Stephen King: Raise My F***ing Taxes Already | Hacker News Reader

Stephen King: Raise My F***ing Taxes Already

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10 pointshachiya16 comments

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.

I think he already does this http://www.stkfoundation.org/

Maybe the cause that matters is universal health care.

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.

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

Link to actual op-ed: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-kin...

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.

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.

Care to elaborate, rather than simply posting a flame?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Why is this showing up in the Hacker News feed?

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.

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