The Bells are starting to ring…
Michael Bloomberg:
“They [the wealthy] are the ones that buy in the stores so that people that work in the stores have jobs in the stores, generate sales tax,” he said.
“The rich are the ones that go to the expensive restaurants where, as a matter of fact, I looked at a list the other day of restaurants where the staff is unionized. They’re the expensive restaurants. They’re not the cheap restaurants.”
Whoopi Goldberg:
But I don’t want to get it coming and going. I don’t want to get the federal raised and then the state raised and then the phone tax raised and then the television tax raised and then the city tax. Back off me!
Lets explain something the UBER rich can relocate themselves almost anywhere in the world and be welcomed with open arms. As they can travel at will any such relocation will not effect their ability to run their operations or their quality of life.
The very rich can relocate from one state to another. Florida is very nice this time of year at New Hampshire has still resisted the democratic party’s attempt to impose additional taxes.
The Bubble people near 250,000 will ramp themselves down because they know that any additional effort will gain them nothing in terms of financial or quality of life rewards:
So, what happens when the heart surgeons, dentists, litigators, and people who employ 10 or 20 other people in their mid-size businesses decide that they don’t want to pay for the excessive, pointless spending that the president finds so compelling? Instapundit speculates on people “going John Galt.” I think golf — a time-intensive sport that the hard-working have eschewed for the past decade or two because it took too long — will make a comeback. But while we’re watching, “working affluent” is a far more useful and less loaded moniker than “the rich,” which has overtones of dilettantes, poodles, and yachts.
Some examples:
1. I recently talked to a record shop owner, who had two shops, four employees, open seven days a week. He let go all four employees, closed one shop, is only open five days a week, and reduced hours at that. Result? Almost the same take-home, and greatly reduced blood pressure.
2. The owner of a small custom stained-glass shop, where I am currently taking a class, let one employee go because the additional income she brought in was not worth the added hassle.
3. I retired from a pretty good job at the end of last year, at the age of 61. I could easily have kept working, or found another job. With pension, and social security in a few months, my gross will be considerably less. But, after taxes are taken into account, the net is not all that much less. I figured that I was working in a pretty high-stress job, for little incremental income.
As always in a republic we get the government we deserve. And if you feel like a chump? Oh well.
