WHO GETS TO DECIDE?

Is it or is it not true that those who make $250,000.00 are in the top ten percent of economic earners who pay 70% of all income taxes?

That is not a matter of your opinion, or mine, it is a question of what is.

It happens to be true.

The conclusion you and I draw from that fact might differ, but the fact itself is not in question.

If you are gainfully employed in the private sector (for those of you educated in government schools, that means a non-government job), you work for a person or corporation who is richer than you are...otherwise, they could not pay your salary.

Maybe you think you deserve more...and well you might.

So, what is stopping you from finding a product people want, manufacturing and/or selling it and moving up the ladder of success to become one of those making $250,000.00 or more?

Answer: Education and ambition.

Get educated in your chosen field, develop the drive, and you, too, can become rich. (In today's market, it might be good to steer clear of the automobile industry, the banking industry and other financial industries as long as the government is still diddling their fingers in them...but most other lines of production would be good).

What will you do with your riches?

Unless you can figure out how to go it alone, you will need to hire some people to help you produce/sell your product.

There will be production costs, override costs, distribution costs and taxes, as well as any people who helped you raise the money to start your business to pay, but everything over that can be spent on such things as salaries, product improvement, the building and maintaining of facilities and equipment, the electric bill, water bill, phone bill and other mundane expenses.

What's left over is yours to keep.

If you want to take home $250,000.00, your company will only have to earn between $1,000,000.00 and $1,200,000.00 per year...gross.

Piece of cake, right?

Here's the rub: When those expenses get out of whack, if production costs go up, or if distribution goes up, you have to increase your unit selling price or there goes your $250,000.00 take home.

Most expenses can be calculated ahead of time and adjustments made accordingly by business owners.

There is one area that seems to fluctuate inordinately and frequently without rhyme or reason: taxes...local, regional and federal.

Being unable to predict what taxes will be the "next time around" makes for uncertainty and creates a reluctance for a company to commit to a given level of production and/or hiring.

If it were a case of "you made such-and-such, therefore you pay X in taxes," that would be one thing. But it does not work like that.

Taxes tend to change on everything spasmodically and on everything differently.

Payroll taxes change, gas taxes change, hospitality taxes change, corporate taxes change, fees and levees change...all at unpredictable rates and almost always up.

Thus your business will be hard pressed to predict what it will cost to stay in business.

Add to that the fact that many people resent that you should make $250,000.00 and they don't, therefore vote for politicians who will take more of what you make over that and pass it around to those who neither sought the education nor had the ambition to do the same as you did to make that much.

Making $250,000.00 can be a real headache!

President BO has said that there "...surely is a limit to how much a person needs to make."

Is that so?

Well, who gets to decide what that limit is, you...or me?

If we get a choice, I'll decide, if you don't mind.

A better response would be, "No, a person should be able to make as much as he or she wants to make and/or can make with no restrictions whatsoever, so long as it is done legally and ethically."

That gives everybody the opportunity (not necessarily the ability or drive) to make a more than comfortable living.

The real trouble is, there are too many whiners and criers who think the rich got rich by osmosis or by "winning life's lottery," when, in fact, the majority of them got there by being resourceful, productive and by volunteering to share their wealth with those who work for them.

The point of all this is (now don't miss this by getting all balled up with some irrelevant detail you might disagree with), govenment never helps business...even the "bailouts" did not help business. Government always stifles business.

If you disagree with that, go back to school and do some study of economic history. Learn something.

Every time the government has gotten involved in the private sector the economy has suffered.

Someone once said the definition of insanity is, "to keep on doing what you've always done, expecting different results."

Government has been overinvolved in private business far too long.

It is time to turn the tide.

(For those interested: I made it through my atrial-flutter ablation after two tries, and am feeling run over by a Mac truck, but better than I was. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. God is on His throne.)