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Ballmer, Bezos Fund Effort To Undermine Bill Gates
theodp writes "You know what they say — it takes money to avoid paying money. TechFlash reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos have contributed $100,000 each to an effort to defeat an income tax on individuals in Washington state making more than $200,000. The backers of Initiative 1098, which is set for the November ballot, include Bill Gates (Sr.), who has emerged as one of the most vocal proponents of the income tax. Under the proposal, which has drawn the ire of the Bezos and Ballmer-backed Defeat 1098, no tax would be due on the first $200K of income, 5% tax would be owed on income between $200K and $500K, and everything above $500K would be subject to a 9% tax (cutoffs are doubled for joint returns)."
Living in a state that does have an income tax, I have to say that I don't have much sympathy for the billionaires who are crying over the fact that they might get taxed on the part of their income over $200,000 per year. Aw, isn't that just too bad.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Complaining about having to pay to support the poor? Then help them stop being poor! Henry Ford knew it - when he was asked why he paid his workers more than the competition, he said "I want them to be able to buy my cars."
Looks like Gates Sr. also gets it - growing the tax base takes money, and you can't get that money by taxing people who don't have it.
The middle and lower classes are no further ahead after 3 decades, after inflation, while the top income earners have seen real increases in their finances.
If you live in the metro, own a home, and your wife stays at home with the kids - making $200,000 hardly qualifies you as "rich". Especially if you are a small business owner.
From the Summary:
(cutoffs are doubled for joint returns).
The way I take this is they'd have to make 400K before they hit the tax.
UPS Sucks
Oops, my bad, they're creating the jobs overseas. I correct myself.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Simply put, if you're making over $200,000 and you're finding it hard to make ends meet, you're living well outside your means. Don't look for sympathy because you can't afford your million dollar home, your five cars, and the yacht.
The worst political development in American history was that it gradually became ok to just vote other people's money to yourself.
No, the worst political development in American history was that it suddenly became ok to run the country into the ground so the greedy rich could hold onto a little more of their money, and managed (brilliantly) to convince the gullible poor to support them.
In Washington state currently, people earning less than $20,000 pay 17.3% in taxes. People earning over $537,000 pay just 2.9%
Even with this law, the richest will be paying less as a percentage of income than the poorest in the state.
This study (pdf) gives the numbers.
In the US there are a plethora of ways to invest money that have little or nothing to do with creating jobs in the US. Would someone investing in IBM be creating jobs in the US or India and China? How about investing in Boeing? To a lot of people it matters where the jobs are created.
Billionaires only exist because the people let them. They can either graciously return a very small fraction of what they have taken in a gesture towards keeping those they've exploited well fed and educated, or they can be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Their choice.
Civilization is expensive. Since the benefits of civilization accrue disproportionately to the rich, they should bear a disproportionate amount of the cost. If you don't like it, we don't have to have civilization. But I don't think you're going to like the alternative.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The biggest conservative BS myth is that they *earned* every dollar they've made - as if they're an island unto themselves and society had nothing to do with it. I suggest we drop those millionaires into Jamaica or some other destitute third-world country. When they fail to become equally rich in Jamaica as they did in America, then we've proved that the society around them has something to do with their wealth.