An Entertainment Tax for Obama

I read that traffic in Los Angeles would be interrupted because Obama is attending a fundraiser hosted by singer Katy Perry and Jon Bon Jovi. Obama has so many supporters for his agenda in the Hollywood film and television industry and the music business, along with the sports world. One part of his agenda is a higher tax on wealthy people. Some of the people at the fundraiser are some of the wealthiest people in America today. Perhaps Obama’s supporters in these enterprises would readily agree to a new and different type of tax. Obama made a statement on September 21, 2012, about how people who are wealthy want to give back. Perhaps at his next fundraiser in Hollywood he could propose this type of new tax and see just how much his wealthy friends want to give back like he asserted they do. This is the statement Obama made on September 21, 2012. Here are some modifications that he could add to the statement at his next Hollywood fundraiser.

Obama’s statement of September 21, 2012, with suggested modifications in italics.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans so many of whom are in the entertainment world who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, as an actor, musician, athlete, or video game developer, movie producer you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart or talented. There are a lot of smart creative, and talented people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, as an entertainer, actor, singer, songwriter, or producer or athlete somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business or produced a film or wrote a song, or acted on a TV show or movie– you didn’t build that, you didn‘t write that book, you didn‘t compose that song or sing it, you didn’t act in that role, you didn’t produce that film, you didn‘t design that game, you did not score that touchdown, you did not hit that jump shot, you did not create that rap music - somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Al Gore invented it along with global warming or is it climate change now? Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. This includes money from your music downloads, streaming shows, game and movie downloads, and HBO.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. Therefore I propose a 25% federal excise tax on all sporting events, movie and music downloads, movie tickets, live concert appearances, Broadway shows, computer game purchases, and satellite dish and cable services to begin immediately. After all, Based on the amount of support I get from those in these industries, I am certain all of the people involved in these industries would readily agree to such a tax. This means that for every dollar you charge to download a song we, the government, would get 25 cents. You can decide whether you want to add it in to the price – which would add 25 cents to every dollar – or we can just let us take our cut from the dollar leaving you with 75 cents. This means that if someone pays 10 dollars for a movie, we get $2.50. That leaves you with a generous $7.50.

I wonder when we will hear that proposal from Obama or any of his Hollywood friends.