Tuesday, September 03, 2013
Targeting the Wealthy Kills Jobs - WSJ.com
This column explains how the American economy should work.
Unfortunately, most elected officials see businesses as tax cows rather than job creators...
Unfortunately, most elected officials see businesses as tax cows rather than job creators...
Here's a bit of Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers recent Wall Street Journal column:
"The American dream is not politically affiliated. The last time it was alive and well was the period from Ronald Reagan's second term in office through Bill Clinton's second term in office. In those 16 years, we enjoyed continuous low taxes, low government spending and economic prosperity.
Since 2000, the economy has staggered under the record government spending and deficits of two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The result of that spending spree has been lower real wages and higher and more-persistent unemployment. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to near-zero, and, for the first time ever in the U.S., that Depression-era medicine has not worked—a scary situation reminiscent of Japan's decade-plus economic demise.
According to the latest 2012 IRS income-tax data, the top 1% of American taxpayers earned 20% of all income and paid 36% of all taxes. The top 5% earned 36% of all income and paid 58% of all taxes. Will even higher taxes help the economy? My experience in Silicon Valley tells me that high and so-called progressive taxes are a major cause of the country's current economic problems, not the solution."
