Ramit Sethi argues against the common political claim that raising taxes on the wealthy will cause them to leave. He says wealthy people engineered preferential tax laws and typically do not relocate over modest tax increases; he also disputes the idea that tax breaks are needed to create jobs, asserting CEOs hire because of business demand, not tax benefits.
I'm so angry I'm going to take my piggy bank and go down to Florida. How can you keep falling for this shtick over and over again? Do you not understand the game being played? Let me lay it out for you. Wealthy people are the ones who created the laws that give them advantages with taxes. They pay preferential rates. When any politician comes on the scene and threatens to raise taxes, not raise them to some astronomical level, raise them a marginal single digit amount to that will simply take them back to what it used to be a few years ago. All the millionaires line up in line and go, if you raise our taxes, we will leave. Do you know how many people message me on social media saying we can't raise the taxes on job creators? Have you ever got a job from a poor person? I'm like, I don't need tax benefits to hire someone. There's only one reason CEOs hire people. That is because they have more demand in their business that they can serve. So please stop it with these trite phrases of you never got a job from a poor person. That is like a fourth grader's understanding of taxes. We are talking about wealthy and ultra wealthy people and how they rarely leave when taxes increase.
