Quote from: LoyceV on Today at 02:19:30 PM

Quote from: rolling on Today at 01:05:34 PM

Do you think billionaires are swimming around in a pool of gold coins or pallets of $100s? Nearly all of the wealth that people are complaining about is on paper. Jeff Bezos owns a bunch of Amazon shares.

I've seen this argument before, but selling some of his shares to pay taxes doesn't matter to Amazon as a company.

But of course he won't sell shares just to pay taxes and then what, pay taxes on the money he cashed out to pay taxes? The point is, even if he sells shares of Amazon, someone else buys them and the money the government takes is no longer available for investment in the economy. I would rather he keep the money and create more jobs. I think he would do a better job than our defunct government.

Taxes hurt the economy. You might not think a little here and little there hurts but it all adds up. We need government for certain things like roads, bridges, laws, police, and fire but the economy can only take so much strain and still grow to it's potential. With high enough taxes and enough handouts, the economy will eventually stagnate and then start to shrink.

Giving handouts has a huge negative effect on the economy and to the people receiving the "benefits". You create a death spiral where you are killing the economy so you can pay someone to not be part of the economy. Then they increase the minimum wage so you have to pay the babysitter as much as you're making by working and people get caught in a feedback loop where staying on the benefits is more profitable than working.

The opposite would be to have very low taxes, very high economic activity with no handouts and people would make good wages naturally because there would be way more work to do than people on the planet.