Kelly, I think you have books mixed up. I’ve read Soul of a New Machine many times. It is about the DataGeneral Eagle minicomputer, not the personal computer. Besides most “facts” in that book were the office gossip type.
And your statement is wrong based on your choice of words. What you meant was that he did not create the software itself, but I would argue that he most assuredly did create (or was instrumental in creating) the market for software.
IBM did not understand the significance of the personal computer, and further thought that the hardware was the important item and regarded software as almost a neccessary evil. It was Gates who realized that controlling the software by controlling the operating system was they key to dominating the coming personal computer age. Until this point “software” was almost a hobby - Gates turned it into an industry.
I think its pretty much a given that some people are always going to support it. And I will not. Nor would I live in world which did so.
Now, as to one substansive query:
All taxes are inherently unfair. That’s life. We have to live with that. The more taxes, the less fair. However, a capped tax as presented here is less fair and more arbitrary than pretty much anything short of communism.
sb:I think its pretty much a given that some people are always going to support it. And I will not.
“It” meaning the 100% top marginal tax rate? You have a lot of company, then; I don’t think anyone in this thread is seriously arguing in favor of such measure, though I haven’t gone back and re-read every post.
Nor would I live in world which did so.
Pretty drastic, dude: I can’t offhand think of a tax policy option that I’d be willing to commit suicide over, but YMMV.
All taxes are inherently unfair. That’s life. We have to live with that. The more taxes, the less fair.
I’m not sure that this is such a universal principle as you seem to think—unless you’re trying to say that taxation is unfair in the same broad sense that life in general is unfair. Personally, I don’t think that taxation per se, even quite highly progressive taxation, is automatically “unfair”. Certainly, I don’t know of any more fair way for a country to pay for the things it decides to do.
However, a capped tax as presented here is less fair and more arbitrary than pretty much anything short of communism.
Again, who here is actually arguing for a true income cap? Even those of us who may not agree with you that it’s flat-out immoral seem to concur that it’s not a smart policy.
Basically, taxes take away money that peopled have earned. This is unfair. Life is, in fact, unfair. Nor I dispute the actual need to tax. I understan that. However, taxes are unfair. Therefore, government should be frugal and responsible. because they really are stealing that money. By rights, it should not be theirs. In an ideal world we could all give the government money by choice. That isn’t going to happen. Such is life.
True, and it has been shown that the OP is flawed. If this is a debate about how much the rich should be taxed and what is fair then we need to be asking about this:
How big can a tax be before the costs of disincentives to growth outweigh the benefits of letting the government control that money?
Some people seem to be arguing that there are very low benefits to government control and others that they might be higher.
My opinion is that taxes can be fair if imposed fairly. This may be extreme but I think that any one person should have a tax limit liability. In other words there should be a cutoff for taxes. For example; if you`ve already paid in the limit you no longer have a tax liability until next year. The limit could be debated, say maybe $500,000 . If your income is high enough and you fall into the highest bracket, you only need to pay $500,000. Ideally it would be in conjunction with a flat tax rate. That would be the fairest taxation in my opinion.
Maybe I do have my books mixed up. I think it’s another Tracy Kidder book, but I can’t recall the title.
And IBM wasn’t the only player in the game at that time. In fact, at that time IBM was being bombarded by the Department of Justice in an antitrust investigation that IBM eventually won, but lost. Several other vendors, most notably Digital Equipment Corporation and Oracle, did as much to create the industry as Bill Gates did. (It is notable that Microsoft hired away most of DEC’s software engineers after a schism at DEC. Those engineers went on to write Windows NT. Those of us who have programmed in both VMS and NT can see the similiarity.)
Bill Gates is a marketer, not an inventor. To place him the same category as the Wright Brothers is simply wrong.
It was arbitrary except for commenting on an eariler post which used the same value. I wasn’t laying down an economic plan here, just some ethical logic.
My problem with the market is that I can’t figure out an ethical means to become that wealthy, or even marginally wealthy or even middle class. I think about this all the time, I’ve been pondering this problem exhaustively for a good 15 years now. I haven’t been able to solve wealth without solving for suicide as being a more logical, rational and efficient approach to the same mechanism.
To me the system is so corrupt that I cannot figure out how to attain my goals without giving everyone the same opportunity, the source code and the point and click use that even a dummy can do. Eventually we can give ourselves the intelligence or the body or the personalities; but to abuse those things in the process necessarily validates the use of corruption, which plants seeds into the extraction, invariably making my result unsatisfactory, even if I managed to become deluded into believing it was perfect while I lived.
I think it just racks my nerves that people are so impatient, retiring on a half-goal which contradicts the goal.
I don’t mind that a market determines worth, I do mind when the actual price-tag is determined through deception, violation of trust or informed consent responses. For me, the seeds are set much earlier in the form of a personality quirk which automates the application of logic consistently when it benefits them and the application of contradiction at all other times - with a floating state which determines how they’re holding back the existential proof of suicide when contradicting themselves. “Denial” is a propular word for this, memory delete mechanisms, humor etc… The more intelligent a human being is who runs this floating state instead of being transparent, the more repulsed I am by their personality because the contradiction layer is being exponentially applied. There’s no game here to me, it’s just right out in the open. I become annoyed that others don’t see it; where the deception is being administered and how it is intentionally choosing irrationality to horde delusional states of rationality. The problem is that they don’t have the pressure to aknowledge or revere logic, meaning or value with regards to life and or purpose.
I think I could write a million words easily on this topic right now, so I’d better stop with the thread responses in general unless I can find a more concise way to communicate this.
(This number is arbitrary ($500,000).)
Because I feel that a half million dollars, is the most that anyone should be compelled to pay for taxes. Considereing that person can do much better by donating to charities or intelligently investing in the economy. For every person that would max out at the $500,000 limit there are thousands who don`t pay any taxes or very little, is that fair?
And we all know who benefit from taxes the most, those who pay the least.
Or maybe I could just answer,
Why not?
I agree with that somewhat…considering the potential for waste of a lot of a rich person’s tax money, maybe after a certain amount…say a half mil (maybe more)…the person still has to pay his fair percent, but he gets to say exactly what it will go for. Not the whole thing, just the amount over the limit. He gets the list of social programs, grants, agencies, military, etc. that tax money goes to, and he gets to say which ones get his dough, and is entitled to documentation proving his money went where he wanted it to go.