Seven years minimum experience developing mobile apps? Seriously? I don't see why PalmOS or WinCE experience can be criteria for minimum experience these days.
And with that, I understand why the rich are secretive about their wealth. It's ok if you're poor and pissed about the rich, but if you're rich and pissed about the poor, lose all your friends. Collect $200M as you pass Go.
That might be part of it, though I think a bigger part is worry about friends/acquaintances interacting with you in a less-than-honest way once they know you're rich.
The asymmetry makes some sense to me, though. A poor person may or may not be justified in where they direct their anger, but I can see why they're unhappy. If you've got a lot of money, it seems strange to be actually angry about wealth distribution. I could see intellectually opposing various kinds of economic policies, but I mean, in the meantime, you still have a pretty good life.
Considering how much the US has spent and is still spending on the military for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't quite get the perception that taxing the rich more would fix anything. The bucket is leaking like crazy at the bottom and the solution is to pour more water? It may be fairer, but will it produce that much benefit, especially when compared to how difficult it would be to make this change? Is this tax-the-rich issue a red herring?
How much more money would end up in Uncle Sam's coffers anyway if the richer are taxed more?
Since just a few percent of the US population make 40%+ of the money in a given year, increasing taxes on those relatively few people would have more effect than taxing any other group of citizens. Also, since their effective tax rate is actually lower than most peoples', bringing their tax rate into line with the rest of the country seems like a no-brainer way to increase tax revenues substantially.
The IRS currently collects $1.1 Trillion/year in personal income taxes. http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html There are progressive "tax brackets" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State... but to incentivize long-term investments, you might be able to claim some of your income as "capital gains" which is only taxed at 15%. So the change in revenue from taxing capital gains at a higher rate really depends on how much income is being claimed as capital gains right now.
Also, since their effective tax rate is actually lower than most peoples'...
No. The people with the highest incomes already pay a disproportionately high portion of their income in taxes, far more than the poor or middle class.
Bringing their tax payments into line with the rest of the country would cause them to pay a lot less in taxes than they do now.
Even so, using AGI is misleading because the "A" means adjustments have already been removed. The more meaningful debate is actually around total (federal + state + local) effective tax rates measured against gross income.
Warren Buffet famously observed that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. I'm mainly talking about income tax, but that chart seems to include all kinds of taxes including real estate etc. It's not at all surprising that the top few % are paying higher taxes on their property and other static wealth, my point is that they're paying lower rates on income taxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...
This data comes from federal tax returns. As far as I know, there are no federal taxes on real estate (except for capital gains when real estate is sold).
This is my main feeling as well. Why does everyone think that taking more money from "the rich" and giving it to the government is going to have better results for society than just letting the rich spend it as they please?
Because taxes have given us public schools, public infrastructure, and other public services. While all of these could be done better by the private sector in theory, there is no evidence that it will happen in practice.
Tax the rich and we'll see how long until they use their considerable political power to move the gov't away from war spending. Don't tax the rich and then why should they care how much the gov't puts into war spending? It's basically free.
WhatsApp FTW? Most of the impromptu meets for food and drinks with friends are organized using that instead of Facebook. Takes way too long to wait for people to check FB, RSVP, etc.
17 years ago, when I got my second Internet account with my ISP, I filled in these 3 names for my choice of email address on their paper signup form.
root@ , nobody@ and daemon@
They gave me "daemon". I've terminated that account long ago, but last I checked (6 years ago?), I could still retrieve emails and dial in using a modem using that account.
