Quote:Go ahead and throw some names out.

 

How much money would they make "inventing products" without society to back them up? Do you know what patent and copyright protection are? They're functions of society meant to encourage invention. Everything in our society of laws is meant to encourage or deter behavior. Taxation policy does the same, though the politicians might deny it.

 

No, I am not going to name all my rich friends.  (I have a lot of poor friends, too.) 

 

The main incentive for making an investment is the chance for it to return a profit.   I don't see how you can call raising taxes, and thus decreasing the return on an investment, "encouraging investment." 

 

And by the way, patent and copyright protection are for protecting private property, protecting one's right to exclusive ownership of what he has invented.  That's how those things encourage invention.  You seem to want to collectivize those inventions, by syphoning off some of the return from them.  

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