Executive orders - Tom Clancy [277]
Senator, excuse me for interrupting, but that simply is not true, and you know it's not true, Winston chided brusquely. Reducing the rate of tax on capital gains means the following: it encourages people to invest their money-no, let me back up a little.
Let's say I make a thousand dollars. I pay taxes on that money, pay my mortgage, pay for food, pay for the car, and what I have left I invest in, oh, XYZ Computer Company. XYZ takes my money and hires somebody. That person works at his job like I work at mine, and from what work he does-he's making a product which the public likes and buys, right?-the company generates a profit, which the company shares with me. That money is taxed as regular income. Then I sell the stock and buy into another company, so that it can hire somebody else. The money realized from selling the stock issue is capital gains. People don't put their money under the mattress anymore, he reminded them, and we don't want them to. We want them to invest in America, in their fellow citizens.
Now, I've already paid tax on the money which I invested, right? Okay, then I help give some fellow citizen a job. That job makes something for the public. And for helping give a worker a job, and for helping that worker make something for the public, I get a modest return. That's good for that worker I helped to hire, and good for the public. Then I move on to do the same thing somewhere else. Why punish me for that? Doesn't it make more sense to encourage people to do that? And, remember, we've already taxed that investment money once anyway-in actual practice, more than once.
That isn't good for the country. It's bad enough that we take so much, but the manner in which we take it is egregiously counterproductive. Why are we here, Senator? We're supposed to be helping things along, not hurting. And the net result, remember, is a tax system so complicated that we need to collect billions to administer it-and that money is totally wasted. Toss in all the accountants and tax lawyers who make their living off something the public can't understand, SecTreas concluded.
America isn't about envy. America isn't about class rivalry. We don't have a class system in America. Nobody tells an American citizen what they can do. Birth doesn't count for much. Look at the committee members. Son of a farmer, son of a teacher, son of a truck driver, son of a lawyer, you, Senator Nikolides, son of an immigrant. If America was a class-defined society, then how the heck did you people get here? he demanded. His current questioner was a professional politician, son of another, not to mention an arrogant son of a bitch, Winston thought, and didn't get classified. Everyone he'd just pointed to kvelled a little at being singled out for the cameras. Gentlemen, let's try and make it easier for people to do what we've all done. If we have to skew the system, then let's do it in such a way that it encourages our fellow citizens to help one another. If America has a structural economic problem, it's that we don't generate as many opportunities as we should and can do. The system isn't perfect. Fine, let's try to fix it some. That's why we're all here.
But the system must demand that everyone pay their fair share, the senator said, trying to take the floor back.
What does 'fair' mean? In the dictionary, it means that everyone has to do about the same. Ten percent of a million dollars is still ten times more than ten percent of a hundred thousand dollars, and twenty times more than ten percent of fifty thousand. But 'fairness' in the tax code has come to mean that we take all the money we can from successful people and dole it back-and, oh, by the way, those rich people hire lawyers and lobbyists who talk to people in the political arena and get a million special exceptions written into the system so that they don't get totally fleeced-and they don't, and we all know that-and what do we end up with? Winston waved his hand at the pile of books on the floor of the committee room. We end up with a jobs program for