I hate the way President Obama (and other democratic presidents of the past) single out millionaires, especially when he says that the rich need to “pay their fair share, just like everybody else“.  Now as a financial blogger, I know that the statistics shows that over 40% of the population don’t pay taxes as is.  So perhaps President Obama want the rich to pay all the taxes?

 

But let’s peal back the layers on President Obama’s millionaire onion, shall we?

1. From the monumental book called “The Millionaire Next Door“, we all learned that 80% of those that are rich did not become so because of inheritance.  So that means that the majority of those that are rich come from the good old middle class group.  Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are prime examples!  Both were from what I would consider the Upper Middle Class, but definitely still part of the middle class.
2. Those that succeeded in becoming millionaires (the road is full of those that have tried and failed), still sacrificed both time and experiences to get where they are today.  The millionaires that I know of put in the typical 70 to 80 hours a week working on their business, for years and years!  Forgoing all the fun stuff that the rest of us middle class folks enjoy.  And now that they are older and even have less opportunities to enjoy life like only the young can do, we are going to suck their hard earned, long hour worked, money from them?  Like a parasite or a leech?  It just doesn’t seem very fair does it.
3. These same millionaires enable the middle class folk like you and I to earn a living and raise our families.  We (the middle class) do so while going on nice vacations and enjoying life in ways that the majority of the rest of the world can only dream of.  The millionaires are the sharp end of the stick and without them, we are just beating again the wall going nowhere instead of breaking through it.
4. They buy our city fireworks, give money to charity, help with special project (like stadiums), and benefit their communities in other ways, and the country in general.  The millionaires are movers and shakers, they are catalyst that make the world a much better place.
5. Being a millionaire, or blazing the trail to be a future millionaire isn’t a thing that should be frowned upon!  We should all be encouraged to become millionaires.
6. Millionaires create corporations which in turn pay taxes.  So already the business pays taxes, then the businesses pay out the wages to it’s millionaire owners/creators  who also pay taxes on the money that has already been taxes at the corporate level (this is called double taxation).

In conclusion, I think it’s wrong to attack the doers of society!  Those that stuck their necks out, took the risk and were luck enough to succeed.  Such millionaires hired the middle classes along the way, dragging the middle class into a more prosperous state while growing their business (many of which pay taxes in addition to the millionaire).

The long hours that millionaires work means that they miss out on a lot of family activities.  This means that they miss soccer games and other activities that their kids may do because of the hours they put into their business.  This may be the ultimate sacrifice made by entrepreneurs trying to become rich…

In conclusion, I think politicians and naive protesters tend to just look only at the checkbook balance of millionaires and they don’t take into consideration the sacrifices and hard work that those millionaires had to pay to get rich.

What is your opinion?

MR

 

P.S.  If you are wealth please email me your story.  Not only would I love to read about your experiences, I would also like to know about the positive ways you impact your community and benefit society as a whole.  If your story is noteworthy, I’ll post it on my site.  Of course, I’ll keep it anonymous…