[wazoox]

It's fair because you're driving on roads, bring your children to school, may need to go to hospital at times, and profit from a judicial system able to enforce law and your company's contracts, among other things. If you want to live in a country without taxes, try Somalia, or Congo.

[rfrey]

The debate is not between "taxes" and "no taxes." We're all clever enough to understand shades of gray.

[eli_gottlieb]

No, in my experience there are no shades of gray. It's just "taxation is theft". There is no level of taxes, no matter how low in real terms, where people actually stop complaining.

[LekkoscPiwa]

It's not about complaining. It's about policies that make sense.

Look, I have saved for few years to have initial funding for my business. This means I had to take away from myself and my family. To save for future business. So, in that period of time, I had lower standard of living that my coworkers. Right? Maybe my daughter couldn't get the toys her friend. could. Maybe we couldn't go for a vacation in 5 years. Maybe we had to live is small apartment vs. a house. Drive car that's not really nice. All of this to save money to invest in future business. Once the money was saved, I quit the regular job. Now, it's even worse. I have no income at all. And still have to pay bills for the family + spend on the business.

The statistics are 1 in 10 startups make it. 10% chances. So after additional 2 years working on the startup and burning all the savings, let's say - 10% chance - it worked. I made it, I sold the business.

You are telling me to tax people like me at 50%. And how do you think now, why in France there is no Silicon Valley? Because nobody in their right mind is going to work their butt off to be taxed at the end at 50%. It just doesn't add up. It would be better for me to stay with a regular job if I were in France. And in the end that's bad for France. It makes it much less competitive, much less innovative, and scares prospect capital off its borders. California alone has bigger economy than France. But in California nobody will punish you with a tax at 50% for trying to be innovative. And California has good roads and sewage system too. Without extreme taxation and business unfriendly environment.

[eli_gottlieb]

Marginal tax rates on the top earners (ie: the high-tech sector) are 46% here in Israel and we've got plenty of start-ups.

And yes, it's about policies that make sense for the economic constraints of the government and the values of the voters. Key words there being values of the voters. France might have a very state-driven economy, but most of the world's top economies certainly don't take the American neoliberal wannabe-anarcho-capitalist approach.

[LekkoscPiwa]

> Marginal tax rates on the top earners (ie: the high-tech >sector) are 46% here in Israel and we've got plenty of >start-ups.

And if the rate was 15% your guess is there would be even more start-ups or less? And if more, wouldn't that be more valuable for the Israeli economy than to give this 30% difference to politicians to waste?

>And yes, it's about policies that make sense for the >economic constraints of the government and the values of the >voters. Key words there being values of the voters.

Agree 100% here with you. However when people vote for something they rarely see the side-effects that quite often are much worse than the potential benefits. Like with cough medicine that gives you heart attack. People don't see things through at times. They'll vote for a politician who promises the most, understanding he'll go deeply in debt and not really caring that their children will have to pay it all off. Democracy gives the people great power, the problem is they don't want to accept responsibility for it. I have a great example here: In 1990s Democrats in the USA got this really good idea that all Americans should have a house. Even ones who couldn't afford it. What they did is they told the banks: look we (the Government) are going to guarantee all the mortgages. If you give a mortgage to someone and that person stops repaying it, the Government will buy the mortgage back using taxpayers money. And you know people voted for it. So all the folks who really weren't qualified got mortgages they couldn't afford. How markets work is that there is a balance between greed and fear. You're greedy to give someone a mortgage but afraid he will not repay. The Government took the fear part out of equation. Obviously the whole thing had to collapse. And in 2008 it did. And what caused that? Good intentions, socialism - let's give house to everyone. Now everyone's screwed over. And the funniest part is that now they blame bankers and capitalism for that. It was socialistic idea from the start.

>France might have a very state-driven economy, but most of >the world's top economies certainly don't take the American >neoliberal wannabe-anarcho-capitalist approach.

US is much more socialist they you could think. They talk the talk but don't walk the walk. Currently in the US there are more people who get Government benefits than those who pay the income tax. That's not capitalism. If you want to see capitalism look at China.

[eli_gottlieb]

US is much more socialist they you could think. They talk the talk but don't walk the walk. Currently in the US there are more people who get Government benefits than those who pay the income tax. That's not capitalism. If you want to see capitalism look at China.

First: you're thinking of social-democracy, not socialism.

But honestly, using China as an argument in favor of capitalism is INCREDIBLY BAD. China looks pretty dystopian to outsiders.

And if the rate was 15% your guess is there would be even more start-ups or less? And if more, wouldn't that be more valuable for the Israeli economy than to give this 30% difference to politicians to waste?

If the rate was 15%, I would guess that there would be roughly the same amount of start-ups. Never has the real business world been shown to respond predominantly to income tax rates. Other factors have always dominated the issue of business formation: availability of skilled labor force, public R&D investment, available infrastructure, solid legal system, etc.

Good intentions, socialism - let's give house to everyone. Now everyone's screwed over.

Neither socialism nor social-democracy gives people loans. You're talking about some kind of weird American state-capitalist thingy. In a social democracy, there are what the Brits call "council houses": available houses or apartments literally owned by the local government and leased or given out based on human need.

Get your brain out of the America and into the sensible world.

[crusso]

Everyone drives on roads, takes their kids to school, and may need to go to the hospital at times. Some of us pay extra for private roads to be built and for private schools for our children to attend because the government equivalents are crap.

As the poster mentioned, if you are an entrepreneur, normally you forgo a steady salary and corporate benefits in order for a big payout later. When the government is going to take a huge chunk out of that payout when you've already been sacrificing hard just to get there - it begins to look less and less worth it.

I've spent my adult career going from startup to startup. Looking at the current regulatory and confiscatory tax environment, I don't know if I'd do the same starting over.

If I could go back 20 years, I'd probably just go work for a big company like IBM or UPS and stay there. If I'm noticing that pressure against entrepreneurs then others are noticing it too. The government is slowly but surely killing off drivers that increase risk taking.

That's a bad thing.

[wazoox]

> As the poster mentioned, if you are an entrepreneur, normally you forgo a steady salary and corporate benefits in order for a big payout later.

Utter bullshit. I'm an entrepreneur, and you know why I was able to create a company? Because of the very good French unemployment benefits that allowed me to build up my business for nearly two years after my previous startup failed! Without that, lacking a personal fortune I just wouldn't have been able to create the company.