Warren Buffet: "Stop coddling the rich."

7xWhich is exactly why I specified establishing another tier in the tax code beyond the current definition of "rich."

I hate to shatter some people's dreams here, but if paying an additional 2% off your 500k paycheck is preventing you from breaking through to "true wealth" (however you define it), it simply wasn't meant to be. ;)

Rich people who are fiscally moderate have a tendency to ruffle a portion of the conservative base's feathers because their very existence contradicts the notion of how one should obtain wealth and act once one has wealth.

edited 9th Sep '11 6:30:33 AM by ForlornDreamer

/eye roll

Tom does have a point. Any kind of leadership (political or otherwise) does get undermined if you don't back up what you are saying with action. And this comes up a lot in politics, partially due to a lot politicians being...well, politicians.

I don't agree with him that Buffet has failed to do so, however. Pending evidence of tax evasion (highly unlikely), Buffet seems to be on the up-and-up.

I'm reminded of that one time that I read an interview with some famous actor that got recently divorced. The reporter asked him if losing half of his fortune like that would create problems for him.

The actor answered with something along the lines of "Problems? The only thing that has changed is that I'm a multi-millionaire instead of a multi-multi-millionaire. I probably won't even notice."

The man gave away 50 billion of his fortune to charity. How about you give away 90% of your wealth and come back to me.

You're telling the man to earn his money in a way that gets taxed at a higher rate and has no loopholes, except that he made his money off the stock market, so he is actually physically incapable of doing that. He pays a 15% rate because that's as high as the tax on his type of income goes and he's saying it's idiotic. Asking him to earn his money in another way is the stupidest excuse for not raising taxes on the rich I ever heard. "Hey if all the financial dogs on Wall St instead earned a wage labour, they'd pay the same taxes, but seeing as how they don't, we're perfectly okay that they get taxed like next to nothing."

He's not undermined by anything.

And what's with "Even if we taxed them at 100% rate it doesn't solve all our problems". Gee what a surprise. One little thing doesn't solve all of America's problems. Like if I put in bank regulations into the American economy, that wouldn't solve your oil crisis, therefore it's totally pointless.

You tax the rich, you shave a few hundred billion off your deficit per year. If that's not enough incentive then I can see why the United States populace is going to vote itself into poverty.

Didn't we establish earlier that Warren Buffet has specifically not done anything that would artificially lower his taxes?

Also the stupidest possible thing you could do, if you were trying to outcompete all the other rich people, is to donate half your fortune to charity. As WB did, and which did bump him down from the position of richest person in the world.

EDIT: OH and of course raising the tax rate to 100% would make nearly no money because you would tax everything they have once and then they stop making money because they're just going to have to give it to you anyway.

Just because a 100% tax rate doesn't work doesn't mean that lesser ones also won't. Here's a government chart◊ showing that just removing the Bush Tax cuts would cut the deficit by a pretty significant amount.

edited 9th Sep '11 8:32:47 AM by BlackHumor

Indeed, Warren Buffet's endorsement for higher taxes is not an attempt to out-compete anyone. It's political rhetoric levied by those who don't agree with him.

Exactly, he's paying the highest rate possible.

And the point is that even though he is paying the highest for his bracket, his secretary has to pay more of a tax PERCENTAGE.

Thats messed up.

Do understand, however, that the Bush tax cuts, while going disproportionately to the wealthy, do hit middle-income people too. That's why Obama's been so hesitant to repeal all of them (even though that's probably the best thing to do, deficit-wise).

I call bullshit. When my aunt put her income taxes in, the year that the first round of tax-cuts went into effect, she got all of $300 back. Thus rendering her slightly richer, enough to get a tiny television. that's all of $300 per year. Not month, year.

The only reason Obama's been hesitant to repeal the Bush tax cuts is because the fucking republicans take something hostage when its due, such as the unemployment benefits for every fucking person last december! So, sorry timmy, I couldn't get a job this year, and now that the republicans have stonewalled about this so that misters Koch can have their extra million dollars each, I can't get you anything for christmas except a can of spam to eat. all day.

edited 9th Sep '11 11:39:07 AM by Enkufka

@enufka

You're forgetting that even when he first talked about repealing them, he actually wanted to make all of the ones for people making under $250,000 permanent. That's a good third or so of the tax cuts. Personally, I'm in favor of letting them all expire, but people do need to understand that doing that will wind up hitting most people at least a bit.

EDIT: This Atlantic column has some nice illustration of the dilemma.

edited 9th Sep '11 12:15:04 PM by Clevomon

again, costing everyone making less than 250k very little.

people dont understand shit about tax policy anyhow. trying to sell it to the american public is impossible when the average person buys the republican line about how lower corporate taxes work in giving new jobs.

edited 9th Sep '11 12:15:13 PM by Midgetsnowman

Gonna disagree again. Lowering the corporate tax rate would make a lot of sense in the context of the gutting of the tax system of all of the loopholes that corporations can take advantage of. We do, technically, have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. The reason corporations pay such low taxes right now is because of all of the plum loopholes they've carved out. If you get rid of those, you could lower the rate to make us more competitive while taking in more income through elimination of loophole abuse.

Only in that context, however, does lowering the rate make sense, and given the Republican penchant for throwing out reform of the tax code as a sop without any real focus on the technicalities of doing so makes me fear for the worst.

Thats the problem,. yeah. tax rates mean nothing if theres a bajillion loopholes.

at the sasme time though,. I meant how they always claim theyd hire more if they werent taxed, when in reality theyd just build moar infrstrtucture or further tax the schedule of the same workers.

They can only tax workers' schedules so much, though. Not to mention that taxing their schedules too much has diminishing marginal value, and will eventually make the work they can squeeze out of their workers negative. That's the point where they start hiring again.

As for the infrastructure, that infrastructure still needs someone to work it. See above.

Stuart Rose, the former chief of Marks and Spencers has said he would be prepared to pay more than 50% tax and hit back at the think tank calling for it to be scrapped