This is my homeland, cacto. My ancestors have lived here for almost 400 years. They have spilled blood for this nation across the country and abroad, they have built it, farmed it, and a certain share of them disgraced it. I belong here and it is irresponsible to state otherwise. Part of the beauty of a Republic is that I get to help make it just as much as do the Al Gores and the Hillary Clintons of the world.

I DETEST the "love it or leave it" mentality. A true patriot doesn't love his country unconditionally, but loves, and serves, even when the country isn't at its best.

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.

I assume you're a single man with no children then right?

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.

You really believe this?  I won't speculate into other areas of the market too much but I do know something about operating systems.  Windows Vista is essentially the same operating system it was in 1996 (NT 4.0).  Why hasn't something overtaken it given that it's barely moved forward?  Microsoft essentially did stop the cycle to concentrate on new venturews and new products haven't come forward and replaced it. 

Certainly a vacuum will create opportunity for a new supplier. But to argue that the new supplier would quickly replace what was there is not backed up by history.

And in addition, in our "what-if" the thing is, we're not just removing the current top-tier of producers, we eliminate all of the top-tier producers forever because as soon as they start to reach a certain level, they too become disincented.

If you raised the tax rate to say 90% on everyone who makes over $500,000 a year (as some Scandinavian countries propose) then what happens is that every time someone reaches that level, the incentive to keep working the hours necessary to achieve that level of excellence goes away. It becomes a never ending cycle of lost opportunity for the society.

 

p.s. going to have to flog the net coders who keep breaking the quote command!

Sorry, you're very wrong here. I work more hours per week and per year than you do, as do a great many "poor" people in this country just to get by. This is nothing more than an egotistical statement that suggests that anyone who isn't wealthy just doesn't work enough hours.

I do agree about the tax situation though. Personally I believe that a flat Federal sales tax would be far more equitable for everyone. Those who make more money spend more money, and a sales tax would reflect that reality. I don't know anyone who makes $15K/year that buys a Jag.

Actually, he did. For 14 months. When he is in garrison (at home) his work hours are much more like what the avg. American citizen works (a little more, and sometimes A LOT more, but generally, normal working hours per week).

While deployed he is ALWAYS at work. 24/7. Not only is it being absolutely away from your family and loved ones with no opportunity to get away for a weekend, a day, an hour...the hours literally worked in every sense of the word far eclipse the hours that you work. I know that may offend you, but it's the truth.



Divide his hours by his pay.

I get what you're trying to say with this article and I don't disagree. It doesn't help your argument, in my view, for you to pretend like you are special and persecuted for your career. You may lose money and yes, that is wrong. But you are not the only one who sacrifices to provide for his family.

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.

It reminds me of Rush Limbaugh being a Mac owner and praising it always - and how Steve Jobs talks when discussing politics.

It does not seem many use the political views of the owner as a decision point in buying a product.

Statisticlaly you're wrong, Mason.  You can claim to work 100 hours per week. But it doesn't change the fact that on average, the top 10% in income earners work substantially more hours per week than the rest of the population.

So your husband is paid to sleep then?

Or do you claim he dosn't sleep?

There are only two variables in effect here that I'm trying (and failing) to communicate:

1st are the number of hours per week someone is LABORING. Not on call (I'm on call 24/7 too TW, but I don't claim to be working 24/7. I do sleep, eat, and even occasionally bathe but I don't claim I'm working when I do those things).

Secondly, the rate, as a percentage, that someone's labor is being taxed.

What I write here applies just as much to the factory worker who does double shifts as it does to me. In a typical week in the Winter, I will work between 60 and 70 hours per week. If my taxes come out to be 50% of what I earn, that means I am forcibly working (you do understand this TW? Not volunteering for the military but literal forced servitude) for the government 30 to 35 hours during that time.

Similarly, the factory worker pulling double shifts on a regular basis who ends up up doing 60 hours per week is likely paying close to 45% (nearly the same) and hence is laboring for the government nearly 30 hours per week.

But our economy -- our current way of life -- as a society absolutely rests on the assumption that the tiny % of people who do a disproportinate amount of the actual labor keep working. If they cut back, odds are that there will not be people to pick up the slack or who can do what they do as well (depending on the job).

That is why when people argue we should raise taxes, they do not recognize the unintended consequences of what they advocate. At some threshold, people decide it isn't worth it.

To use a military example -- what percent of current military volunteers would still have volunteered if they the minimum deployment was 6 years? My guess is would be some percentage considerably less than 100%. And what would happen to our military if it were that percentage smaller or less effective? And yet would anyone deny that this is precisely what would happen if the government decided that deployments would be at least 6 years and nothing less?

Which is the same as it is in the private sector. If the government were to decide that if I wanted to continue to make what I currently make I would need to work more hours, there is some threshold where I might value my free time more than the material gain from working.

If I currently work 30 hours a week for the government without a choice and then was sold that now I would have to work 35 hours per week, I suspect I and many others would simply pull back. The hardest working factory workers might pull fewer shifts. I might decide to work a little less, lay off a few workers to deal with the decreased revenue, and take up gardening as a hobby.

It always saddens me how quickly liberals are to fall into class warfare arguments. They see my post and think "Oh, poor rich boy" without recognizing that my argument is about labor, not wealth.

 

I think you fail to recognize the hours that others truly work.

Find someone in your area who has deployed. You will find he worked far more hours than you. I'm not saying that what you're talking about doesn't suck. But you're not alone in working long hours.

He was LITERALLY working more hours than you. We're talking 12 hour shifts plus calls in for casualties plus guard tower duty.

I know you don't like to think of it that way, but YES, he literally worked a TON of hours. Not JUST being away such that time "off" was anything but. He was LITERALLY working TONS of hours weekly throughout his tour.

Mason LITERALLY works a ton of hours weekly but you pish-poshed his assertion.

Other people actually do work a lot. Not just 40 hours a week.

No, we are not taxed the way you are. I agree it's not right. But there are middle class people who work just as hard and long and smart as you.

PS - I know you don't like this, but it's NOT forced servitude when you work.

I appreciate you and I respect what you've done for yourself and your family but I believe you are going about this argument the entirely wrong way.

You don't have to work the hours you work. And you don't have to be a CEO of your own company. You choose to do these things. Just like my husband (and gosh, I know you hate to be compared to him) chose to join the Armed Forces.

You make choices.

I could agree with you far more heartily if you were not using this tact. But hey, maybe other people think it's a great argument and totally sympathize with you. I don't know.

Man, if I worked 100 hours a week there is no way I would ever have time to post in a JoeUser comments thread. Actually that is 14 hours a day, there is no way I would even have time to eat.

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.

You can get a sense of what the tricks look like in David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal. There are things like the old classic headquartering your business in Bermuda, there is making your company a subsidiary of an insurance company so that your profits get insurance tax treatments. You can hide your profits in a partnership that loses money every year and then dissolves in the tenth year returning you the profit. There are several reasons no one can specifically name these for you.

1) they're tricks for a very limited audience, the very wealthy. That means they're marketed in exclusive meetings, not mass-market education efforts. Often to get Morgan Stanley or whoever to explain the details of their new tax shelter to you requires you sign nondisclosure agreements.
2) they're very complicated and unexplainable. Like they hinge on what happens when you short sell a million shares and then buy them back immediately. A lot of the time the only way they really work is that the IRS doesn't know about them. But that's sustainable because the IRS can't afford as good accountants as the people they're trying to audit.
3) some of them seem to have no real explainable logic at all. But if you have a letter accompanying your tax return saying Tax Attorney X approved this strategy, the IRS will often avoid the risk of contesting your claim. The richer you get, the more the IRS knows that it will be hearing from your lawyer and perhaps your Congressman if it leans on you. It tends to stay away.

Basically no one who doesn't use these strategies can explain them to you because there are two tax systems. People like me pay tax on our incomes. People like you pay tax on what they say their income is. It's in the deferring and nonreporting of income that these secret tax breaks lie -- it doesn't work for people whose income is already recorded on W-2's that are sent to the IRS.