We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can't the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It's a captured system.
Whenever I'm asked if the Trump tax cut is for the rich, I say yes. It is a tax cut for the rich. It is a tax cut for the middle class. It is a tax cut for small businesses. It is a tax cut for the Fortune 100.
It's a game. We tax lawyers teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich-and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.
Obama and Clinton wrongly believe that the corporate income tax is a tax on the rich. The reality is that rich corporations don't pay taxes - workers do.
You can tax the rich to pay for current spending. You can even tax them very heavily. But when the rich look forward for decades and see nothing but increasing taxes, debts, and government control of their businesses and assets - they will leave.
I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here, but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich, but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.
Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich.
Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
I think that everyone is saying all kinds of things about 'rich.' Not only am I rich from doing some of things I've been able to do, but I'm rich in spirit. I'm rich in health. I'm rich in every way possible.
High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates - or perhaps any taxes at all. What is worse than class warfare is phony class warfare. Slippery talk about 'fairness' is at the heart of this fraud by politicians seeking to squander more of the nation's resources.
Asia is rich in people, rich in culture and rich in resources. It is also rich in trouble.
Rich, 'the Old Man said dreamily, 'is not baying after what you can't have. Rich is having the time to do what you want to do. Rich is a little whiskey to drink and some food to eat and a roof over your head and a fish pole and a boat and a gun and a dollar for a box of shells. Rich is not owing any money to anybody, and not spending what you haven't got.
Ask most guys what their ambition is, and they'll say they want to get rich. But when they get rich, they discover it's not what they wanted at all. I don't want to be rich.
All of the incessant debate about development assistance, and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1% of rich world income. The effort required of the rich is indeed so slight that to do less is to announce brazenly to a large part of the world: 'You count for nothing.' We should not be surprised, then, if in later years the rich reap the whirlwind of that heartless response.
No, I'm not rich. I had a tax problem in this country, curiously enough, and my accountant said the British government was patently wrong in taxing me, and they were, but we couldn't persuade them and it cost me everything I had.
You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness.