Guest, Jack the Sailor

Regarding Bill Gates, you asked me, "Are you saying that he has worked a million times harder?". Of course not. When you hire someone (say a neighbor boy to mow your yard or a doctor to fix your aching back), you don't pay them by how hard they work. The neighbor boy works as hard as, or harder than, the doctor. You pay them partly according to the value they provide and partly by the demand vs. scarcity of their service. (In other words, there are more people capable of mowing lawns, relative to the demand for lawn mowing, and fewer people capable of being doctors, relative to the demand.)

So why is Bill Gates a million times richer than me? Because he did an amazingly rare thing. He figured out a way to improve the daily productivity of literally hundreds of millions of people. The same is true of Brin and Dell and Jobs. True, the value of what they provided to each individual was small, but they provided it to so many that they raised the productivity of the entire nation, indeed of the entire world.

You asked me, "Are you implying that it is fair that he pays a smaller percentage of his income in taxes?" What I'm saying is what the title of this thread says: the rich pay their fair share of taxes.   

You asked me, "Does he not he enjoy the opportunities this country offers in proportion to his wealth?" No, of course he doesn't. How could he? Are you saying he gets a million times more benefits than I do? When he drives down the interstate, and when I drive down the interstate, we both benefit from the road by the same amount. He doesn't get more benefit because he's richer. We both enjoy freedom of speech. His freedom of speech costs no more to defend than mine. We both will eventually be eligilble for Social Security. I will need mine; he won't need his and, since Social Security payments are capped, he will receive a much smaller amount (relative to what he paid in) than I will. If I ever patent anything, my patent will be just as valid as his patents. If I go to Yosemite, the scenery I see is just as beautiful as the scenery he sees. He certainly does not enjoy the opportunities this country offers in proportion to his wealth.

Kent