Wall Street And Silicon Valley: Not That Different After All

If we had some

very high personal income tax brackets on ASTRONOMICAL incomes (like we used to have), the East Coast (Wall Street) guys would not have ever gotten the kind of money that induced them to risk destruction of the financial system of the world. And YOUR government would not have had to spend YOUR trillions to right the ship (again).

Likewise, the Silicon Valley guys would not be kissing up as much to whomever would give them "$150 Billion in free money" (from YOU via the government) to do possibly-dubious green projects.

We have this fantastical notion that if we don't provide billion-dollar personal income magets (by way of low taxes at the high end) to a few "entreprenuers", that nothing worthwhile will happen in society. The truth is that free enterprise actually worked better back in the days of tax rates as high as 91%, and that low taxes have brought you the S&L crisis of the 80s, the tech-stock bubble of the 90s, the housing crisis, the oil crisis (at $145/bl last year), and the likes of everything questionable from Enron to "Girls Gone Wild". It probably also is a contributing reason for why millions of jobs left America---to temporarily feather the personal nests of whomever shipped them out. Why do we insist on staying blind to this obvious cause-effect relationship?

Muser of NM @ Sep 18, 2009 13:12:42 PM