No.  A job is a means to an end.  I work so that I can earn money to support my family. Pretty much like everyone else.

Even taking the underlying unfairness aside for a moment. What people don't realize is the effect it has on everyone else.

The single biggest problem with our society is how few people understand economics. Look at what ThinkAloud said in comment #1. It really highlights the lack of understanding about wealth creation.

The phrase "make money" is well known in our society but apparently not understood.

People who are rich are people who get $1 and can produce a lot more than $1 in wealth.  The greater the ratio, the richer they are.  I'm not super-rich by any standard. I'm a little fish.  But there are people who can take $1 and turn it into $1000's.

And we ALL benefit from those people because they get their wealth by producing things we all want and ultimately can have the opportunity ourselves to create our own wealth by leveraging what those big fish have produced (like me making computer software - I stand on the shoulders of giants who broughts us today's consumer-centric Internet, personal computers, friendly operating systems, etc.).

Fortunately, the government didn't take so much from those men and women that they didn't have enough to risk and invest in promising new endeavors. And so they took their dollars and created vastly more of them.

That is why we're so much richer today -- all of us in the US -- than people were 100 years ago.

It's also worth wondering how much better off we could have been if the government hadn't taken so much of the nation's wealth to re-distribute it.

It is delivered every April 15th.

In actual fact then you're not like everyone else. There's a study cited here http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/ (I couldn't make a link for some reason) which ran from 1945 to 1965. What it discovered was that while security was the highest factor in work motivation (and therefore presumably money for the family), advancement, the type of work and the reputation of the company were also important.

From the last three factors we can see that recognition of effort, the desire to be in a certain industry and acknowledgement of good employment choices are important.

The government may only be able to get more money from you through coercion because you have no interest in working beyond the bottom line, but the evidence suggests they should be able to get more from others through appealing to the non-monetary motivators. Titles are simply an effective method of recognition. Higher taxes for popular industries and positions might also be an option.

EDIT: I've neglected to mention the psychological toil of unemployment here. You say that people only work because they need the money, but the societal influences are also heavily biased towards working. This is one of the factors behind the high level of depression among the unemployed.

The government's agenda seems a bit unclear to me.  But it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job at it.

Certainly people like to DO things.  I enjoy my job and all the factors you mention are certainly motivators.  But at the end of the day, people get up and go to work first and foremost to trade their labor/abilities for other things that they want.

It's not about materialism. The point is that when people have less to spend, the first thing they do is zap any spending they deem non-essential.  Less on that 401K. Less vacationing. Less NEW things right?  Well, business owners are the same way. If they have less to spend, they invest less (hiring new workers), they may cut unnecessary expenditures (those employees that they don't really absolutely need - and anyone who has a job probably has coworkers that they know aren't really essential).

In short, it's a falacy when someone argues that the "rich can afford it" because that's not the right way to look at it. The question is whether the middle class can afford it?  I'd say right now, not bloody likely.

I guess so, but then you look at the truly wealthy and this doesn't appear to be the case. I'm not sure if you're at this stage yet, and really it's none of my business, but eventually you will reach a level of wealth where you don't make much of your money from actually working. You're mostly just reaping the rewards of investments. At that stage - when your work isn't particularly relevant to your ability to trade for things you want - the fascinating thing is that most people still work.

If we can find a way to harness that by making them pay more taxes in exchange for something they want, we can boost revenue streams without alienating them or reducing their productivity. It's just a matter of finding the right trigger.

The middle classes are the bedrock of a nation and the wealthy its financial heart, sure. But I think it's more a question of how to get money out of people without breeding the creative resentment you argue is the inevitable result. In the current political and economic climate, I think you can do this by offering a product you can't get any other way which offers prestige in spades but costs government little. I think many wealthy people would pay to be able to have "financial saviour", "patron" or somesuch after their name on official correspondence.

I suggest this because it sidesteps your valid argument against raising taxes and creates value for money where in a tax rise the value can be hard to see.

C'mon now ... you can understand machine language and an unedited comment (btw, because of your editor doesnt work unless it is in the mood ... please fix it ) with few lines is hard for you to understand?... i dont believe that ...

anyway ... my argument still stands and so far i have not seen any response, from anyone, to disprove it ...

all responses so far is about totally different points not directly related to your article or to my response to it.

your article is about HIGHER TAXES on high-incomes, not about wealth creation or hard work or feeding the poor or fairness ...etc.

my responses give details about how those higher taxes on high-incomes sustain and increase that wealth and in the process make the country richer and better and without them the wealth is not sustainable and in fact decreases .... and the country regresses ....

regardless of anything ... please ask your team to fix the editor ...

and created 24 million jobs in the process !!!!!

all that is ignored and they talk about everything else under the sun and avoid the main argumnets

Certainly. People want a purpose.

But let's be very careful here on how we define "working".  As ones wealth increases, their ability to hand off unpleasant tasks to others increases as well.  I'm certainly not super rich by any means.  But even with me, I've hired people who take care of a lot of the work I used to do on my own to focus more on things I'm particularly good at / enjoy.  

I don't agree with those who would argue that if we raise taxes that the rich simply won't work.  I do think there's a threshold where that is true but I don't think we're very close to that point.

The problem with raising taxes on the highest income earners (not the richest, Obama doesn't propose to do that, he is merely focusing on the highest income earners) are the unintended consequences.

I'm not arguing about creative resentment.

Here, look, let's walk through this step by step:

You make $N per week.

What do you do with that money?  Buy groceries, pay the rent, pay utilities, etc.

What do you do with the remainder?

Invest some in a 401K maybe? Purchase some non-essentials?

The problem I'm trying (but failing) to communicate is that to business owners, their equivalent of a 401K and non-essentials are hiring new people (investments) and laying off non-essential personnel (non-essentials).

There's no malice or spite involved.  

Now you have two false premises.

The first one which you just ignored - that economics is a zero sum game which it's not.

And secondly, that anyone, myself especially, cares about "proving" item #1 to you.

I'm not trying to suggest there is. However I didn't pick up that you were talking about corporate taxes rather than personal taxes.

I thought you were talking personal taxes and the way they affect your willingness to go to work and be a CEO, in which case a prestige-based recognition of your input to the country might be a valid way to encourage further high tax revenue without reducing your dedication to work.

However, if we're talking you as in corporations giving the CEO a title isn't going to make him hire more people. Well, it might, but the company's financial status might not survive that.

Or do you as a business owner and CEO disagree that there is a difference (in practice or in theory) between business and personal incomes? I guess I'm not really seeing your angle, as the conversation seemed to be about personal incomes and work, while your embellishment with the 401k analogy seems to suggest the company's incomes and work can be considered in the same terms re: taxation.