"Newps" wrote in message
...
There was a 10% surcharge on cars over $30K, airplanes over $100K and
boats over some number I don't recall right now. The boating industry
was hit the hardest because there are lots of small boat builders who
build high end boats. These people were effectively shut down as orders
dried up. What the lefties failed to realize was that these purchases
were nearly 100% discretionary. As such sales dried up completely for
the boats and thousands were left out of work and hundrreds of small
companies went bankrupt. Virtually no tax money was collected. You'll
never see a stick it top the rich surcharge like that again.

I was working at Hatteras Yachts designing megayachts (92ft and up) at the
time. I was fairly liberal back then and right out of college. I wasn't
making much money, so soaking the rich felt like a good thing to do. Heck,
they can afford it, right? Greedy fat *******s.

Boy was I ignorant. Layoffs began within a couple of months of the passage
of that stupid tax. We also had a recession at the time. Rich folks are the
ones who can weather a recession and will still spend money, but that tax
deterred them from spending money on things like yachts. It essentially
destroyed the place. I never got laid off, but things got really bad for the
ones left behind. Hatteras survived, but many of its competitors did not.
The local economy was also adversely affected as well.

What a stupid tax! Any policy based on class envy should be examined
extremely closely. I am also very suspicious of very wealthy polititians who
want to penalize wealthy people by increasing their taxes. Will they really
put their John Hancock on a tax that could cost them huge bucks personally?

-Trent
PP-ASEL