VIDEO: The People Speak: Tax the Rich?

President Obama and Democrats are big proponents of raising taxes on the rich in order to generate revenue for their out of control spending practices. However, very few people seem to know that the top 10% of wage earners already pay a whopping 68% of taxes.

In a mission to see how popular the idea of taxing the rich actually is, Dan Joseph hit the streets of Alexandria, VA to talk to some people. He also quizzed them on our current tax rates. Here's what he found...

Tax the rich! Tax the Rich!

Yup, the mythical rich, the demons of the marxists, who already pay a whack of tax, a disproportionate amount.
But for Obama he needs to pit class against class. Everybody against one another. Constant confusion. He probably wants to promote anarchy for a while.

Anyways ~ tax the rich! tax the rich!

What percent of the tax returns earn in excess of 250,000?
Most would be shocked as to how few there are!

There’s a double problem. Taxing the wealthy, beyond a certain point, does not work because of the Laffer curve. They will divert their income into low tax or tax free investments.

The *real* problem is that there is a scale to investments. That is, below a certain amount of money, most people invest in stocks and bonds, what you typically think of as investment.

However, even with a still relatively small amount of money, within a few million, investing this way is a full time job. So these people prefer to invest in mutual funds and instruments like that, with somebody else really doing the investing for them.

But there are limits to even that. If you have say, hundreds of millions of dollars, mutual funds just don’t cut it. This is when people move into things like hedge funds, where they might not earn as much, but their investments will be safer.

And finally, among the very wealthy, even hedge funds are not enough. But investment at this level, in things like derivatives, is oddly enough, not substantially different than gambling. It does not help economies, or production, or industry. It is just betting.

So instead of boosting the taxes of the wealthy, a much better thing to do, that will benefit everyone, is to set up a tax structure that encourages them to invest in things that will benefit us all.

Things like research and development of both science and technology. If the super rich can save money doing this, they will.

See, taxing those who make a lot of money is different than those who already are generationally wealthy. Those people with castles on the Hudson and acreage designated as farms and 7 houses, etc., etc., are in a whole ‘nuther category beyond the guys hoofing it in shoe leather to get ahead.

My 2 cents

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