Steve Jobs's widow attending tonight's US State of the Union address - Page 2

Though, the fact of quoting an Arab country, especially one that suffered from massive Israel terrorism (Israel has bombed public places like movie theaters in the fifties, and even nowadays you won't find a car driving at night with lights on in sniper range at the border... tells stuff, eh?) and then just-as-massive American interventionism (billions of US Aid poured into the Egyptian military to keep the status quo -- and peace with Israel -- ), might be discussed.

In other words, Russia, North Korea or Canada might be better exemples (uh, not Canada, sorry sorry sorry... I'm running before the Canadian Air Force bombs Hollywood )

OH GIVE ME A BREAK!

The more money you have, the easier it is to make more? In a free market, which people like you are constantly trying to dismantle, it doesn't work that way. That's why the richest people in our country today came from families that weren't even on the map a generation or two ago!

Steve Jobs, the founders of Google, Microsoft, Fed Ex, Genentech, Intel, WalMart, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, etc. etc. etc....they don't come from The Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Fords and Carnegies, do they?

No, they don't. And when the Rockellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Fords came up in the world, they all came from incredibly modest families as well. None of them were scions of the old rich families that came before them.

The idea of great families amassing all the wealth and controlling the country is ridiculous, and is completely DISPROVEN BY THE FACTS. In a free market, wealth is destroyed as easily as it's created because the market is always changing in unpredictable ways (until, of course, government regulation turns the churning waters of a free market into a static lake), and the people that amass a lot of wealth in one generation are rarely ever the top players in the next generation.

Plus, the record shows that much of inherited money is invested in business, and whether those businesses succeed or fail, the investments generate a lot more legitimate economic activity for the country than the government taking the money and using it for god know's what. More free entitlements that depress human initiative, instead of encouraging it?

It's so sad that our country can defend itself from any foreign powers on the face of the earth, but increasingly looks like it will succumb to the naive attempt to "spread the wealth around" without understanding or encouraging the traits that created the wealth in the first place. You can't encourage human initiative by taking money from the earners and handing it over to the non-earners.

That late thing where Steve was so pitably emaciated?

He said, as reported in the NYT, that he wouldn't put up a factory in the US because the Chinese capital base is huge, and the mobility and complexity of it there, and the number of very good engineers, makes it necessary for an American electronics company to use the big ol' Chinese fab. The low wages? More or less held down to a false level by lending us billions. Making sure we don't reinforce our educational and business infrastructure. We need plants, and and need manufacturing here, too.

That's my guess.

The function of the Estate Tax is, during a time when fortunes were rising very high, the Estate Tax was to ensure that we weren't getting a hereditary nobility. Bully!

And Microsoft founders are such a great example. Like M. Gates is not a big Boston Lawyer. Like Mrs Gates is not a big Bank of America decider (board member... but surely unimportant). Like the current Microsoft boss doesn't come from a rich family himself. Purely irrelevant.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," Jobs told Obummer! And I agree with Steve Jobs.

Steve wasn't impressed by Obama and told him he was going to end up a 1-term president. I hope Steve is right and those words are in Obama's thoughts as he discusses the American dream tonight.

Maybe he can explain how more burdensome regulations and higher taxes create an environment where entrepreneurs and small businesses feel emboldened to take risks to create something great or expand.

I agree too, for the exactly opposite reasons. Amazing.

Imho, Obama did not show the requisite strength of a great reformer. He should have let big banks fail (instead of using taxpayers money to save some rich asses), let fools lose their fool's money, set up (with the saved money) proper health insurance, invested in long and short term education programs targeted at industry jobs. He would even be popular again.

Good question. I believe, properly thought regulations give more strength to companies that really bring imaginative work to the table. Lack of regulation only strengthen old dinosaurs. Bad regulation is bad for every actor.

Pick your choice.

But you can ghoulishly live off other people if you are a member of the US congress.

It was already taxed when Steve earned it, double taxing it is friggin stupid. It should be Steve's decision who his money goes to in full when he is gone and the government can get their greedy hands out of it.

It's assets, not just a wad of cash. That's the problem, you might inherit millions in "assets" and get taxed on that but then a chunk of those assets might be the very house you live in & car you drive.

My aunt had this happen to her when her husband got cancer, problem is the taxes amounted to more than she could pay & none of those assets could be sold in time to cover that cost (not to mention for the price the government claimed they were worth). She lost everything right after loosing her husband to cancer.

The death tax is immoral & people who support it are really brainless.

The problem with regulation is it also falsely props up business failures. We haven't had a truly unregulated system for decades, fact is now the government uses regulation to pick winners. The people should be the only ones with the power to regulate, you do it with the choices you make in what to buy & from where. It's not complicated, businesses serve the almighty dollar and in the end they'll keep behaving badly as long as their customers are complacent to it.

I guess that she will now have to vote for Obama come November

If you had an honest concept of Estate Tax you'd know any half-wit assigns their estate to their children long before they die and thus have jack to tax.

You might want to explore that a little more. What you gift to children ultimately reduces your estate tax exemption.

How can the president and his mouthpieces keep railing against the "one percent" and then invite them to the State of the Union address to offer up some platitude?

So Apple just released insane numbers.
Last week they announced iBooks 2, iBook Author and iTunes U App.
They already had 600,000 DLs of iBook Author.
3 million DLs of iTunes U App.
$97.6 Billion in cash.
Laurene Powell Jobs is invited to be at the State of the Union address tonight.

Obama will announce that every student in the US will get an iPad.... for free.

You heard it here first.

Why you ask?

Laurene is a big supporter of education. She is and/or on: Emerson Collective, White House Council for Community Solutions, College Track, New America Foundation, Teach for America, NewSchools Venture Fund, Stand for Children, and Conservation International.

She inherited a lot of money (Apple and Dsiney stock). She and her kids only need so much. She will take the money and give it away to improve the US education system.

Thoughts?

Do you include the regulation of financial markets as part of these burdens? You know the lack of which allowed Wall Street to plunge the whole world into the great recession?

Fine. It's our government. Not yours. I'll spare you my opinions about how your government manages its finances, or the fate of so many of your land's retired racing greyhounds.

I agree. Good post.

There's the baaad part of the 1% and then there's the goood part of the 1% that vote Democratic. Just like there are those baaaad corporations that use off-shore labor to compete and make obscene profits and then there's Apple, who of course MUST use off-shore labor so as to maintain goood record profits.

Hypocrisy rules in all levels of government and in all parties. just one of many reasons why what the government does, and how much it takes from us, needs greater limitation.

Come on now, it's only president Obama.
He's not Oprah.

She lived with Steve Jobs........she earned it.

Hah... No doubt. Isn't there a story about him calling his wife and kids to the den and saying "you call this cleaning dishes? You should all hate each other for letting each other down."

Or something like that.

You know what they say, "the eyes are the window to the soul".

like!

Actually the estate tax dates back to 1797. Ms. Jobs has zero to worry about it -- there is an unlimited exemption between spouses. With all of the "trust" loopholes it has become almost worthless. You correctly point out why it is so important to actually have a "real" estate tax. People should play the game of Monopoly - it ends when 1 person owns everything - which is were we are headed (@ 400 families). The biggest myth is that it is double taxation -- it is not. Probably none of the huge appreciation in value of the stock Jobs owns has ever been taxed -- that capital gain should be taxed -- at normal rates -- not the special Romney rates.