Hi tschmath: I keep promising myself not to get sucked into these fruitless discussions, but here I go again. I can only speak for myself and my own experiences.
To begin with I am self employed and have been since 1988. My income is very modest by any ones standards well under 30 grand a year, at one time I had sales territories from Alaska to California and in most of the western states. I personally had gone in and built a customer base then hired individuals to maintain and grow the business from that base. Under normal circumstances it should have taken a rep 6 weeks to call on their customers. Some of the people I hired did continue to grow their customer base while others just burned out the ones I had established. Those that did grow their base were sucessful. Which in turn earned both the rep and myself a very good income. How ever changing government regulations and rising gas prices eventually forced all of us out of business. Now I'm not rich and never have been but it does take not only money but hard work to be in a position to employ some one. The business person has a couple of choices either keep his business small enough to work it by them self or hire some one and deal with all the government regulations. After once having gone the route of trying to hire people and putting up with the government and some people actually to lazy to work. I decided this time When I bought my present business to run it entirely by myself. Oh I could expand it and do 20 or even 30, possibly even more times the business volume I currently do. I could have crews of people working. Why don't I do that. In a word the "GOVERNMENT". It just isn't worth the head aches caused by the bureaucrats and their regulations. Indeed I could be a job creator, I've just chosen not to, if you don't understand why then there is nothing more I can say and until you start your own busisness and try to hire others you never will understand my point.... You say the wealthy aren't job creators. That's only partially true, they do indeed create jobs, many of them are invested in a variety of companies and those companies provide jobs so rich people do create jobs in that respect they also create jobs even if only in how they spend their money. I've never known a broke person to buy a new Caddy, or a big motorhome, or an airplane, or a big boat, or start a big business. I could go on and on the point is, how many people are employed because they bought something. How many of the so callled working middle class have stocks in theses big companies. In reality they, the small stock holder own the companies, and if enough of them don't like the CEO there are stock holder meetings to fire them all you need is a large enough block. The rich and big companies aren't my enemy but big government and crooked politicans scares me to death.You know over the years I've heard the cry that the wealthy aren't paying their fair share. My question is what do you consider a fair share for them to pay? Hmmm 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% at what point will the government be satisfied with how much they take away and at what point does the person they are taking it away from say enough is enough and I'm just not going to earn the money if all that I earn is taken away by the government or I'll invest out of the country where they can't take it away... I've said this before if you truely want fair taxation get rid of income tax altogether and put in a national sales tax, I'm not talking a Value Added Tax or VAT I'm talking a flat rate sales tax. The more money you spend the more tax you pay. Simple clean and fair, unfortunately it will never happen. To many government employees would lose their jobs... Well I've said my piece agree with me or not.. People will continue to have their oppinions and I'll continue to have mine. My biggest question is how did the govenment and the people survive before we had income tax... Any body know the answer to that?

In all of the hyperbole about raising taxes on the wealthy, whom the Republicans mis-named job creators, I've often wondered why no one has ever talked about the fact that people don't create jobs, demand creates jobs. I've always thought that we could eliminate all taxes on anyone who owns a business, and it won't result in a single new job if no one is buying what they're producing.

I came across this video today and it perfectly states the obvious truth about so-called job creators. And what's so important is that it's by a guy who could be called a job creator, and he debunks the whole idea. Check it out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/nick-hanauer-ted-talk_n_1524435.html

It seems to me that taxing the wealthy and reducing taxes on the middle class is exactly what the job creators should want. More income in my middle-class pocket means more spending by me which increases demand, which increases profits for the job creators, and results in more jobs creating more demand and the cycle repeats.

The Bush tax cuts for the rich went into effect in 2001, eleven years ago. If tax cuts for the wealthy really created jobs, why is the unemployment rate so high?

You are talking about tschmath's response, right?

Hi Mac: Good point and an excellent question, at present I don't have an answer. I hope all of you that have chosen to disagree with me will note, I try not to resort to name calling or other sorts of demeaning a person with a view that is different than mine. What I do is express my opinion on things as I see them. You are welcome to either agree or disagree with me. For me questions and the nonphotography chitchat like this while still a part of the UHH Photography Forum tend to make for some interesting debates. I have a very close friend he happens to be gay. We've known each other since we were kids. Just because he and I are on opposite side of the political fence doesn't mean we're not friends. The same is true of my late brother we disagreed on politics but we were still brothers. Just because we don't agree on some issues doesn't mean I don't respect your right to your opinion. and I would hope you respect my right to mine.