View Single Post
  #33  
Old 12-29-2006, 05:16 PM
Rupert Pupkin Rupert Pupkin is offline
Del Mar
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,102
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by somerfrost
\


Again, I disagree there...I'd tax the rich as I said previously...90-95% of income over some set amount...nobody needs all the money in the world!
I agree with you that nobody needs that much money. But I don't think it's up to me or you to tell a person that we're taking away 90-95% of his income because we think he makes too much. I think that is totally un-American. If a guy works his butt off to make a ton of money, there shouldn't be a limit on what he can make. Besides, who is to say that the government will make better use of the money than the person. For example, Waren Buffett is giving all his money to charity. He is worth around $50 billion and he is going to give it all away. Do you think it would have been better for the government to take that money?

There aren't really very many billionaires out there any way. But what about people like Oprah or Tiger Woods? Tiger makes about $80 million a year. I don't think it would be fair to take 90-95% of that money away from him. He could not live the way he lives right now, if you took 95% of his income away. He travels everywhere on private jets. He has more than one home. A nice house(4,000 sq. feet) in Beverly Hills costs around $3-4 million. I'm not even talking about a mansion. A mansion out here is going to cost at least $10 million. I think Tiger deserves to be rich. He worked his butt off to become the greatest golfer in the world. He is entitled to be rich and he is entitled to have a few mansions if that is what he wants.

I'll tell you one thing that I would change if I was in charge. I don't think it's fair for these CEOs to be getting hundreds of millions of dollars in stock options. That money is coming right out of the shareholders' pockets. I don't have a problem with a CEO of a big company making a few million a year in salary and I don't have a problem if he gets a reasonable amount of stock options. It would be one thing if the stock went crazy and went from $10 a share up to $100 a share and the CEO made $50 million or so. But it is crazy when CEOs get $200 million of free stock when the stock didn't even perform particularly well. These guys are so overpaid it is crazy and the money is coming right out of the shareholders' pockets.
Reply With Quote