

Stephen King: Raise My F***ing Taxes Already - hachiya
http://www.newser.com/story/145065/stephen-king-raise-my-fing-taxes-already.html

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jhnewhall
He could just give the money to a cause that matters, instead of expecting
others to buy weapons to enslave the weak and luxuries for the banksters.

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GiraffeNecktie
Maybe the cause that matters is universal health care.

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rsanchez1
Then start a foundation. Taxation, or the lack thereof, didn't stop Bill
Gates. He didn't sit on the sidelines complaining. He saw a problem and did
something about it. He found his cause that matters.

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sigzero
Raising taxes on the Rich will do precisely zero to alleviate anything.

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tyisathome
Link to actual op-ed:
[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-
kin...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me-
for-f-s-sake.html)

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bunderbunder
A tangent on the whole "job creators" thing:

Being rich is not the same thing as creating jobs. In a sense, it's the
opposite: Every full-time equivalent's worth of income brought in is a full-
time equivalent's worth of money that someone else didn't make instead. In a
way, wealth is better thought-of as a measure of how many jobs the owner of a
company could have created, but didn't.

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simplefish
I'm not sure what you said you be any _less_ true. You seem to have no
understanding of how a modern economy works, or how the banking system works,
or what a salary represents, or what wealth is, or what the determinates of
unemployment are, or what it means for a job to be "created", or, hell, even
what a "job" is. There are so many flaws here, it's hard to even figure out
where to start.

You will be unable to find a single economist, economics textbook, or economic
model which agrees with your premise.

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bunderbunder
Care to elaborate, rather than simply posting a flame?

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simplefish
There's not much to elaborate on; the argument literally makes no sense as
presented. You say "wealth is better thought-of as a measure of how many jobs
the owner of a company could have created, but didn't." It isn't.

Apple has $100b in cash. Are you going to seriously tell me that if Apple
gives $10b back to shareholders via a dividend that, regardless of what those
shareholders do with the money, total employment for the economy as a whole
will be lower? And that, further, if those shareholders had never invested in
Apple at all total employment for the economy would be the same? In other
words, that dividends from an alternate-world Apple would not both be a sign
that the possessor _had_ created jobs in the past, as well as a potent
mechanism with which to create jobs in the future? Because, that's exactly
what you're saying, and there isn't an iota of evidence in your favour.

Or to take another tack, the internet has been all atwitter about asteroid
mining recently, funded by, among others, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. You're
going to sit here and say that it's clearly the case that, if we care about
unemployment, the money they're sinking into the venture should have stayed
with Google. That, somehow, if Google had decided to go into asteroid mining,
rather than the founders of Google, it will magically create more jobs?
Because...what? Again, there is no theoretical basis or empirical evidence for
this notion.

I could go on forever. Your argument is lunacy on its face, and when we unpack
it, it is based on levels of misunderstanding and mistakes all the way down.
I'm sorry, but if you want more than a contemptuous flame, you're going to
need to do better.

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bunderbunder
Let me first just throw out that you seem to largely be reacting to
extrapolations you've made upon what I wrote, rather than the statement
itself. Perhaps you'd be able to read a little more clearly if you took a
moment to wipe the spittle off the monitor. That said, let me attempt to
rephrase:

If you look at it on more of a macro scale, then yes everything you're saying
is trivially obvious. All that, and the money so-and-so accumulates gets saved
in a way that makes it available for loans which in turn are spent on goods
and services, which creates jobs, etc. etc.

However, the "job creators" rhetoric is carefully focused on a micro scale,
very much in order to avoid the way such things tend to disappear once you
allow all that interconnectedness to be considered. Cutting out as many
complicating factors as possible also makes it more appropriate for the 'sound
bites' rhetorical arena in which it operates. Such an argument can't be
challenged by just wildly throwing a list of nuances at it. Nuance doesn't
work there; it'd be like trying to use incendiary weapons in an underwater
fight. Hence, my observation on it was meant to be similarly blinkered, in
order to better tailor the response to the proposition.

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simplefish
I...see. Let's recap:

You said that wealth should not be equated with job creation. I said that this
was wrong, and it should be. You admit that this is true (and indeed, that it
is "trivially obvious"). But your say that other people often simplify this
true argument so that, while still correct, it lacks "nuance", and this means
that you are justified in making untrue arguments against it.

That certainly clarifies things. I withdraw my criticism and apologize for my
ill-considered tone.

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kevin_morrill
Write a check to the treasury anytime you like and stop telling the rest of us
how we should spend our money.

1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20220

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brettbender
So you did not read the article which actually addresses people who make this
argument?

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emilv
Why is this showing up in the Hacker News feed?

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rsanchez1
If he's so anxious about it, why doesn't he just write a check out to the
Treasury? Nobody is stopping him from giving more of his money to the
government.

