$400,000 per year = $33,333 per month

[JDPriestly]

57. I'm with you, dotymed.

My husband and I were talking about one of our children who has a job that entails a lot of responsibility and earns pretty good money. She chose her profession at a very early age, never wavered from her determination to get the education necessary to do it and is utterly devoted to her work.

She lives very simply and is extremely generous. But her most striking trait is her devotion to her work and the people for whom she is responsible. Of course, I'm personally proud of her.

But the thing that struck us is that she, like many other people who are really, really good at what they do, is not in it for the money although she is paid well. She is in it because she cares and really wants to help make the world better.

I do not agree with those who think that you have to pay people large sums of money in order to motivate them or give them incentives. I don't think that anyone will turn down a generous salary of paycheck, but I really don't think that is what motivates excellence in the workplace or business.

Some people will tell you they work for the money, but then you look at what they do and how they live, and you realize they are really working to win the game of working. They are investing to win the game of investing. Or alternatively, they are really working or investing because they love what they do whether they will admit it or not.

So, I think that raising the tax rates really won't be a disincentive at all. People for whom earning a lot of money is a reward because it means that they have won the game will be really angry at first, but they will still get their joy from winning and will soon overcome their anger.

For them, making money is like playing a sport. That is something that many of us wage- and salary-earners don't understand. They will keep playing the sport as long as they can regardless of the prize at the end. Well, I qualify that. When I was working, I sometimes decided at the end of one year what changes I wanted to make in my work and set a number goal about how much I wanted to be earning at the end of the year. I made that goal a surprising number of times (although it was always a modest goal). I found the game of it to be fun. It helped me over those rough days when you really don't want to get up and go to work.

We have nothing to fear from raising the taxes of the rich. They have already invested most of their money overseas. Let's make our part of the world a good, healthy, thriving place with what they owe on the rest. Raising taxes is necessary to do that. If the economy gets better, we can lower them again. In fact that is what we should tell the rich.

You help us get the economy going again, get the employment rate up, get education less expensive and the housing market back on an even keel and you can have your lower tax rates back. But until our economy regains its health, we are putting you on a high-tax, lower take-home diet. Thank you very much.

Now that is the kind of compromise that we should be talking about -- working together to make the country better, not taking from a relatively poor group in exchange for lower taxes for the rich.