The Wealth Envy Tax

Enough with the Joe the Plumber nonesense.

Would you like to see a list of the people targetted by the wealth envy tax:

Here it is:

The Inc. 5000.

You can browse the list by category, location and other cool features.

I read the list from top to bottom every year because it happens to list the companies I like the best ... small innovative firms that are doing well in their targetted market.

Obama notes that the vast majority of small businesses make under $250k a year. That is true because most small businesses are things like lawn mowing services, dog petting services and other side businesses.

Companies that provide higher paying jobs require a great deal of capital and require a revenue stream to cover materials, labor and high capital cost. It is possible for pure service jobs to have a low revenue per employee. The small tech and manufacturing firms that really drive the economy require substantial revenue per employee. You often find that a company would need $500,000 in revenue to pay the salary of a $75,000 a year engineer.

The people who create the innovations that spawn high paying jobs often go years in the red before they crest and have a brief revenue stream that triggers wealth envy at $250,000.

The debate about Joe the Plumber is silly. You can always pay plumbers under the table to avoid the high taxes. It is the Inc. 5000 that is the real target of the tax.