This comment on CNN just irked me:
My parents are rich and they employ 5 gardeners, 3 housekeepers and 1 car washer. A tax increase will force my parents to fire most or all of them in order to still retire when they want. Life shouldn't change too drastically for my parents, but with absolute certainty the lives of 9 hard working people and their families will become very difficult. Please someone tell me how the benefits of increasing taxes on the rich will make up for the unavoidable adverse consequences so that when my dad lays off 9 perfectly good employees I can tell myself that it is for a greater good.
Are some of the rich really as ignorant about their own finances as this dimwit seems to be about his parents?
First of all, anyone who can afford to spend money on 5 gardeners, 3 housekeepers and their own car washer is not going to be even mildly effected by a tax increase that goes from 35% to 39%. Secondly, anyone who would fire these people over such a tax increase is doing so out of spite or to make a point.
I have many friends who are very very well off, the result of growing up in one of the most desired spots on Long Island. Most of them don't have 5 gardeners, 3 housekeepers and a car washer but their lifestyles have not changed one lick since the downturn (most work on Wall Street). The most conservative of this lot, however, ARE inclined to threaten this kind of action as a result of more taxes, even though the difference would hardly be registered (if dividends taxes, for example, remain unchanged most of these folks will simply take less in salary and more in that kind of payout). It has nothing to do with sacrifice for them. It has everything to do with an ingrained attitude of survival of the fittest. The fact that most of them were born 20 rungs up on the ladder to begin with is a lost revelation.
I'm so fucking tired of this whining by people who cannot only afford the crimp in their tax expenditures but will not even notice it. Lies are the truth in today's modern society - and they come at such a rapid pace that many of them stick. This kind of scenario is one of them.