Let me ask you who can afford it more? Someone who pays 10% on $35000, leaving them with $32500 to live off of. Or someone who pays 20% on $350000, leaving them with $280000 to live of of?
It boggles the mind how a person/corporation with wealth can claim that its not fair. Oh and then want to cut services to help the person with little or no means. Its just plain greed.
So it's all about everyone living exactly the same lifestyle regardless of what they do for a living? Yes, many that make $350k barely work, but most took many years of working 15+ hour days and risking everything they had to get to that point. It's so very different once you're on the other side of the table. Believe me.
I remember when I started my first business. I had a bit saved up from a 401k that I cashed out and took it in the shorts. I was all in. My partner and I invested everything we had, paid the bills with our savings, and didn't take a salary. We hired a couple of employees and paid them out of this money as well. My personal mortgage fell behind, my bills fell behind, everything.
I remember after 10 months we were at our very poorest. My wife was selling some of my son's games, one of his car seats, and various other stuff. We had a couple garage sales. I had built a company that was now grossing about $100k per month, but the controls weren't in place to get our profit margin in place. While technically having a (barely) million dollar company, I specifically remember my wife having to leave her cart at the grocery store because we were completely broke. Everything was gone. I remember I sold some tools to a friend for $100 to get us by. Shortly after that we had a sign on our door and front gate showing that our home was to be put up for auction.
Right after this things turned around. Probably 2 months later my business FINALLY wasn't upside down. We made around $8k (net) that month. My partner and I actually took money out for the first time. Next month it was like $10k, then it jumped to like $24k, then it hit $50k, then leveled off at about $100k. Finally, things paid off.
Our employees had joked a couple times about us living "the good life". After all, they saw the deals being made, but didn't realize how bad things actually were. I (and my partner) worked our butts off. Both of us found ourselves at urgent care at different times due to heart issues and anxiety issues. Things got really really tough.
The moral of the story is, I almost killed myself. My doc told me to slow down or else I'd be dead in a couple years. My partner got the same advice. I'd give up mental stress for physical stress any day of the year.
So where am I now? Well I have several employees. I just hired a guy for $125k/yr about 2 weeks ago, and another guy that starts at the end of the month at $85k. I'm doing my best to help create jobs in this economy. Most will see me as "lucky"...and that I don't deserve to have nice things... but I think I earned it. I know a lot of other business owners that have exactly the same story... unfortunately I know even more that have a similar story, but went bust. It's a risk we take. If there isn't a reward at the end, none of us would risk anything. We'd all get government jobs.
