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The Republicans have a mantra about taxes on the rich. It goes like this. 1. Many of them are small business owners who have not incorporated, so the profit and loss of their businesses are reported on their personal tax forms. 3. It's "intuitive" that if taxes were to go up they'd have less incentive to grow their businesses and therefore would not create as many jobs. When I hear this it makes me pretty angry, esp when the reporters just pass it through without checking to see if it's true. As a person who has run small businesses that create jobs, I had a pretty good idea it was wrong. First, how many Republican politicians are business people? If they aren't how could they know what's intuitive for business people? Second, I've never based business decisions on how much I would pay in taxes.
They asked the Republicans for names of small business people they could interview that would confirm what they say. How many did they get? Zero. They also asked some of the lobbying groups that say the same thing. Again, no introductions. So they went online and looked for some small business people to interview, and got the same answer over and over. They played the interviews. It was inspiring! They're trying to win, in business, not win in taxes. When they have a chance to grow -- they grow, and they don't worry about whether they'll pay more or less taxes. A couple of them said taxes are too low and they worry about the country, and they would happily pay more. That's what I love about business people. It's an art and a sport. It's best played by creative people, not bean counters, and certainly not politicians. The Republicans have some other motive, and NPR finally had the guts to call them on it. And they did it the way it should be done. Not with a he-said-she-said piece. Those are cheap and easy. They actually went to the sources and found out. |
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