- the rule of law and a court system that allow VC's and others to sign billion dollar contracts with only minor fears of being cheated
- a large supply of underemployed people rich enough to own a car, but desperate enough to cash in the depreciation by driving for Uber
- a massive public road system
- a market
- and much more.
For all of this, they pay very close to nothing as their income is mostly capital gains.
Uber is a growth company, so we can expect that corporate tax has little effect on them, for the simple reason that they're not making much money (by design). Still, their capitalization has some notion of corporate tax baked into it, because if they become a giant and start returning earnings to owners, then this will be impacted by corporate tax.
I don't like that we have this complicated system of double-taxing corporate earnings at lower rates, as opposed to taxing earnings as income for the owners of the company. I know that many companies find ways to skirt corporate tax... but not all, and not really the majority (but preferentially the huge companies). I also know that the combination of these two taxes may not total to what the individual owners would have otherwise paid if the earnings had been ordinary income. Still... it's not as simple as "capital gains".
So that's basically the case for progressive corporate tax. Everyone acknowledges that small/medium business pay the full tax rate, while large/huge corps always never anything close to it. With progressive taxation you can directly impact the latter and not the former.
Top managers wages are completely fictitious. Investors generally don't care though, since it is basically nothing compared to turnover as a whole.
I believe as an American I’m missing some important context to understand this comment.
The purchasers (taxpayers) are not willing to pay sufficient wages in order to incentivize [the right] people to pursue it as a career.
For those remaining 25 years, they will tend to prioritize money in their pockets over a teacher's salary; a situation that does not align with the betterment of our society at large.
The million dollar teachers will do things like actively manage the student's home life or business trajectory, give them personalized curricula, connect them with opportunities to gain hands-on experience, etc.
Not saying you're wrong re: the incentives or anything, but a lot of people don't even know this segment of the market exists.
You have named the very reason the teachers are angrily protesting any and all attempts at evaluation of teachers' productivity. Or introduction of private (i.e., market-based) schools competing with the state run ones.
E.g Uber's executives are very well compensated, and are nothing but middle-men. Middle-men that are easily replaced, as demonstrated by the Uber clones in cities that banned Uber.