Raise His Taxes—And Even More Exorbitantly Increase His Income?

In Reed Hastings’ “Please Raise My Taxes” essay, he opines that the wealthy of America (as he defines as anyone whose income excess $1 million USD) should pay higher taxes but still receive the same pay or higher pay. This is a controversial topic because there is a huge spectrum of attitudes about how much people should earn, how much should be given to the government and to other people, basically the paradigm of the worth of an individual vs. the worth of his society and how much he wants to contribute to social welfare. Indeed, anytime an ego is being called into question, contention ensues.

Hastings begins his persuasive article by stating that he is the chief executive of a successful company (Netflix). This is his showing ethos, proving his identity and expertise of tax filing and having the feeling of wanting to support his government as he belongs to a socioeconomic group of high earners. However, he immediately follows this sentence by giving a backhanded suggestion to President Obama and insinuates that Obama had been “trying to shame us” and reduce his pay, and that instead of doing this, Obama should take up more of his earnings through tax collection. The proposed amount to increase this is one half instead of the current one third of the top income bracket’s earnings.

The next paragraph of his argument combines logos and pathos again, alluding to the statistical references he made in the previous paragraph and using some memorable language like “eye popping amount of money” used for “soldiers, schools, and security.” Then, in the next paragraph, he mentions that the attempts to reduce top-level/executive compensation have not accomplished much. He cites an example, that President Bill Clinton’s attempt in 1993 to ...

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...re even when they themselves have higher incomes.

This was a sensitive topic for him to write about, one that would have given him a fair deal of opposition. Also, even though he would not mind having his taxes raised, he still didn’t want his pay cut too much or have himself singled out. Not every other executive would necessarily agree with his argument—many high earners believe they should keep most of the money they earn. Hastings seems to have just given the typical, left-wing biased view of how to handle the top income bracket’s taxes, which would make him popular in the eyes of average Americans.

Works Cited

Hastings, Reed. "Please Raise My Taxes." The New York Times. 05 Feb. 2009. The New York Times. 20 Feb. 2014 .

Gooch, John, and Dorothy U. Seyler. Argument! Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2013.