Mark Cuban: The most patriotic thing you can do is "get rich"

Re:Mark Cuban: The most patriotic thing you can do is "get r... by ckinnan on Thursday August 13, 2009 @06:45PM (#761906)

There's a huge difference between the rich and high income earners. The rich/wealthy often favor higher taxes because their income is from tax-free bonds or from control of assets, where income is deferred and usually part of a one-time transaction, like sale of a company, where taxes can be avoided.

High-income earners, on the other hand, often have negative net worth (school and housing debt). The rich want high taxes on the high-income earners because they don't want the upstarts competing with them for control of assets...they want to make it harder for the next wave of entrepreneurs to build disruptive or competitive businesses.

It is ironic, but taxes on new capital formation directly benefit those who already have capital.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Mark Cuban: The most patriotic thing you can do is "get r... by mcslee on Thursday August 13, 2009 @07:03PM (#761942)

This is an astute and important point. I have always found it flawed that a middle-class American family making around $100K in income will pay more taxes than someone with $10M+ portfolio of municipal bonds.

With that said, I agree with Mark Cuban's philosophy here, and do not get personally upset with paying taxes.

I don't think the solution is to complain about taxes on high income earners. Rather, there just needs to be more pressure on instituting equivalent taxes for other forms of wealth generation (i.e. get rid of tax-free bonds).

[ Parent | on HN ]