Fred Smith on taxes

I just came across this wonderful article in today's Wall Street Journal. FedEx CEO Fred Smith points out some essentials to improving our economy, including lowering the corporate tax rate, opening our borders, and providing incentives to our nation's workers. Here's some of the highlights, part of which directly relates to Zach's post three days ago.

"The politicians deplore the fact that we have a disparity of income," he says, but "the only way to make a blue-collar person earn more is to invest in capital, training and infrastructure. So the more you tax capital, the more you hurt workers." He estimates that about 70% of the return from FedEx capital expenditures is captured by workers in the form of higher wages as their productivity rises.

He sees a big problem in that so few Americans now pay any income tax. "We're now at a point where a very large part of the population pays no federal income tax at all. When you have a majority of the population that realizes that you can transfer money from the productive to themselves, that's one of the great questions for the future of civilization, as far as I'm concerned."