around and INVEST it elsewhere, greasing the wheels of commerce and creating jobs. This is asinine.
Creating more ridiculous stock options does not create jobs. Buying politicians does not create jobs. Ending up a joke on a reality show does not create jobs. And, despite my previous post, neither does buying a giant yacht and staffing it with bikini models and a private army. INVESTING in manufacturing would, but whereas all the manufacturing is done in countries where they can pay their workers in hugs and compliments, this does little to help us.
You know who creates jobs in this kind of economy? The guy buying shit at Wal-Mart. The family paying a contractor to work on their home. The people who trade their money for real live shit, and not a bunch of theoretically bull pucky. And they'll have more money for real live shit if taxing rich twats leads to improvement in schools, health care, and public infrastructure.
Rich people have every right to protest taxes levied against them. It's a democracy, folks, and everyone gets a voice. Even the selfish idiots like Bill O'Reilly and that asshat Republican from Louisiana who claims he can't feed his family on $400,000 a year. All I ask is that they're honest with their protests; don't hide behind a bunch of bullshit about creating jobs when you're just a greedy shit. Just say you're a greedy shit and you need a new golden toilet. That's the American Dream, after all.
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