Quote: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.  

 

This is WAAAAAY too black and white. The implication that taxes somehow stop investment is one of those Reaganisms that's survived for far to long.

 

The top tax rate in the USA from the great depression until Reagan was incredibly high compared to what it is now and the USA had it's strongest period of middle class growth the world has ever seen. Business thrived.

 

Patent and copyright protection are actually intended to encourage public ownership of ideas and technology, it's been misunderstood for a long time, but the point of them is actually to encourage public development and disclosure of art and technology, which is why the terms 200 years ago were so limited, so that inventions would be encouraged and then enter the public domain as soon as reasonably possible.

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