{"id":1206,"date":"2012-01-24T08:32:01","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T13:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2012-02-13T08:35:50","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T13:35:50","slug":"should-wealth-creation-be-rewarded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/24\/should-wealth-creation-be-rewarded\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Wealth Creation Be Rewarded?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Elephant_in_room.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs-images.forbes.com\/deanzarras\/files\/2012\/01\/300px-Elephant_in_room.jpg\" alt=\"Elephant in the room\" width=\"180\" height=\"134\" \/><\/a>Do we want to motivate people to create wealth or not?\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s the unspoken question, the elephant in the room, when President Obama attempts to whip up the populace with stories of \u201cbillionaires paying lower tax rates than their secretaries\u201d and other class-warfare\u00a0demagoguery.<\/p>\n<p>Mitt Romney recently said his effective tax rate is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/la-pn-romney-admits-his-tax-rate-is-close-to-15-percent-20120117,0,1446799.story\" target=\"_blank\">probably close to 15%<\/a>, because most of his income comes from long term capital gains. \u00a0The admission hasn\u2019t helped his campaign much, to be kind. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/profile\/warren-buffett\/\">Warren Buffett<\/a> has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/15\/opinion\/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html\" target=\"_blank\">famously said<\/a> similar things, and has become the President\u2019s biggest gift in his drive towards wealth redistribution.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly since the beginning of the income tax, the government has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban.org\/publications\/1000519.html\">treated long term capital gains differently<\/a> than \u201cordinary income.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In 2003 the long term capital gains rate was cut to 15%. \u00a0Why are we surprised to see that people like Romney and Buffett have matched their behavior to the incentives? \u00a0Surely even President Obama understands the concept of incentives. Under certain conditions,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.irs.gov\/businesses\/small\/article\/0,,id=230307,00.html#2011\" target=\"_blank\">section 2011 of his Small Business Jobs Act of 2010<\/a> establishes a particularly favorable long term capital gains rate: 0%.<\/p>\n<p>Presumably what everyone\u2019s attempting to foster here are wealth creation and capital formation. \u00a0From wealth comes the ability to invest, which creates jobs and, if created via free market capitalism \u2014 as opposed to crony-capitalism \u2014 advances society. \u00a0The opposite of wealth of course is poverty. \u00a0 We see endless government reporting and programs attempting to alleviate the latter, but little understanding of the need to create the former. \u00a0\u00a0<em>If we want less poverty, we need to create more wealth.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/deanzarras\/2012\/01\/23\/should-wealth-creation-be-rewarded\/\" target=\"_blank\">Continue reading at Forbes Opinions&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#civilsoctrust\" target=\"_blank\">Follow on Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do we want to motivate people to create wealth or not?\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s the unspoken question, the elephant in the room, when President Obama attempts to whip up the populace with stories of \u201cbillionaires paying lower tax rates than their secretaries\u201d and other class-warfare\u00a0demagoguery. Mitt Romney recently said his effective tax rate is\u00a0probably close to 15%, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1208,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}