The overwhelming majority of lottery winners are broke again within a few years. That proves throwing money doesn't solve the problem of "50 inch plasma in a trailer" culture.
The problem is that some subcultures, and also general American culture more than some others, value flash over investment, rims over tuition. Throwing money at many people just means they'll have bigger rims on their hoopty, more gold around their neck.
If someone from Japan or India gets $10,000, they'll turn it into a college degree or a business. Give some. Americans $10,000 and they'll put a fown payment on a tricked out 2006 Cadillac at the note lot.
What do you mean by "business failures"?
In economics, "business failures" is defined as discontinuation of operations resulting in losses to creditors. In other words, companies that went out of business AND couldn't pay their outstanding bills when they did. That's easier to measure than just "companies that stopped doing business" because the creditors report the loss, whereas a company that just stops may not report anything.
Which Obama's policy led to your loss?
I'd say it was 70% indirect, but I'll give a few examples of direct effects of his policies. We'll limit it to just health insurance policies to keep this from going on for 20 pages.
We've long had pretty good health insurance, which we were happy with. We paid 100% of the cost even for part time employees. In two years, as Obamacare is being phased in, the base premium increased by more than 50%. Total cost close to doubled, as I'll explain.
Also, half of our employees have a profit share, they each own a few percent of the company. Under Obama, the law was changed so that we had to report their insurance cost as taxable income on their W-2 AND the company could no longer deduct health insurance cost. (Under Obama everyone's insurance cost is deductible EXCEPT business owners', including 2% owners like our employees. Did I mention he's anti-business.) That penalty for making our employees owners increased cost another 30%, on top of the 50% premium increase. So that's one example, Obamacare nearly doubled our insurance cost.
Of course his policies were doing the same thing to our customers, doubling THEIR costs, leaving them with less money to by our products. Less sales + higher costs = we're out of business and te employees are jobless. That's the result of making policy based on feelings rather than actually thinking through the results.
git init How hard is that?
Sometimes pretty difficult. My fiance told me there was no way I was going to git init.
the first guy to buy the patent would be a real sucker if the price went down.
As a business owner, I strongly disagree. Being the first to market with something cool is a huge advantage. If you're a tech geek, consider the early versions of Java. It was HORRIBLE. Because it was conceived, designed, implemented, "tested" and sent to market in about a year, it was perhaps the worst programming language ever. There's a reason they wanted it out in a year, though - to be the first browser app language available. Do you remember the competing languages that came out in the months to follow, between 1996 and 1999? Neither does anyone else. Java was first to market and that pretty much solidified their dominance for the next fifteen years. So buying the first license for say $50,000 would be much smarter than waiting a month and paying $49,000, sometimes.
Plenty of businesses are doing fine, so I suspect the problem is not with the taxes, but rather with you.
ROTFL. The private sector is doing fine, right? Even you President Kardashian couldn't say that with a straight face. When he tried to say it, he had to come back out and retract that statement, saying "It is absolutely clear that the economy is NOT doing fine."
I've been in business twenty years. (or 25 if you count part time businesses). I've launched four completely different companies. Our business, and thousands of others, was taken down when Obama launched his attack on business. We were fine under Reagan. We hired people under Bush I. We did fine with the fast and loose economy of Clinton. No problems under Bush II. (Though the last year of Bush II wasn't awesome.) If it was us, we wouldn't have been around that long.
In the two years following Obama's election, business failures increased by 40%. 40% man. If you like Obama, fine. Maybe you like his smile. Maybe you think he smells nice, whatever. But don't lie to yourself - he's radically anti-business.
There's no bigger supporter of Obama than liberal journalist Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria is honest with himself, though, saying Obama is "at his core, anti-business."
I have my own business and I pay nothing close to this 63% tax rate that you mention and I cannot imagine how you can even get there.
If you don't know how you end up paying AT LEAST 63% in taxes, this should be educational for you. I guess the numbers in my original post were hard to read because they were mixed with the prose. Maybe better formatting will help you. But first, let's agee on some averge rates to use in our example:
The first tax we'll consider, corporate income tax, ranges from about 24% to 44% in different places. For example, in California, USA, a medium sized business pays 35% federal, 8.84% state, plus local. In the UK, it's 24% income tax, but then also 20% VAT which compounds to about 35% total VAT.
We'll use a mid-range number - 30% corporate income tax.
Then that same money goes to you, the owner, and you pay tax on the same money again. 28% is the UK rate, and it's about the average of the several US rates.
Then when you spend that same money, you pay tax on it again. 12% if you spend it on gas/petrol, 27% if you use it to pay your mortgage. We'll use 18% as an average.
For every 100 dollars/euros/punds you earn:
100 earned
70 after corporate income tax
50 remains after owner's income tax
41 of goods can be purchased after paying "spending that income" tax. (Gas, property, or sales tax)
So you earned 100, and can buy 41 worth of stuff after taxes. You paid 59% taxes in this example. That doesn't even count the taxes you paid before calculating profit, like business personal property tax, etc.
The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.