2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I earn over 600k a year [View all]Mister Ed
(5,973 posts)If you earn over 600k per year, as you say - that is, if you produce more than 600k of wealth per year, directly or indirectly - then my hat's off to you, and I hope you won't be unduly penalized for your productivity when the the tax man comes around.
Maybe you earn that dough solely by the work of your hands - if, perhaps, you're a very highly skilled surgeon or something like that.
Maybe you've earned a large portion of it by building and marketing a better mousetrap - that is, by founding and growing a business. Then you're also producing. Those mousetraps are being produced, and people everywhere are the better for it (although the mice are somewhat worse off).
Maybe you're producing wealth indirectly, using some of your money to buy stock in other businesses that produce useful goods and services for people. If so, then once again you are producing. You're partially responsible for bringing those goods and services into being, and people benefit from that.
My great concern about our present-day economy is that, to a large extent, producing seems to be for chumps. It seems to me that oftentimes more money can be gained through activities that produce no goods and services, directly or indirectly. And if people acquire wealth that they did not produce, then who did produce it? And how was it taken from them? This is not production of wealth, but merely misappropriation of wealth.
Discussions of taxation always seems to center on how much wealth or income a person or business has, and never on how they got it. I would like to see that change. I would like to see fairly moderate taxes on those who produce wealth, in one of the ways described above, and see punitive, virtually confiscatory taxes on activities that merely misappropriate wealth.