Here’s a great idea. Tax the bastards

I’m in Brooklyn, where it’s snowing.

But I was cheered up by seeing that Congress here has passed a bill taxing the bonuses of the thieves in firms that were bailed out by 90%.

Why not in the U.K.?

And why only 90%? At one point in Sweden they were taxing people by more than 100%. Why can’t these wretches be made to disgorge the money they stole before that?

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

7 Comments

  1. We Canadians have taxation down to a science. Literally.

    (You’d require several doctorates just to read cliffnotes from the damn legislation.)

    But then again, our government officials are just as corrupt. Need I say more?

    By the way, you might be interested in what Perry Marshall had to say…

    http://www.perrymarshall.com/bailouts-bonuses-80-20/

  2. Steve Gibson

    I don’t like this ‘changing the law retrospectively’ stuff.

    Firstly, I think it’s a way for the government to help themselves by

    (1) Appealing to the angry mob.

    (2) Distracting people from the real problem: the govts failure to regulate the banks.

    Secondly, it’s the thin end of the wedge.

    If there’s a precedent which says you can obey the law, but the government can re-write the rules retrospectively and find you guilty, what does that mean for our civil liberties?

    I’d rather live in a society where the law is more powerful than the politicians.

    Steve

  3. Maciej Mardyllo

    Why they will not make salary cap as it is in NBA? In my point of view it will help to reduce huge salaries for managers.

  4. Michel Fortin said:
    “But then again, our government officials are just as corrupt. Need I say more?”

    He got there before I did.

    Who’s going to tax the crooks in this country their friends are all in governement?

    Don’t forget you wrote about the knighthood conferred upon one of these crooks by the head crook.

    Rezbi
    PS Am I Really THAT Stupid… What Do You Think?
    http://imsecretsrevealed.com/2009/03/20/am-i-really-that-stupid-what-do-you-think/

  5. I agree wholeheartedly with Steve Gibson above. Nobody likes the idea that AIG execs (and others) got huge bonuses while their firm was taking bailout money, but that was specifically added to the law by Chris Dodd and TurboTaxCheat Geithner. Specifically written in.

    This feigned “astonishment” by the very people who are dragging this country down makes me ill.

    There IS a concept known as “ex post facto” in our country, whereby one cannot be prosecuted for something that wasn’t illegal at the time of commission. But for this government to target specific citizens for “crimes” that the purposely allowed is a very dangerous slippery slope.
    If they didn’t want the bonuses paid, they had ample opportunity to disallow them as far back as November.

    What a bunch of hypocritical liars. This is just another way to chip away at our liberties. Use a scapegoat to ratchet up the anger of the mob. Exactly what the National Socialists did in Germany during the 1930’s.

    Aaarrrrrgh!

    Greg

  6. Newdell

    If we were all as dishonest as the governors we’d all be in gov’t.

  7. Thank you Greg. Maybe we should tax Bernie Madoff 90% capital gains on his heist. That’ll make sure it never happens again… right?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *