<<Go through the Yellow pages democrats. You see all those businesses? Those are the people making 250K a year. Those are the people who own Mail Order Companies, Travel Agencies, Machine shops, and Neighborhood Restaurants. Aren't they just the picture of evil!? That bakery owned by your neighbor, he's a real rich bastard ain't he? Marsella's Pizza, rich bastard.>>
Whether he's a bastard or not, a guy making $250K can afford another 10% of his income go to Uncle Sam and still have a nice chunk for himself, take a vacation in the Caribbean and drive a nice car. How much money does this guy need anyway? A lot of the Yellow Page businesses you see, the guy is NOT making $250K and Obama's not looking to increase his taxes by one cent.
If any one of those businessmen who ARE making $250K before-tax income or more would come to me and tell me, "You know, with this tax increase, my net after-tax income will fall to only $112K, so I'm just shutting down shop," I'd want to know who his customers are. In many cases, they'd just take their business to other Yellow Page small businesses in the area - - the other businesses would have to add on extra staff to cope with the overflow, but there wouldn't be any great loss of jobs, net. If there were some net job loss it would only mean that the same volume of customers is being serviced by fewer providers and a fewer employees, i.e., more efficiently.
Suppose the customers are left stranded high and dry. Well, if there's a need, some enterprising new businessman will set out to fill it. Maybe he can cut overhead to less than what the last guy had, maybe he can increase sales or maybe he's content to run the business and take home less net after-tax income than the old guy, but who gives a shit? If the old guy was earning a pre-tax $250K from his business, he had it pretty good. Maybe he shoulda just shut up and absorbed the tax hike himself.