A tax break to the rich
Slashing taxes on the super rich.
“Unfair” they say, the Republican tax
plan
favors rich people.
And that’s especially wrong because
the super rich greedily take so much that
other Americans have less.
But is that true?
My goal in life is to be the best part of your day.
Jim Caruso is rich...
he took over a bankrupt brewery and made it
successful by creating a bunch of, what
I would think were, absurd new craft beers like
blood orange ale.
At the end of the day
you can sit back and
sip a beer and just appreciate the beauty of life.
Caruso now employees 100 people.
His company is worth more than $50 million.
Thanks to Flying Dog Brewery,
he’s now richer than most.
Millionaires and billionaires
People on the left say…
It's unfair.
You will have unequal outcomes, and I would argue
that it's possible we all benefit from that.
For example,
somebody decides that their
pursuit of happiness means being a doctor.
They spend 12 years in school,
so I have an excellent doctor to serve me.
Somebody else might want to be a world class
tattoo artist.
These result in different outcomes for people.
On average, the doctor will make more money
than the tattoo artist.
But some Americans are 1000 times richer than others.
The top 1% has earned 85% of all new income.
The top fraction of earners
has just about half the assets in this country.
This ticks people off.
They view it as evil.
Think about it this way.
Last year, I saw that there were one billion
Apple devices actively being used.
And last month, I saw that Apple was the first
company to be worth $800 billion.
Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
I was curious,
how much was Steve Jobs worth
in 2011 when he passed away at too early of an age?
10 billion dollars.
I did some quick calculations, rough math.
Let’s look at those calculations.
Steve Jobs earned $10 billion dollars.
But Apple sold more than 2 billion devices.
That’s means jobs collected
about $5 for every device.
Certainly your cell phone is worth more to you than $5.
It must be, because you willingly pay
several hundred dollars for this.
I think Steve might have been underpaid here.
The feeling tends to be
that somebody like Steve Jobs
took something away from everybody else.
But what did Steve Jobs take from us?
He had this idea, wouldn't it be great
to have a thousand songs in your pocket?
One of the most massively
important tools for productivity and communication
in life?
So,
it's that zero-sum game mentality that
somehow,
people who create stuff
are taking it away from other people,
and that's simply inaccurate.
It's not a zero-sum game.
They're creating stuff that didn't exist before.
They are creating stuff…
and unless they collude with government
they can get rich
only by making our lives better.
