Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Source: New York TImes

By WARREN E. BUFFETT

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1

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For the full 41 percent. Or more.

You know, share the sacrifice by setting an example.

Instead of talking. Talk is cheap.

Perhaps you would care to clarify that remark.

The idea being that taxes should be voluntary and not imposed on the rich at all. In essence everyone should be taxed at the same very minimal rate. People can donate extra taxes if they want.

And I never would. I said that if Warren Buffet meant what he said, he could cut a check. Meaning I'm not buying what he's selling.

Would this suit you better? He could give superpac millions to anyone supporting a tax increase. Think he is? Seen his name on Colbert's scroll or anything?

And it wouldn't prove jackshit to Obama, the other third way Dems or Republicans that consider the filthy rich their real constituency. In fact all they would do with his money is hand it over to some other rich asshole since tax coffers end up like a money laundering scheme for embezzlers. People put the money in the piggy bank and they use legal means to steal it.

If there was a guarantee that his money would go to something we needed like, say, paying to repair public schools or whatnot, then fine. Donate the money. Otherwise why give the money to the treasury when it's sure to go right back out to other rich assholes who will use it to wield political power and cause more damage?

Rp

Perhaps you could tell me which rich assholes we are cutting checks to and why?

Your insinuations seem petty to such a momentous call to duty for the 'mega-rich' .... Buffet has always been reasonable and honest .... He is speaking truth ....

is petty beyond measure.

Cheers!

billions in drug cartel money (see my reply below)



:thumbsdown:

He's saying he and his friends are undertaxed. I said, Talk is cheap. Cut a check for the missing amount.

Are you hoping they will ALL cut checks? Without any example to shame them?

He said he doesn't pay enough. But he doesn't pay more. The implication is MAKE ME. That means Congress.

HOW IS THAT A CALL TO DUTY FOR THE MEGA RICH? (Who, btw, are impervious to duty calls.)

I'd rather have Buffet publicly calling out his peers on prime-time to just do the right fucking thing,
than I would getting a mere million or two from him to buy us all off from paying attention.

Buffet is not the enemy here & never really has been...He has been exposing these lies for years now & also saying eventually the middle class will figure this out & there will be hell to pay...How long is "eventually" who knows as I think he made that claim in 2007!

Buffet has always been very honest & does not hide his income with fancy accounting & has no overseas tax shelters.

I think too many here on DU think anyone with money is evil...Despite the fact if they are giving almost all of it away to make a positive difference in the world & not just for a tax break or to get their name on something to look like they care like the Koch Brothers do.

peers and their tools in Congress.

Or at least it should.

but shame them? No, they've proven time and time again that they have no shame. Only a greatly exaggerated sense of entitlement and self importance. It'll take some brave souls in Congress and a public outcry the likes of which have not been seen since the Viet Nam war protests to turn the tide of plutocratic welfare that has poisoned our nation.

Do you think Warren Buffet can manufacture shame? Like everything else, it's been outsourced.

They'd be fucking gifts.

I HATE conservative nim-rods.

He admits to being undertaxed and has no plans to rectify the injustice. All hat, no cattle.

will pay their fair share.

If he just cuts a check to the government, that doesn't do squat. We need all of them to pay their fair share, and it needs to be part of tax law, not a single voluntary contribution by one guy, or even by many of them.

For all we know, he might be sending extra money when he pays his taxes each year. But even if he doesn, that doesn't matter. What we need is precisely what he is calling for: tax law that doesn't coddle the super-rich.

shouldn't this be in E&OA?

I think Mr Buffett realizes something his new era rich peers seem unable to grasp.

When the Middle class and Lower class are unable to purchase at all.. the money STOPS.

I guess Liberty University did not cover that lesson for the newer generations.

:toast: :patriot:

Thanks Mr Buffett. Your voice helps on this (AGAIN). Maybe some decade they will listen to you.

He (and some others who agree with him) needs to stamp out the ilk of the Kock brothers, et al. in order to get meaningful change in congress.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/munger-tells-25-million-americans-suck-it-and-thank-god-bank-bailouts-brk-benefits-95-billio

video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYHQLNb3zGA

There is a reason why many countries institute mandatory retirement age: it is so that when dementia strikes, and people spout any damn thing that comes to mind, only the nearest four walls are subject to their insanity. Alas, when it comes to Berkshire Hathaway, no such luck. And while we have extensively discussed Warren Buffett's recent inexorable decline from merely a successful rider of the biggest cheap credit bubble in history to a captured puppet of Wall Street courtesy of his tens of billions of Wall Street-related investments, little has been said about his even older, and apparently even more affected by the unpleasant side-effects of a public televised senescence, sidekick, Charlie Munger. Luckily, courtesy of Bloomberg we now know just how deep the rot runs in the Berkshire family. During a discussion at the Universtiy fo Michigan, the 86 year old told the 25 million of Americans who comprise the 16.7% of the underemployed population in the country, to "suck it in and cope." Not only that, but apparently, all those who have been without a job for 99 weeks and more and no longer have recourse to insurance benefits, should "thank God for bank bailouts." Why of course he would say that: after all $26 billion worth of direct BRK investments were the recipient of over $95 billion in bailouts. So when it comes to him, thank god for the bailout indeed... But when it comes to the little man, old Charlie is all about doing the right thing.

It gets better:


Bank rescues allowed the U.S. to avoid what could have been an “awful” downturn and will help the country as it deals with the housing slump, Munger, 86, said. He used the example of post-World War I Germany to explain how the bailouts under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were “absolutely required to save your civilization.”

“Hit the economy with enough misery and enough disruption, destroy the currency, and God knows what happens,” Munger said. “So I think when you have troubles like that you shouldn’t be bitching about a little bailout. You should have been thinking it should have been bigger.”

Germany was unable to stabilize its financial system in the 1920s, and, Munger said, “We ended up with Adolf Hitler.”

Nowhere in Munger's ridiculous hypocritical ramblings does the old man mention that it was precisely the same currency debasement, wanton money printing and incipient hyperinflation that created Adolf Hitler out of the failed Keynesian experiment that was the Weimar Republic. Just as nowhere does he discuss his massive conflicts of interest that would have bankrupted the billionaire should the equity in banks have been wiped out, and Berkshire's holdings, together with its multi billions bet against the S&P, would have wiped out the firm, its shareholders and its management. Because lest we forget:

Munger slipped 16 places to 230th on Forbes magazine’s 2009 ranking of the wealthiest Americans as Berkshire’s stock gain last year trailed the advance in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. His stake in Berkshire, which didn’t take government aid, is worth about $1.6 billion.



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Notice that Wachovia Bank (now Wells Fargo under the odious Warren Buffett) had a division (Wachovia Capital Investments) at the very same address as the new US Federal Reserve's super secret electronic surveillance center http://www.answerwix.com/find/finance/website/60553/wachovia-capital-investments-inc_richmond_va.html . This was during the time that Wachovia was laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal drug cartel money and Wachovia Capital Investments was directly also involved in billions http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/banks-and-organized-crime-one-and-the-same of dollars of securities fraud. All at the Fed's address- Hmmmmmm.

This Federal Reserve Information Technology center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40jKkZD3W3A&feature=player_embedded is one of a series of nexus hubs for command and control of the IT architecture of the global monetary system, as well as deploying new surveillance grids to detect any threat to their systemic hegemony.

FUCK Warren Buffett (Wells Fargo (which he has a huge stake in via Berkshire Hathaway) bought up Wachovia for pennies on the pound)

Wachovia laundered $378.4 BILLION in drug cartel money, yet paid a fine of only $160 million.

That is equal to laundering a million, and paying a 423 dollar fine. A speeding ticket is more than that in certain cities.


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/wachovia-paid-trivial-fine-for-nearly-400-billion-of-drug-related-money-laundering.html

They actually believe the opposite of what true Christians believe and call it christianity, in name only. CINOs all of them. It takes a real man like Buffet to speak the truth. With proper regulations, no one could abuse the system, and with a better system no one could live with privileges above any other. Call that system whatever you want, we all should want that. We should all seek a fair country to be proud of.