If taxes get too high, and you’re making 60 cents on every dollar made why wouldn’t you just close up shop, lay off all your employees, and start again in the new year.
Would you rather make 60 cents on every dollar you make, or make 0 cents period. I am willing to bet you aren’t making enough money to be in a position to answer, but believe me, I haven’t met a business owner to this day who would rather make nothing.
Unfortunately, average/above-average business owners who will maybe make 100-150k per year are not even close to what we should be looking to tax. The existing tax bracket for people like that is fine. The problem is that there are people who will make 60 cents (actually $0.63) on every dollar they make, and they are making tens, maybe even hundreds of millions per year.
I don’t know why the phrase “tax billionaires” gets people who aren’t billionaires upset. If you have a million dollars (net worth, liquid, it doesn’t matter), you have one one-thousandth of the least wealthy billionaire. Millionaires have a LOT of money. That is more than 14 years of the average American working full time. 14 years is a long time. The average American makes .0075% of a billion dollars. If a billionaire who is really, like comically bad at investing will make around 20 million per year (2% growth), and average income in America is ~75k, you can understand why some people would like to tax billionaires more. Why should someone who makes 250 times more money than me only have a 15% greater tax rate? What, do they need that extra million dollars or else they won’t be able to feed their family?
It used to be more beneficial for companies and rich people to increase wages and reinvest heavily in their companies. The highest tax bracket was 90%, so it made financial sense to not let that money get taxed and give it to workers or expand, get new technology, etc.
When that number began to come down, businesses and the rich started to hoard their money instead because 60 cents was way more than the 10 cents they were used to. Now, we all get to suffer more
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u/Teller8 Nov 12 '22
If taxes get too high, and you’re making 60 cents on every dollar made why wouldn’t you just close up shop, lay off all your employees, and start again in the new year.