Job creators…
Comments: 0 - Date: October 2nd, 2011 - Categories: Uncategorized
If I were to look at a list of the richest people in America, I could guarantee that none of them created my job. No. My current job was created by an immigrant who came to this country about 20 years ago from Soviet Russia. It’s very American dream, if you ask me. Before this job, my job was created by a small family who ran a newspaper.
My point is this, according statistics by the Small Business Administration, small business have created 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years. While small businesses do get tax breaks, I doubt they’re in the same stratosphere as the breaks the super-wealthy receive.
According to Warren Buffet’s recent editorial, he paid a lower percentage than the other 20 people in his office. He has also said that he pays less in taxes than his maid. Obama, Buffet and others have come up with a rather ingenious solution: close tax loopholes and raise taxes on the wealthiest one percent. This has been deemed “Class warfare.” And the super-rich are now called “Job creators.” I’ll let the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway take that one:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an editorial for The Washington Post about the “demonization” of the uber-wealthy. One of the points she touched on was how to middle class america, the upper tax bracket seems woefully out of touch. She interviewed a crisis-management consultant in Washington named Eric Dezenhall, who talked about a “gazillionaire” client who didn’t think people would picket his house after he ran his company into the ground. “Because the super-rich live in a bubble,” Dezenhall said. “They’re concerned about what a small circle of peers think of them, like the guys they play golf with, but nobody else.”
With record unemployment, high foreclosure rates and millions of people struggling to make ends meet, no one is pitying Representative John Fleming for only having $400,000 left after taxes and “feeding his family.” How will he ever survive?
So, let’s follow Warren Buffet’s advice once again. Let’s remember that right now, the real job creators are small business owners. Perhaps we can give them a bit of a break, instead of the billionaires.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places (Warren Buffet).