You know what's interesting?

Whenever I encounter someone saying the government ought to pay for this, that and the other, my question is "and if it meant doubling your taxes, would you STILL want it?"

I would say at least 80% of the time the answer is no!

Couldn't find an e-mail for you Draginol and wanted to ask a question. For the last several months Scott Adams had been writing about controversal topics on his blog. In most cases they were just mental excercises and not even his actual stances on the actual topic.

Recently he made a blog post saying that no matter what he wrote he offended some of his readers enough that they no longer read Dilbert. He said it actually began affecting his income. As a result of this, he said he was going to stop writing about these topics (religion, politics, etc).

You also write about controversal topics, yet you take a firm stance. Have you found this to affect Stardock's sales either positive or negative?

BTW, Love Galactic Civilizations and Object Dock Plus.

Whenever I encounter someone saying the government ought to pay for this, that and the other, my question is "and if it meant doubling your taxes, would you STILL want it?"

I can guess who one of the YES answers would come from (because that old coot would surely assume he'd be left alone while only the rich people got hit with higher taxes).

 

Excellent article Draginol.   And interesting questions raised by afaust above.

A very interesting question Afaust.

I don't think Scott Adams has lost any measurable earnings from having controversal views. But I also think its an apples and oranges comparison.  Scott Adams is literally the force behind Dilbert.  By contrast, I am one person of ~60 people at Stardock. Those 60 people have lots of different opinions.

To put it in perspective, it would be like someone not buying Microsoft Office 2007 because Bill Gates expresses some political belief (like support for very high estate taxes) that others don't agree with. 

Even if it was costing sales, I wouldn't stop writing what I want to write about.

Draginol, I present this opinion for you:

You complain about the % of money that comes out of your pay, and the amount of money taxed onto your spending. But what you're ignoring is that this is all a relative term. EVERYONE has that % taken out of their earnings and added onto their purchases. If taxes were cut in half across the board tomorrow, it would not affect your ability to buy big screen TV's or semi-luxury cars, or larger houses. Why? Because all markets would adjust to the larger pool of money that people are willing to spend.

To think that if we were all taxed less than things would be better, but it really wouldnt. In fact I find that people like you often hide behind a false notion of "isn't it sad what all of us have to deal with?". But when presented with possibilities, you gravitate toward solutions that help mostly yourselves, such as tax breaks to business owners, and stock/investment "tricks".....the sort of things that most people (who dont have regular expense of an account) cannot easily find out or make use of.

JeremyG, I am taxed substantially more than everyone else.  My federal income tax rate is 35% already.  There are those who think that it should be even higher.

But when presented with possibilities, you gravitate toward solutions that help mostly yourselves, such as tax breaks to business owners, and stock/investment "tricks".....the sort of things that most people (who dont have regular expense of an account) cannot easily find out or make use of.

Feel free to name these tricks.  I always hear about these tricks from people who, naturally, just happen to not be able to use them.  Since you are so certain they exist, please specificlaly name some so I can take it up with my accountant.

There's another way of thinking about it, Draginol - you're paying for the privilege of living in the US. You could move to a place with no income tax or sales tax if you wanted to. Dubai has neither and is also becoming a bit of a technology hub. But because you want to be American, with all that entails, you have to pay through the nose for the privilege.

Everything has its price. Is a 47% tax rate an excessive price for living in the world's most powerful nation? Evidently not, because you still live there. But if ever it does become too much, don't forget you can always leave. You don't have to be American, you just want to be.

There's another way of thinking about it, Draginol - you're paying for the privilege of living in the US. You could move to a place with no income tax or sales tax if you wanted to. Dubai has neither and is also becoming a bit of a technology hub. But because you want to be American, with all that entails, you have to pay through the nose for the privilege. Everything has its price. Is a 47% tax rate an excessive price for living in the world's most powerful nation? Evidently not, because you still live there. But if ever it does become too much, don't forget you can always leave. You don't have to be American, you just want to be.

How easy it is for you to say that when you pay a tiny fraction of what I pay for in taxes.

Moreover, if you read carefully what I wrote, the problem is the obliviousness of people to the fact that our society relies on people like me to drive it economically.

How many  jobs are lost if people like me cut their hours back in response to tax increases?  It's rarely measured because it's poorly understood.  Even as-is, without a tax increase, if I lowered the number of hours I worked to say 45 hours per week, I would have to lay off approximately 5 employees because of the decrease in revenue our company made.  Because our employees are so sharp, they'd find new jobs.  But that would still tighten the labor market ever so slightly. 

But imagine if say 100,000 of people like me did the same thing, how you're talking 500,000 lost jobs (or even more since there are plenty of people who dwarf what I produce).

Did Draginol beg to be born in the US? No, his place of birth was not of his own choosing, anymore than a baby born in Calcutta chose his.

Your response appropriates the perspective that we are here to serve the government, when in fact, it should be the government who is here to serve the people.

You know I respect you Brad, but what are you trying to say here? Is wealth a prerequisite for an informed or balanced opinion on citizenship? Are you suggesting I'm cursed by my peasant nature into little thoughts, and am therefore incapable of being rational over money?

You might be right, but I thought you were less class-focused in your views.



I don't see it as a problem at all. Lots of people are in key positions in society. Your key position is being loaded and paying tonnes of taxes. Others put out fires, deal with the homeless, teach, run the financial systems, work in national defence - without everyone cooperating and chipping in the US would be a failure. You may put more money in, but who's to say a logical mind like yours couldn't have provided more benefit to the mother/fatherland working on codebreaking or representing the people?

Don't think I can't see your point - the rich are often forgotten when it comes to attributing national success, and many people erroneously think they're all bloodsucking parasites. But if you don't think your economic contribution is being appreciated adequately the best thing you can do both for yourself and for America is take it elsewhere and encourage your rich friends to do likewise. There's nothing like a capital evacuation to show a country why harassing the wealthy is a bad move.



It might happen. I'm familiar with Rand's theory, but I'm not so sure it's accurate. There'd be some short-term upheaval, but new entrepreneurs would rise up to replace you. The removal of Chinese capital from Indonesia following the 1999 Jakarta riots is slowly being replaced by wholly domestic capital. The recession though was a nightmare and that can't be denied.

But long-term impact? I think it would be minimal. There's always someone hungry for power in middle management who could replace you eventually if you left.



Sure, but anyone with a middling or better income can pretty much choose the country of their choice for residence and tax purposes these days, particularly if they work in IT. An accident of birth doesn't lock you into a country for life. Transnationalism is the new black. If you find somewhere you like better, why are you staying where you are?

Ah, taxes -- love 'em or leave the country. Too bad we don't live in, like, a representative democracy where we could actually try to FIX the problems with the system.

Oh wait. We do.

I think it's pretty harsh to tell someone if they want to change the system, they should just get out of the country. The fact is, Draginol is acitizen, as am I, and we do have a right to be represented by the government.

This is funny to me only because my husband worked for the gov't 8,760 hours in the past year (more than that, actually since he was extended).

Volunteer, force, I know.

It's just funny to me.

I think you have a valid point, though. I think we should be operating with the least amount of taxes possible and allow private charities (or family) to pick up the slack where there are community and family needs. Everyone should be able to keep as much of their own money as is remotely feasible.

Don't flame me, I know the argument. This just made me chuckle.

I didn't look at it from that perspective; I was wondering why you guys seemed so narky. Sure you can stay and try and change things, but you're going to have to think of some practical ways to regain control over education first as unfortunately it's going to have to be slow, old-fashioned generational change.

There's just too many people around these days who think representative democracy means a free handout to everyone who votes 'correctly'.

But sure, you could do it if you can swing the kiddies around. I just got the impression Brad was having a bit of a whinge. You'd get faster results and it'd be less stressful to just switch countries.

I know that's what I'd do, but maybe that's why I'm an impoverished journo and Brad's a new media tycoon.

This is funny to me only because my husband worked for the gov't 8,760 hours in the past year (more than that, actually since he was extended).

No Texas Wahine, your husband doesn't work for the government 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Secondly, your husband is paid for his services, correct?  You may have noticed the title of my article: SLAVERY for the government.  The hours I mentioned "working" for the government were unpaid. Slavery.

Cacto writes:

It might happen. I'm familiar with Rand's theory, but I'm not so sure it's accurate. There'd be some short-term upheaval, but new entrepreneurs would rise up to replace you. The removal of Chinese capital from Indonesia following the 1999 Jakarta riots is slowly being replaced by wholly domestic capital. The recession though was a nightmare and that can't be denied.

This represents a world view in which propserity is a zero-sum game.  Which is not the case. There isn't some queue for prosperity. The domestic capital in Jakarta would have almost certainly occurred anyway -- except it would have been ADDED to the Chinese capital to provide even greater prosperity. The idea that people sit on their hands waiting their turn to have a bite at the apple of prosperity is more sad than absurd but still both.

It would be like saying someone out there is just waiting for me to get out of the way to start up their own JoeUser site. That if only I'd take JoeUser down, some other "Entrepreneur" would finally have their opportunity to set up their own blog community to replace it.  Which is, of course, nonsense. The market doesn't work like that.  If JU went down, it would go down. The people would go and find some other existing site and new sites would emerge organically as they would have otherwise.

Another problem with the belief that it's a zero-sum game is the idea that entrepreneural people are simply waiting their chance to put up something as good or better than what is there.  In basic market economics, the best product or service will normally win in the long term.  If that leading product goes away, then sure, a new product may come in to replace it but by definition it won't be as good or better as the original product because if it were, it would have been released in competition.

It should be pretty obvious that what you say isn't the case.  If you wiped out every player in the NBA, you would certainly be able to "replace" the players. But the new players would not be as good as the old ones (because if they were, they'd have been in the NBA already).  But your belief seems to indicate that there's these great second-tier basketball players who are just as good but just need the opportunity to play which is nonsense.

You then say:

There's always someone hungry for power in middle management who could replace you eventually if you left.

That's why you're an "impoverished journo", Cacto.  Because you not only don't understand economics but you don't understand humanity very well.  Managers != entrepreneurs. Perhaps you should do some profiles on successful business owners sometime.

In addition, what you don't realize is that what I describe happens in the real world. I know because I've spoken to many successful business people who, reaching a certain level, simply pull back because there are too many disincentives for them to keep working so hard.

But sure, you could do it if you can swing the kiddies around. I just got the impression Brad was having a bit of a whinge. You'd get faster results and it'd be less stressful to just switch countries.

This is just an asanine statement.  What kind of discussion would we have if every topic discussed in which someone disagrees with a governmental policy or whatever was to tell them to move?  What about the people who want universal health care? Why not tell them to just move to Canada. How constructive would that be?  Besides the obnoxiousness of your statement, the argument is simply stupid. Less stressful to relocate ones family to another country is less stressful?

If you think I'm whining, then I feel sorry for you for not having the capability to read the underlying statement. So I'll spell it out: Don't worry about me. I'll be fine.  But the reality is, as opposed to your socialist fantasy, is that at some threshold, people will work less than and it will cost jobs and no, someone else won't step up to replace them because if there were these people, they'd be attempting to do so right now. 

Moreover, all human beings have a threshold of when they feel something is no longer worth the effort.  My post is not a "whine" it is an attempt to communicate with those who see "the rich" as an endless source of golden eggs that that is not the case. That at some point, they will kill that goose.

Taxes are a disincentive to work. 

My post was written so that people could recognize these fundamental truths:

1. That most wealthy people are wealthy because they work far more than the average person.
2. The real-world effect of existing progressive taxation
3. People don't consider the unintended consequences of their beliefs

Cacto, I think you're an intelligent guy but I also think that you aren't able to make the distinction between intelligence and experience.

It's not that they would finally have their opportunity, it's just that there are more than 500,000 or whatever people with the capacity to be entrepreneurs. You could remove every one that exists today and there'd be a fairly terrible result, but fifty years down the track new ones would have sprung up, whether as the inheritants of old companies or with wholly new companies and organisations. I know it's not a zero-sum game, that's why I'm saying you're going to get new ones, whether they're middle managers with the skills to take over the big chair of their current company or young people capable of forging a new one.



That doesn't make any sense. Products undergo constant cycles of development. They aren't released fully formed to never improve again. If their cycle stops competing products will inevitably take over that market as they evolve beyond their halted competition. For a time the new products may be inferior, but there's no reason to expect that will last long.

Just look at the Korean car industry - less than fifty years of production and Hyundai now tends to top the charts in reliability, affordability and sheer lack of machine faults. Even Porsche has a hard time competing on that pure mechanical reliability front. And all that's from a base not so many years ago where you'd only buy Korean if you couldn't afford anything else. Admittedly their product isn't as sophisticated, but the idea that removing the top tier of entrepreneurs would permanently cripple the market is a little strange to me - there'll always be new entrepreneurs because there always has been.



There's always going to be a point at which you receive a diminishing return for your investment of time. Would they really have been more productive if they devoted more than 100 hours a week to their business? It's possible, but all the literature seems to suggest you lose productivity in every hour after the 7th or 8th you work on any particular day. How much is left in those 13th, 14th hours?



Maybe. I've certainly never believed in ascribing any excessive value to experience, so you might be right.



A thoroughly 21st century one! How often have you seen signs saying 'America {or insert your country of choice} - love it or leave it!'

Maybe I'm just too mercenary, but I don't see much point in doing things for people who are only going to be ungrateful. May as well do what you like instead and find like-minded people to do it with. But then again I've always lived in a family that's in a constant state of movement, so I don't have the sense of place I guess you possess.

If I thought I'd enjoy living in the US more than in Oz - if I ever felt that somewhere else was a better match for my thoughts - I'd move there in a heartbeat. So to me it's not an asinine statement but simply good advice.