[GRH]

Yawn...

Could Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or any other entrepreneur built their empire without:

1. Roads, bridges, railways, and other forms of public infrastructure that is used to ship the PC's, iPads, X-Boxes, iPods, etc. to market?

2. An educated workforce of software engineers, chip designers, etc. Would the access to such an educated workforce be possible without public primary schools, universities, etc. And if the educational infrastructure was in place, would Apple or Microsoft have had as large of a talent pool to draw on, had said talent pool not had access to student loans, Pell grants, etc. that helped them attain the education that Microsoft/et al. ended up needing?

3. A legal system that is designed to protect the intellectual property involved in designing said tech gadgets? Currently, Samsung has an injunction against selling one its Galaxy tablets because of the violation of Apple patents. In the absence of such civil protections, Jobs or Gates may have had a great idea, only to have it stolen out from under them.

4. A secure political sphere in which to build a business? When the tech giants built their empires in Cupertino, Silicon Valley, etc. they probably weren't overtly concerned about hostile invasion by a foreign military presence because of the existence of the world's strongest military.

This is just scratching the surface, but the point remains the same. Jobs, Gates, or any other businessman may be the ingenuity and drive behind the success of their respective business. They DID build that. But without the common good-- the roads, universities, student loans, legal protections, etc.-- all their good ideas and ingenuity wouldn't have gone nearly as far. And to be fair-- Microsoft and Apple did NOT build that. They may have helped (through taxes), and it is the existence of such developed infrastructure that in my mind serves as the primary justification for taxing corporations.

Too many corporations want to operate in America and benefit from all of the common good infrastructure that I've just referenced-- but they scream hell when it comes time to pay for such infrastructure. I tell you what...If corporate taxes are so onerous...I've got a suggestion for your business. Move your corporate headquarters to Sudan. I hear Sudan has a pretty lax corporate tax environment. Granted, you probably won't have very good electrical or water utilities to run to your business. And the road/bridge infrastructure probably leaves a lot to be desired. Nevermind that legal protections are non-existent-- especially for a foreign corporation. It's also probably a safe bet to say that you're not going to have a very large graduating class of software engineers every summer-- so you may have difficulty recruiting educated talent to your firm. And it's probably just a small fly-in-the-ointment that civil war could break out at any time and lead to massive destruction. But at least the taxes are low!

As usual Tracy, you present a false dichotomy. Yes, tax revenue is derived from the income that is generated by private sector employment...But I see this as sort of a chicken vs. egg argument. Which comes first? Does business employment follow the development of infrastructure? Or does infrastructure follow the emerging needs of business? I'd argue that both statements may be true to some extent...Thus neutralizing the whole chicken/egg dilemma. I don't know why I bothered wasting 5 minutes of my life replying to you-- because it's not like we're changing each other's minds.