Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.

Thats the cry you hear. Learn to follow the money trail. Than the rich pay more and the first thing they do is rise the cost of their product and pass their cost back on to us the consumer. Thats us.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Too many don't get how that works......



Must be the new math.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

Just let me deduct the cost of my camera and equipment

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

By world standards almost all of the US are "rich", just some "richer" than others to one degree or another.

So that means tax all of us. Either directly in income tax, indirectly in sales, property etc., second hand via higher prices or fees and charges for various licenses and permits and other things like gas.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody pays for it some way.

Yes, Basic Economics was one of the things I was qualified to teach along with government, history (US & World), geography and basic photography. I never got to teach economics and seldom government. Those were senior classes for 12th grade and got assigned by seniority among the faculty. 12th graders had the fewest discipline problems and you could hold a more or less intelligent conversation with them. Plus staring at graduation at the end of the year they were pretty well motivated and mostly did their work without too much argument.

Yes, I taught 1973 (student teaching) to June 2007 and when I retired I was just barely in the top 25% for seniority in the History/Social Studies Department.

srscary Loc: Cary, NC

Most rich people don't make any products. They just make a lot of money:
1. The CEO earns 300-400 times the average employee.
2. Rich kids inherit enormous wealth from parents and live off that wealth without doing anything productive.
3. Rich people make more money off their investments than any products they create. ETFs are the new darling of the rich for reducing capital gains taxes.
4. Financial engineers (hedge fund managers) are different from (typically modestly paid) electrical, mechanical and other engineers who actually build tangible products.

-- Ronnie

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Business is risk.
You have to invest some capital into a business to make it work. If you do it right, you get a return on your investment.
Business requires infrastructure.
You have to have ways to get people to see that you have a product, they need ways to evaluate it, and to order it if it passes their evaluation. You need ways to get the materials to produce your product and get it to them. All that involves infrastructure in the way of transportation, safety, communications, etc.
Transportation, safety, communications, etc. are all part of the public environment and someone has to pay for it.

The CEO who makes 300 times the basic worker's wage is in a much better position to contribute to the infrastructure requirements. (S)He has more disposable income, while the minimum wage worker probably has no income that is disposable.

And without that infrastructure, the money would not flow to the CEO.

davidv Loc: salt lake city utah

Seems like the only thing our elected officials are best at is spending money.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Exactly

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Yes! The wage gap between the workers and the CEOs has risen to obscene levels. I’m all for laissez faire capitalism, but it has to be tempered with some moral decency or you ultimately end up with a French/Russian revolution.

The abuse of our tax system is rampant and the system needs reform. Large American companies often pay little or no tax by moving their headquarters offshore, and tax avoidance schemes are constantly exploited by those CEOs that can afford the accountants and lawyers that the average worker cannot. We need to find a balance between the incentives of capitalism and social well being.

11bravo

Seems that when a company succeeds, it's due to the brilliance of the CEO and upper management. When the company fails, it's due to unavoidable outside influences, and time to strap on the golden parachutes.

JRiepe Loc: Southern Illinois

Spending and wasting.

ddetloff Loc: Fair Haven, MI

As long as it's not their money.

Jim70 Loc: Delaware

Yet when the "flat tax" was proposed years ago, it was laughed out of the room by those who felt they would lose power.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

Don't forget without the created infrastructure there would be no jobs. Being successful always seems to be frowned upon.

nimbushopper Loc: Tampa, FL

Yep, happens every time politicians promise to give away stuff in order to get votes!