The following is excerpted from the Baltimore City Paper and includes an excellent primer on how business works. For liberals, this is a delightful read.
http://blogs.citypaper.com/index.php/2009/11/the-maryland-millionaire-count-tax-scams-and-train-wrecks/
"Critics of the millionaire tax say they’ve never heard of a poor man hiring a worker. Only the rich do that; therefore, to render the wealthy less so by taxation is to destroy jobs.
"The theory presumes that the wealthy hire people out of charity. In this model, jobs are bestowed upon lucky workers by the industrious entrepreneur, who derives his own wealth from some magical practices (having nothing to do with the workers he may hire) which are anyway unfathomable to outsiders.
"To hear self-proclaimed capitalists make this argument is irritating, because it suggests they don’t understand how our economic system is supposed to work. They have the process exactly backwards.
"In a capitalist system, investors make money not despite hiring workers, but because they hire workers who, if they are adequately managed, create value in excess of the wages and benefits they are paid. This value is called 'profit,' and the business’ owner gets to keep that, after paying taxes.
"In a properly functioning capitalist economy, rich people don’t 'create jobs' for workers; workers, upon having jobs, create rich people."
http://blogs.citypaper.com/index.php/2009/11/the-maryland-millionaire-count-tax-scams-and-train-wrecks/
"Critics of the millionaire tax say they’ve never heard of a poor man hiring a worker. Only the rich do that; therefore, to render the wealthy less so by taxation is to destroy jobs.
"The theory presumes that the wealthy hire people out of charity. In this model, jobs are bestowed upon lucky workers by the industrious entrepreneur, who derives his own wealth from some magical practices (having nothing to do with the workers he may hire) which are anyway unfathomable to outsiders.
"To hear self-proclaimed capitalists make this argument is irritating, because it suggests they don’t understand how our economic system is supposed to work. They have the process exactly backwards.
"In a capitalist system, investors make money not despite hiring workers, but because they hire workers who, if they are adequately managed, create value in excess of the wages and benefits they are paid. This value is called 'profit,' and the business’ owner gets to keep that, after paying taxes.
"In a properly functioning capitalist economy, rich people don’t 'create jobs' for workers; workers, upon having jobs, create rich people."
