Most of the questions at the event, which was moderated by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, came from laid-off workers asking Obama how he plans on getting unemployment figures down.
But one early Google employee, Doug Edwards, also asked the president to “please raise my taxes?” He said he’s now unemployed by choice.
Mr. Edwards said it “kills him” that the federal government has stopped investing in programs that helped him to become successful, such as Pell Grants.
When the president asked where Mr. Edwards worked, he played coy, only saying that he made his money at a start-up search engine down the street. Mr. Edwards recently published a book about his time at Google, “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59.”
The president said he didn’t want to raise taxes on the rich to the point where it would become punitive and disincentivize people from trying to create new companies and make money. But he did say that he would like to revert to the tax rates that existed in the 1990s, “when Silicon Valley was doing pretty good.”
Obama is no stranger to social media sites in Silicon Valley. In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a town hall style meeting with Obama. The president also hosted a Twitter town hall in July, answering questions in the form of tweets.
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