John Taylor sounds a theme that has been a pretty constant one around here—the U. S. economy needs a higher level of business investment than it’s seeing:
Either way you look at it, the relationship between unemployment and the investment share is remarkably close. It holds for both non-residential and residential investment, and is a subject of my current research. Of the four shares of GDP (the other two of course being consumption and net exports), the investment share shows by far the largest negative association with unemployment.
Encouraging the creation and expansion of businesses should be the focus on government efforts to reduce unemployment. The recent compromise agreement to prevent the increase in tax rates on small businesses and the move to lighten up on the anti-business sentiment coming out of Washington are two steps in the right direction.
and he presents three graphs supporting the view.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen an accelerating trend, beginning more than 30 years ago and intensifying over the last decade, to support consumer spending rather than business investment. Now we’re living with the consequences.
Increasing the level of business investment will be no quick fix; it’ll take decades to overcome the decades of bad policy. Further, it will be a challenge to insure that what we encourage is investment here in the United States rather than overseas investment on the part of U. S. investors.
I think he may be right, but it’s unfortunate his data only goes back two decades – during much of that time we were in bubbles.
Doesn’t this lead to the savings-rate Catch 22?
Lord, help us to cut our spending, but not right away.
(Though, if the world is changing enough that America can have an export economy, that would solve everything.)
I looked at that yesterday. Looked like a chicken and egg problem. The two track together, but not sure if investment actually precedes change.
Steve
“Further, it will be a challenge to insure that what we encourage is investment here in the United States rather than overseas investment on the part of U. S. investors.”
Need to invest in businesses, not innovative financial products.
Steve
Doesn’t there first need to be a thing in which to invest? Isn’t offering investment capital to random people claiming fabulous business opportunities how we got the dotcom bubble? And obviously whatever barriers you see to business investment didn’t stop billions of dollars from chasing ChangeYourDiapers.com. (God I hope I hope that’s not a real thing.)
I have money to invest and nowhere to invest it. Where’s the hot opportunity? To the extent I’m investing at all it’s in my own self-generated project, and that in turn relies on the tech that brought us the iPad. But aside from the joys of the touchscreen, what’s out there that needs investment and isn’t getting it?
michael, you are in the midst of creating a new-media model.
Other people’s money could fund that. And ideally, you’d bring home international sales.
JP:
Actually we’re funding with British/Danish money and yeah, we will be very aggressive going after overseas sales. But in investment terms it’s small potatoes and I don’t know that we’ll create net jobs.
As an aside, this is funny:
http://technologizer.com/2011/01/16/amazons-raw-deal-for-android-developers/
JP:
You might have useful insight on this, if Dave doesn’t mind an OT sidebar: regarding apps for iPad vs. Android, the house geek warns that Android is fragmenting so developing an app that works across all Android devices might be quite a bit more expensive and time-consuming to build, and far more expensive to support, than just sticking with the “i” world. Obviously we know Android requires additional expense, just wondering if it is disproportionately expensive.
Playing with quietwrite … maybe it works for sidebars
What! sidebars
That one worked. (Quietwrite might be a good example that media and innovation are continuing.)
Thanks John, I could read it. Just couldn’t figure out how to answer.
But thanks that was actually very helpful.
The “in house” team, which is to say “my” people, are a writer (me,) a filmaker, an ad person and a numbers guy. Our in-house geek is 13. I brought him to NYC to meet with our new digital parter, and he sat in on our meetings. I trust Jake but he’s such an Apple fan boy it’s good to back-stop him and as you can gather from the above job titles, none of us knows dick about software.
“The recent compromise agreement to prevent the increase in tax rates on small businesses and the move to lighten up on the anti-business sentiment coming out of Washington are two steps in the right direction.”
Gee, I wish I’d thought of that………
“Doesn’t there first need to be a thing in which to invest? Isn’t offering investment capital to random people claiming fabulous business opportunities how we got the dotcom bubble?”
“I have money to invest and nowhere to invest it. Where’s the hot opportunity? To the extent I’m investing at all it’s in my own self-generated project, and that in turn relies on the tech that brought us the iPad. But aside from the joys of the touchscreen, what’s out there that needs investment and isn’t getting it?”
Michael – your first observation is quite correct, it was a bubble mania. It was the false sense of economic success that the Clintonistas point to as evidence of superior stewardship – and a budget surplus – and even tried to get Al Gore elected by. In truth, it was a mirage.
Your second observation is also quite correct, and instructive. Many people have no better investment vehicle than their own business. And to those folks we must say “bravo.”
Lastly, as I pointed out in a previous response to steve, in point of fact the world has been awash in investment capital for much of the 2000’s – despite steve’s persistant denial that it all went into financial instruments. I rarely “pull rank,” but I do believe that I am the only participant on this forum who is in the business. I actually speak on a routine basis with the real pools of capital: endowments, fund of funds, public and private pension fund administrators etc. I don’t traffic in breazy articles by faux economists or pundits with political motivations.
Allocations to investment “in companies” has not been in short supply for at least 15 years. The issue you cite, MR, is currently correct: “where are the REAL” opportunities? Corporations are sitting on cash; PE is sitting on cash. But the crucial insight most do not want to admit to, because of political biases, is that capital will follow opportunities. It always has. So let the entrepreneurs of the world know they will not be taxed, regulated and vilified out of existance and I guarantee you the money will follow.
But when “greed,” “spread it around” and “tax their rich asses” is the political environment of the day……………..don’t be surprised when boat sales go up and golf handicaps come down.
“I rarely “pull rank,†but I do believe that I am the only participant on this forum who is in the business.”
Well, only on this and climate science 😉
FWIW, overall your analysis is consistent with NPR’s “giant pool of money” storyline. A high global savings rate coincided with and became dependent on a high rate of American consumption. When the obvious investments because saturated, money sloshed to new places.
You know, I was looking at houses in SoCal as the dot-com crested. My realtor told me she had people flying in from Silicon Valley, buying 2 or 3 houses in a day, and flying out again.
So then housing crested, and money has sloshed to gold.
The giant pool of money is still scared. Tremendous volumes are willing to earn ~1%, rather than risk anything.
It sickens me that the best solution we can come up with is “Bush tax cuts”. If we think that new, growing businesses are the driver of employment growth then why are we focusing on people who are already realizing very high incomes when new and growing businesses don’t realize much at all? If only we could have a conservative party that was for low, efficient taxation instead of low, make-it-hurt-as much-as-possible taxation. We need a smart, efficient way to tax consumption and leave capital untouched until it is realized for consumption. The best idea I’ve heard so far is a VAT.
BTW, cross-wise to this we have examples like Vizio.
I worry Vizio’s success foreshadows a bad future. As I understand the story, Vizo was started by Mr. Wang, a Taiwanese-American with manufacturing contacts in Asia. He started with little money and little staff, but he didn’t need them. He called the Asian manufacturers who were already making TVs for other folks, and said “can you make me one too?” These other folks had their expertise as a result of decades of American off-shoring. So they said sure, we know how to do that. Mr. Wang then hot-footed it down to Costco and said “I have TVs.” He cut a deal at lower margin than his “larger” competitors, and the rest was history.
He was actually the second I know of who followed this same game plan. This was also how Linksys got started.
So what have we got for investment in America? $600,000 from friends and family paid off big … but it resulted in a pretty thin “US” company.
(Wang’s Q&A)
I guess Linksys, after its start in a Turtle Rock garage, grew to quite a few US employees.
“By 1994, it had grown to 55 employees with annual revenues of $6.5 million”
“By 2003, when the company was acquired by Cisco, it had 305 employees and revenues of more than $500 million.”
… remember, such stories quote “US employees” as “employees” and this relates back to those GDP/working-pop numbers.
This is exactly like the chicken and egg problem because it’s so linked together. But in a greater number of different ways. Credit, for example. Investment means long term liability and spending can mean greater short term credit. If government policy shifts the market rules toward supporting one or another, we will see (and we all saw) something non-healthy.
jp –
The problem isn’t climate science, its climate voodoo.
Drew:
I have to say that being “vilified” is far down the list of things which would stop me from investing. If the model I’m busily trying to assemble works the people who will hate me will be the actual people who have always paid me. And if I fail they’ll have a good laugh and tell me to f*ck off. In a context where I’m already biting the hands that feed me society’s opinions are irrelevant.
And of course as I’ve said before high taxes are part of my motivation. I want more money. If I paid fewer taxes I’d have more money and would have less need to make more.
I wonder whether you tend to deal with entrepreneurs or members of the investor class. As a member of the entrepreneurial class (I also launched a political media company at one point) high taxes, snarky leftist politicians, etc… aren’t even on my radar of worries.
People are giving me their money and their time and their confidence and expecting me to succeed, while others are rooting for me to crash and burn. And I had an idea I wanted to see turned into reality. Those are the things that are real for me, and I suspect for a lot of entrepreneurs.
chuckle … as long as you are a qualified voodoo priest, you can make THAT argument, drew.
@Drew- Where did all that money go in the 2000s? Lowered taxes, little regulatory oversight. Perfect for investing, or at least much better per your theories, than ever before. Why did we get a weak recovery (peak to peak was lower) with low job recovery/creation?
Steve
Which 2000s and which money, steve?
A lot of money blinked out of existence in crashes. And cross-border flows are non-trivial to trace. I mean, I cite the rise of US funds invested in emerging markets, but they might actually be small compared to emerging markets monies invested in US funds.
I mean, China holds about a trillion in Treasuries, while (IIRC) US equity and bond funds might own a few hundred billion overseas.
“It sickens me that the best solution we can come up with is “Bush tax cutsâ€.”
That’s only in your mind,Sam.
“If we think that new, growing businesses are the driver of employment growth then why are we focusing on people who are already realizing very high incomes when new and growing businesses don’t realize much at all?”
Because your predicate is inane. Many small, growing and potential employment creating businesses have owners in relatively high income brackets. To focus taxation on them is counterproductive.
“If only we could have a conservative party that was for low, efficient taxation instead of low, make-it-hurt-as much-as-possible taxation.”
First part of sentence: you do – a flat tax. Second part of sentence: bizarro world.
“The best idea I’ve heard so far is a VAT.”
Except that it will be ADDITIVE to current income taxation proposals.
Carry on.
.
“Where did all that money go in the 2000s? Lowered taxes, little regulatory oversight. Perfect for investing, or at least much better per your theories, than ever before. Why did we get a weak recovery (peak to peak was lower) with low job recovery/creation?”
steve – It is you who needs to look in the mirror. Its not my “theories.” Capital data is easily found; I posted one set two or three of Dave’s essays previously. Its a fact. YOU are positing theories about how all the money went into financial instruments, not me.
You are showing either ignorance or bias in the balance of your comment. Little regulatory oversight? Talk to a small businessman about that. And for the popular myth of Bush era lax oversight, look at the origins of REAL financial lax regulatory oversight: Clinton (Glass -Steagal) or Dodd, Frank, Waters defense of Fannie and Freddie. Its a dismal record. But that’s a different world, steve, international finance. Let’s get back to ma and pa widget makers. Their world is a regulatory nightmare. And now ObamaCare. Ugh.
As for a weak recovery, let’s keep some sanity in the air. The unemployment rate during the Bush years and the Clinton years was essentially the same; and we experienced one of those 1 in every 50 years productivity spurts. If you want to argue against productivity go ahead…………..bring back calls for buggy whip manufacturers as well.
“I have to say that being “vilified†is far down the list of things which would stop me from investing.”
If you thought the political class would render your investment diseconomic through the tax code or employment costs you would, unless you were irrational.
“And of course as I’ve said before high taxes are part of my motivation. I want more money. If I paid fewer taxes I’d have more money and would have less need to make more. ”
Of course, that’s why you send in 2x what you owe by law.
“I wonder whether you tend to deal with entrepreneurs or members of the investor class.”
Please. You apparently are illiterate, or have not read a word I’ve written. We represent the interests of investors, and work with entrepreneurs 90% of the time.
“People are giving me their money and their time and their confidence and expecting me to succeed”
And they expect a return, unless its dumb money. They don’t want psychological returns, but the mean green.
Actually, you have it exactly backward: I’d have to be irrational to have those fears.
You’re missing the point: taxes lower my income, I want more income, so taxes force me to work harder. That’s not really very hard to understand. No different than gas prices or restaurant prices, taxes are a bill I have to pay.
But then I’m not typically motivated by self-pity, so rather than whine about poor, poor me having to pay taxes, waaah, I take on more work, improve my efficiency, and shoulder my responsibilities.
An entrepreneur who worries about being vilified is a pansy. An entrepreneur whose other option is sitting on his money and playing golf isn’t an entrepreneur at all. Sounds to me like your client base are whiny, self-pitying and rather gutless trust fund babies. But maybe you’re not presenting them in the best light.
Yes, I’m afraid they will insist on turning a profit. But you’d be badly mistaken if you thought that was their only goal, or my only goal. This reinforces my suspicion that you may deal more with moneyed layabouts and less with entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs will have ego, pride, insecurity, resentment and the usual range of human emotions in play.
Oh, boy oh boy oh boy………
“If you thought the political class would render your investment diseconomic through the tax code or employment costs you would, unless you were irrational.
Actually, you have it exactly backward: I’d have to be irrational to have those fears.”
I can only glean from this comment that you are the one in a million who takes a devil-may-care attitude toward investment, and perhaps are speaking with some wild ducks. But, oh, perhaps 200 investor meeting in my lifetime informs me that your position is bizarre.
“You’re missing the point: taxes lower my income, I want more income, so taxes force me to work harder. That’s not really very hard to understand.”
I do not misunderstand anything. I recognize the risks to income generation. As do 99.99% of people. Most people reject the notion, as you accept, that they are just squirrels running on a treadmill to fund government, or cock………oh, that might get me in trouble………..whose best use is to work for the Feds.
“But then I’m not typically motivated by self-pity, so rather than whine about poor, poor me having to pay taxes, waaah, I take on more work, improve my efficiency, and shoulder my responsibilities.”
Reminds me of the juror in a rape case who opined: “she should have just laid back and enjoyed it; nothing she could do about it. (True story; PBS documentary)
“An entrepreneur who worries about being vilified is a pansy.”
No, its a rational person worried about future taxation and regulation of their business, juxtaposed against their alternatives. Its an empirical fact.
“An entrepreneur whose other option is sitting on his money and playing golf isn’t an entrepreneur at all.”
No, its a rational person worried about future taxation and regulation of their business, juxtaposed against their alternatives. You are free to disagree with empirical fact, and the human condition.
“Sounds to me like your client base are whiny, self-pitying and rather gutless trust fund babies. But maybe you’re not presenting them in the best light.”
Nice mindless invective. But no, its a rational person worried about future taxation and regulation of their business, juxtaposed against their alternatives.
There is a bottom line: look at the empirical results. Unemployment at 10% – but really mid-teens. Businesses sitting on mountains of cash.
Drew:
Everything you say goes to politics, not rationality. You see what you want to see. And you no doubt self-select a bit in the people you do business with, or they with you.
I hate to break it to you, but the mere fact that you’ve participated in various business meetings — with Subway franchisees, or dry cleaners for all we know — does not render your judgment objective or infallible. Or applicable across the board.
You’ve decided — a matter of politics, not rationality — that paying taxes is a sort of slavery. That’s fine. I’m all for alternate lifestyles, and if you’ve chosen resentment as yours, what can I say?
In all honesty, it doesn’t sound like your clients are entrepreneurs, it sounds like they’re VCs. We had a few of them offering us money.
Somewhat to our surprise — although, as you suggest — there was no shortage of available capital. In fact one of the VCs was actually taking my 13 year old’s card and offering to throw money his way.
Strangely, paranoia about the government, or taxes, didn’t figure in any of that talk. Now, possibly that’s because we’re not talking about a situation where a slight increase in labor costs is much of a factor given that all the “labor” is already pretty well compensated. (We’re not in the sweat shop business.) Maybe we needed a Drew in the room to warn us that Obama would come along and steal all our money and give it the shiftless poor, but I guess we all just figured we’d, you know, pay our taxes.
In any case, we told the VCs to go suck it, got the same money for a much smaller piece of the pie and access to lovely things like worldwide sales and distribution in the process. The company in question has annual sales of 2.2 billion USD if memory serves. So despite our lack of tax paranoia we got everything we wanted and more from some guys who bought our numbers and our business plan and who probably do know one or two things about business.
Job creation Bush v Clinton.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
“Little regulatory oversight? Talk to a small businessman about that. ”
I have started doing that. You and Dave inspired me. 🙂 At work, when cases are delayed, I talk with local business owners. I ask them about how business is going and what complaints they have. I break the ice by complaining about health care costs. The complaints I hear are health care costs, probably the biggest, and then there are a lot of complaints about local regulations that make it harder to function. Zoning laws, trash collection rules, noise rules, parking regs and property taxes. Maybe I am getting a filtered representation of their worries since I am a doc. Maybe I should try giving them a little happy juice first.
“look at the origins of REAL financial lax regulatory oversight:”
Those go much further back. Mostly Reagan but even Carter passed the DIDMCA. (Been reading up on deregulation and the king of deregulation, Jimmy Carter.)
Steve
Reasoning from a unrepresentative sample I’m afraid.
While you might respond this way (if you have lots of income/wealth and have way too much time on your hands) most people do not. They will respond by consuming less (income effect) and consuming cheaper goods (substitution effect). These are well documented, well tested, and well understood behavioral patterns just about everyone exhibits in the face of a price increase for a good.
Some links on the empirical research.
Link
link
link
Drew may have an unrepresentative sample, that is true. But at least Drew has a sample, you have nothing unfortunately.
Kind of like a writer worrying about easing intellectual property laws? Seriously, if you had an investment opportunity and then found out what you were thinking of investing in was going to be hit with a substantial tax increase (say yacht building) you’d still go ahead with the investment to show us you had big balls?
BTW the yacht building is true. Taxes on yacht purchases was raised dramatically and the yacht building industry…died. Bunch of goddamned pansies I guess.
link
Should have just worked hard, but they pussed out. F— them if they can’t hack it, right?
Steve V:
Within a couple of days the Apple app store will hit its 10 billionth app. Apps barely existed 10 years ago, and only became a major thing when the iPhone came out. That’s billions of dollars — unknowable since many are free but others include in-app purchases.
Now, tell me honestly: do you think the thousands of companies rushing to write apps (not even getting into the Android apps) are being scared off by tax fears? Or by employee benefits?
And if those people in those companies were terribly concerned about their tax rates, why are they all in California and New York? (Washington state, I’ll give you.)
And if tax rates and government regulation and benefits and the rest are such a killer, why am I getting my money from the UK and Scandinavia? Why isn’t my capital coming from Somalia? Pretty sure no one is collecting taxes there.
And when we gaze out at the world and wonder who will buy our new products, who do you think we look at? North America, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, roughly in that order. Not a libertarian paradise in the bunch.
By the way, you do know the difference between “being vilified” and “having your taxes increased.” Right? Drew is very concerned that politicians will say mean things about entrepreneurs and that when they are thus “vilified” they’ll go golfing and pout.
My point was that a guy who will go golfing and pout isn’t an entrepreneur. He may be a douche, he may be a trust fund baby, he may be a car dealer with some extra cash on his hands and want Drew to invest it for him, but he’s not an entrepreneur.
Yeah, all those “companies” creating apps are going to save the American economy. With brilliant ideas like the iFart, how can it possibly go wrong? If only they had come up with more Pet Rock themed crap in the 1970s they would have avoided stagflation….
Michael, I thought you were against people being vilified. Something about it encouraging other people to shoot the place up.
It’s a bit strange when both you and Steve Verdon are reduced to non sequitur. Ordinarily you’re both very intelligent. He somehow equates vilification with tax increases. And your remark I can’t even parse.
I don’t know what your beef is with me, Ice. Honestly: I don’t get it. It can’t be that I’m tough in a debate because so are you. So what’s the thing with you? I think if someone’s going around hating me I should at least know what the hell it’s about, and I just don’t.
As for the iFart app — not one I own, I’m afraid — I don’t think I ever said they would save the economy. The point was that the app developers don’t seem to be paralyzed by all the factors that Verdon and Drew seem to believe should be paralyzing them.
I don’t believe that you can just throw money at a problem and solve it. So there may be a lot of capital ready to be invested — I assume that’s true since you all seem to agree on that point.
But I think the notion that if government would get out of the way all that capital would suddenly pour forth and create jobs smacks of magical thinking. Pour forth to where, precisely? Pour into what? Real estate? Aerospace? Machine tools? Hotels? Mining? What?
It’s not the government getting in the way of capitalists investing their money, it’s that there’s nothing much to invest in. And when there is something to invest in — apps in this example — the money seems to have no great problem finding its way, regardless of government.
Our population is leveling off. Our population is aging. A large percentage of people really have just about all the crap they need. God knows we have more than enough houses. And casinos. And hotels. And wheat and apples and corn. And cars. I know the unemployed are screwed, but the other 90% of the country just doesn’t seem to need anything new right now.
I have no idea what that’s called in economic terms. But something has changed. We are saturated with stuff. I don’t really want more stuff, I want less. Feel free to call me an asshole who has forgotten how tough life can be for people out of work, but I’m telling you we are at a place where the traveling salesman is at the door with his encyclopedias and we already have a set, so we’re just flat not going to buy another.
I assume a day will come when we as a country once again discover that we need a whole bunch of new stuff. But that’s not now. And blaming the government because I and a lot of other people in this aging, leveling population already have all the car/TV/clothing/Scotch/pie I want makes no sense.
Michael, you and I have been butting heads online for five or six years now. I really shouldn’t have to explain this to you, but I guess I do.
In the past you have all but called me a Nazi. You HAVE called me a Fascist and a racist and a closet Klansman for daring to question your personal god, Barack Obama.
You tried to get me to wager with a rigged bet. The worst part of that was that you thought I would be stupid enough to not see the inherent dishonesty in the wager, not that a millionaire was trying to take money off an unemployed person. You have constantly talked about how much better you are than me just because of the size of your bank account. I didn’t give a damn that you were richer than me when my life was going well financially, and I don’t now that it’s in the toilet. But to have to listen to some leftist ass-wipe talk about how kind and generous he is to the poor while expecting them to grovel before him? I don’t cotton to such behavior. It’s a special kind of pettiness of the soul, and you have gone there over and over again through the years.
You have repeatedly told me what was what about subjects which I know, and which you don’t, e.g. the health insurance business. And when called about it you haven’t even had the decency to admit that just maybe someone else knows something you don’t. (That happens a lot here, too.)
You have implied by association that I just MIGHT be responsible for a nine year old girl’s murder because of the actions of some psychopath.
You have through the years claimed to be a moderate while being slightly to the right of the average DailyKos nut job. You have claimed you believe in civility while slandering everyone that doesn’t hold to your narrow world view. (Do you ever respond to TangoMan without calling him a racist? Hell, you’ve called TM a racist in comment threads in which he hasn’t even participated.) When it gets right down to it, you want free speech for you, and you want everyone else to shut the hell up unless they agree with The Magnificent Michael. I hold all that against you.
In short, I believe you have no honesty and no intelligence, because I have seen evidence of neither. I have never had any dealings with you where I felt you were honest, forthcoming, or decent. It has nothing to do with your politics and everything to do with your character.
Is that clear enough for you?
Oh, and one more thing. In the past I have criticized comments of yours for being trite, hackneyed and/or lazy. You have responded with outrage that I could dare question a professional writer’s verbiage. (You’re quick to criticize others on topics on which they have knowledge and you don’t, however, and repeatedly. No shame from you.)
Your argument has been that since YOU are a professional best-selling author that no one other than same can criticize your writing. That argument always rankles. I won’t argue the publishing business with you, because that IS something you know about, and I don’t. I won’t argue about the quality of your books, because I don’t care to read them, therefore I have no opinion on their merits.
But to claim that all your writing must be good because your books sell well is bullshit. All that means is that your books sell well. Mariah Carey and Britney Spears have sold assloads of records, and I wouldn’t judge either of them to be quality singers. They’ve outsold damned near everyone, including almost everyone with any talent as a female singer. Quality-wise it means nothing. I don’t care how many times more records they sold than, say, Shirley Bassey, or Stacey Kent, or Chrissie Hynde, or any number of other female singers from opera, jazz or even the pop music traditions. Just because it sells doesn’t mean it’s quality, and to claim otherwise is an unacceptably false argument.
I found this amusing, as an example of innovation and funding:
FWIW, I think michael is more right than wrong. Most people keep working as long as they can, putting themselves on a consumption treadmill. (AKA Hedonic Treadmill)
Most people who want less tax just want more consumption, not less work.
A headline which supports my big-picture view:
Borderless Economy, Jobless Prosperity
Ice:
That’s a lot of lies and distortions to pack into a couple of comments. The last time you went down this road — in that case mischaracterizing why I ended the Mighty Middle — I pointed out the logical impossibility of your statement.
When last I checked you hadn’t bothered to respond.
I’ve never said any of the things about you that you claim. I can’t even imagine how you got near the conclusion that I held you responsible for Tucson. I don’t even remember discussing the issue with you. Are you using some second pseudonym and assuming I know that? I’m genuinely baffled.
I don’t think issues has much to do with this. I think you just deeply resent the fact that I’m successful in my career at a time when you are having difficulties.
I think it would be easier for you to take if you could fall back on a belief that I had some unfair advantage. But it’s hard to make a case of privilege against a guy with a 10th grade education, a warrant officer father, and a past history that includes periods of sleeping under freeway overpasses.
The problem is that my mere existence forces you to question your ideological presuppositions. And rather than take a new look at those assumptions and beliefs you get furious at me. You seem to have chosen me as your bete noire. Your decision, not mine.
But since you’ve decided to bring the hate . . . The reason I’m doing well is because I work my f*cking ass off. How much do I work? Other writers can’t believe my output. I have to conceal the amount of writing I do so that editors don’t freak out and decide I’m overcommitted. I work so hard my own lawyer intervened and threatened to refuse to submit anything new for two years because he thought I’d give myself a stroke.
Before I started writing I waited tables, worked retail, managed restaurants, refinished antiques, painted houses, scraped gum off the floors at Garfinckels, set pins at a bowling alley, and updated CCH’s at a law firm. When my wife and I sold our first book we were both cleaning — homes during the day and offices at night. My last night I had her take a picture of me cleaning out the used feminine napkin bin.
I’m 56 and this year I celebrate 40 years working full time. On many occasions 80 hour weeks. I’ve never taken dollar in government benefits. I’ve never collected unemployment. I work all the time. And I take risks — which is why, sorry to disillusion you — I am not a millionaire. I do things for which I have no education or qualification and more often than not I succeed by virtue of native intelligence and the fact that I will work anyone into the ground.
I am genuinely sympathetic toward you and the millions out there who are going through very bad times. I’ve been through bad times, I know what they’re like. But lying about me or hating me are not a solution to your difficulties.
It really isn’t. There weren’t a lot of jeers when they got extended two more years. Everyone was happy because the two parties finally agreed on something. Yet we are still left with an inefficient and confusing tax system.
I’ll grant you that many rich investors help creation of new businesses. A VAT (non additive) would prevent them from realizing gains in a previous company to start or invest in a new one and having to pay taxes on that. I want to make it easy for re-investment. But no, reading “Millionaire Next Door” you’ll find the vast majority of the high net worth business owners in there realized very little income compared to their net worth. They did this to minimize their tax bills and grow their net worth tax free in their business and investments.
I don’t think it needs to be flat. We could certainly do away with the tax expenditures, though. The second part refers to the “all government is bad” wing of the republican party that wishes to keep inefficient taxation to make starve the beast easier.
Maybe, but it wouldn’t hurt if our conservatives were interested in efficient taxation, which is my point.
ok.