“We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he conceived and built the Mac and the iPad.”
Sorry, that’s also by Charles Krauthammer so the idea must be tainted in some Dopers’ eyes. Still, another interesting point I thought.
I think he was, insofar as as the iPad wouldn’t have happened without him.
As for your achievements & contributions, I know it hurts to contemplate that nobody would really notice if you hadn’t made them, or indeed if you were gone the next day. But if the CEO departs, that makes national headlines. There must be something wrong with the system! The CEO is no better than me!!!
You make a good point, but I think that it’s the other way around. Obama and people on the left have a desire to craft a narrative that diminishes the individual and overstates the role that factors other than the individual play in order to make more and more public spending more palatable. The more important the individual is, the less important government’s role is. They must craft a more socialist narrative in order to do more of what they want.
I don’t think anyone is of the mind that public investment in infrastructure isn’t necessary. I don’t think anyone is saying that we shouldn’t pay taxes to build things like roads and bridges. I know I’m not. And I don’t see anyone who is. The point is that given that those roads and bridges and other elements of infrastructure exist, some people make better use of them than other. And they are the ones who do deserve the credit for doing so.
No, I don’t. I acknowledge he was not solely responsible, in that other people did their jobs. But those other people could have been replaced. Jobs’ involvement was the unique factor.
Another point is that given that those roads and bridges and other elements of infrastructure exist, some people make more use of them than others. And they are the ones who do should pay more for their upkeep and improvements for doing so.
I can see the scene at the post office. “Hello Mr. Snowboarder, you’d like a first class stamp? Certainly, that’s forty-five cents. Next! Oh, hello Mr. Jobs. You’d like a first class stamp. Certainly, that’s three thousand dollars, please. Next!”
Well, they do. The more vehicles you have, the more gas you drive, the more you’re paying. Also, many bridges, and some highways, have tolls. So, the more you use them the more you pay. Is that not enough? Or do you advocate something along the lines of what Koxinga just offered?
But they already do. Who do you think paid more in taxes last year, me or Bill Gates? And I’ll give you two guesses.
Your argument is that they should pay more as a percentage of their income. That’s a debate for another thread, but it is beyond dispute that Warren Buffett, Mitt Romney, and Bill Gates pay a shit ton more than me or you for the maintenance of public roads. The debate seems to be that they should pay EVEN MORE.
But it would all work out. Snowboarder would pay 45 cents for the handful of letters he mails. Jobs would pay 45 cents for each of the bajillion letters he mails. Jobs is paying for the increased volume of mail traffic attributable to him. Am I missing something?
A progressive tax system is based on the idea that the pain for taxation should be equal. Paying a tax of dollar of your income hurts you more than a dollar of Gates’.
That said, the exact cut-off points and taxation percentages are judgement calls, and open to debate. It is beyond debate that they were much higher for the most productive part of our history. So raising the rates is hardly shocking or unfounded. The are abnormally low now, due to the recent Republican administrations fetishism of the wealthy.
I understand and we’ve had many threads regarding progressive taxation. But the argument seems to be stuck on the idea that since Gates gets more benefit from the roads, he should pay more for the roads. He does. Both as an actual amount and as a percentage of his income. An argument between 35% and 38% doesn’t change that.
And the argument that he pays 15% on his capital gains is simply a reflection that capital gains income is not guaranteed like wage income (guaranteed as far as a contractual right). He may lose his shirt or make a billion dollars, so his billion is taxed at 15% so he will risk it. I won’t lose my shirt at the local saw mill, so even if I’m an executive, I get taxed at 35% because there is no risk.
Risk is an essential element in all finances. That’s why a mortgage, backed by a home is 4% and credit card debt, backed by nothing, can be near 20%.
If you tax capital gains as regular income, then you will see people working for wages instead of taking risks. There would be no benefit to the risks.
So you are saying the free market does not adequately incentivize investment with profits, and it requires the intervention of big government to make it worth the risk, or the whole capitalist economy will decline? "Cause that’s what it sounds like.
The income tax, like all other taxes, introduces an externality that upsets the free market. A government policy that balances out what they’ve already screwed with is hardly big government intervention to save the free market.
How has the government taken away the power of the free market to incentivize investment through profit? You said if there wasn’t a lower capital gains tax, no one would take the risk, and simply work for wages. This implies they make no more on investments that they do from wages, and the only way anyone invests in the free market is because the get a tax break. If that is true, the free market ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.