The Rich & Job Creation

[germloucks]

TED talk that i came across. It's short, concise, and makes a compelling argument. You kinda already suspect the things that he says are true in a sense (at least I did), but the presentation is well put together imo. Thoughts?

[NightRychune]

i remember there was a @#(!storm about this talk

something about how TED talks are watched by rich white people to make themselves feel good and they were offended that someone would $#@! with the "rich people = job creators = saviors of society" narrative

[Vortrog]

Its true and well presented.

Sadly, you don't see people realise this until way after they have paid for the futures of their kids and their kids kids.
Until then, TAX ME LESS until I have 3000 cars.

Taxing is just awesome for forcing people to put their income into something else. So why tax the poor or lower middle class at all?

India is an awesome example of how it gets all out of kilter. How poor are the poor there, and how insanely rich are the rich? Does the insanely rich create jobs? $#@! no.
Mind you there is a class issue there as well....

[Mastametz]

There's just the same caste issue here because everyone just circumvents the estate tax.
The rich become exponentially more wealthy with every generation.

[KGJV]

The fun part is that this talk was removed from TED site. Literally censored. The cited reason was "too political" ...

Or someone doesn't want these rich people to stop coming to TED conferences (a TED 2014 attendance ticket is $7500...and already sold out)...

It seems that TED started as a nice thing and just turned in an ugly business.

[raumvogel]

This is spot on. But how are you going to change the rich that are in control to get them to implement it?

[HJ_KG]

What the owner of TED said at the time...
web.archive.org/web/20120518054015/http://tedchris.posterous.com/131417405

everyone has their own story that they tell themselves I suppose.

[takingarms1]

He's right about the rhetoric of job creators to some degree, and also right that tax reductions do not automatically result in more jobs. Both of those answers are too simplistic.

He's right that jobs are created in part by demand from consumers. But you also have to give credit to risk-takers, particularly in areas where risk takers invest a lot of money into products that are essentially new to the market. For instance, when apple created the ipod, there were few if any consumers demanding or even asking for portable mp3 players. But apple decided to put a ton of money into R&D, took a risk, and it was amazingly successful. And that risk-taking did contribute to creating jobs, no matter how you look at it.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to taxes and government monetary policy. You have to look at the individual policy and decide whether it makes sense. Saying "taxing the wealthy is always best" is just as bad as saying "cutting taxes for the wealthy always creates jobs."

I agree his presentation is well done. Did any of you notice it was supported entirely by anecdotal evidence, and no hard evidence whatsoever? When a presentation is most slick, that's when you most have to critically analyze its contents. And honestly there wasn't much hard evidence in anything he had to say.

I have a lot of questions about changing the capital gains tax. If we changed it, what would the real results be? I don't think it's a simple answer and I don't think it's something you can automatically claim will be beneficial just because a lot of rich people make money from capital gains. What do other countries tax cap gains at? Would we see foreign investment in our markets diminish? Would rich people in the US start putting their money overseas if we raised cap gains taxes? I'd like to see studies and statistics and actual facts before deciding which way to jump on that issue. This guy presented none of that, and just claimed that because rich people pay it, cap gains should be taxed the same as income tax. That sounds overly simplistic and not very well thought out.

On the cap gains issue, I just quickly googled another question - what percentage of the budget comes from capital gains taxes? Check it out here. Apparently, it's less than 6% most years. Even if you doubled it, that's only a 6% increase in revenue. What would we be giving up for that? Again, none of these issues are addressed.

Based on the lack of data, I'd say it's a poor presentation and has the ring of propaganda. Moral of the story: don't believe everything you hear, even if it sounds good and you really want to.

[ryujin]

QUOTE (TakingArms @ Jul 24 2013, 12:43 PM) Based on the lack of data, I'd say it's a poor presentation and has the ring of propaganda. Moral of the story: don't listen to taking arms

only 6% of the budget increased... hmmm
we could quadruple our education spending with that much. sounds like a lot to me

[KGJV]

QUOTE (TakingArms @ Jul 24 2013, 07:43 PM) He's right that jobs are created in part by demand from consumers. But you also have to give credit to risk-takers, particularly in areas where risk takers invest a lot of money into products that are essentially new to the market. For instance, when apple created the ipod, there were few if any consumers demanding or even asking for portable mp3 players. But apple decided to put a ton of money into R&D, took a risk, and it was amazingly successful. And that risk-taking did contribute to creating jobs, no matter how you look at it.

It's the worst example you could use. The point is about rich people (individuals) not companies. Companies invest and take (calculated) risks, that's part of their survival. Give us an example where a rich individual took a risk with most part of his money and that created jobs. You won't find much if any.

As for Apple. They simply replaced the 'walkman' market , they didn't create a new market. In the process they made tons of cash and killed even more jobs and small businesses. And the key success of this was iTunes and the deal they made with the music companies not the iPod device. It's just the portable device for iTunes.