Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 354 posts

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#21

Post by [deleted] »

dublinclontarf wrote: post #7
cromulent wrote: post #2

It looks like Joe Nocera got his wish from a week ago. "I keep waiting for one wealthy, well-known figure to stand up and say publicly that he or she is willing to pay more in taxes as part of the shared sacrifice necessary to gain control of the country’s deficit." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/opinion/nocera-while-the-m...

We'll let them voluntarily pay more taxes then, or donate to charity, or start a charity or whatever. By their very nature taxes are not voluntary, they're taken by force of law. Don't pay them then go to jail. This is a stupid (but very easy) argument to make, one (of the richest)rich person says he'd be happy to pay more tax, therefor all rich people should pay more. If he really wants to make a difference he'd be…

[deleted]

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#22

Post by ck2 »

The problem is getting low to middle income people to stop voting against themselves. Good luck with that, they all seem to think they are going to be billionaires someday so better keep those billionaire taxes low.

Either that or by bribing the wealthy with low taxes they might only ship out half the jobs overseas instead of all of them.

It's just dumbfounding. Election after election, over and over.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#23

Post by karmafeeder »

As a freshly minted middle-class American, I disagree with Mr. Buffet's argument here. Though his eagerness to share the tax-burden is laudable, I hope that tax rates stay low for him. I would pay higher taxes to keep it that way.

Simply put, I don't trust the government with that money.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#24

Post by dmayle »

a5seo wrote: post #9

What's missing is an estimate of the revenue impact of doing what Buffet suggests. I've always heard that this kind of policy would add little to revenue, because there is simply far more tax money available by taxing earned income.

If you just count the top 400 income earners in the US that he mentions in the article, and they restore the the 1992 rate of 29.2% (as opposed to the 21.5% of 2008), then we're talking about 7 billion dollars

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#25

Post by yummyfajitas »

dwolfson20 wrote: post #11
dublinclontarf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll let them voluntarily pay more taxes then, or donate to charity, or start a charity or whatever. By their very nature taxes are not voluntary, they're taken by force of law. Don't pay them then go to jail. This is a stupid (but very easy) argument to make, one (of the richest)rich person says he'd be happy to pay more tax, therefor all rich people should pay more. If he really wants to make a difference he'd be…

Maybe take a look at Buffett's charitable record sometime.

Why does Buffet donate to charity rather than the treasury? Does he believe that the government will use his money less efficiently than the organizations he donates to?

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#26

Post by netmau5 »

drblast wrote: post #14

Voluntary gifts of money can be sent to the U.S. Treasury at this address: http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html One has to ask, if any super rich person really considered the U.S. Government a worthwhile investment, why are they donating to various charities instead of to the Treasury?

Most decent charities deliver far more per unit donated than the US government could ever wish to achieve. If you're interested in pure charity, you're not going to get much bang for your buck at the federal level.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#27

Post by dwolfson20 »

zzeroparticle wrote: post #17
sliverstorm wrote: post #6

The more I hear about this guy, the more I like him. He is so frank, it seems like he'd be a very interesting person to meet.

I've always enjoyed reading Buffett's remarks in Berkshire's shareholders reports because of those very reasons. There's no BS; he just tells it the way it is, covering both successes and failures. And when he talks about the overall economy, he puts it in terms that people can readily grasp the concept without being swamped by gobbledegook. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/reports.html

He also puts on a great shareholder's meeting every year, where he and his #2 Charlie Munger spend a lot of time just answering questions. And of course, there are the discounts at Dairy Queen and Nebraska Furniture Mart. He even supports local independent businesses like The Bookworm.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/meet01/VisGuide2011.pdf

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#28

Post by revscat »

karmafeeder wrote: post #23

As a freshly minted middle-class American, I disagree with Mr. Buffet's argument here. Though his eagerness to share the tax-burden is laudable, I hope that tax rates stay low for him. I would pay higher taxes to keep it that way. Simply put, I don't trust the government with that money.

I don't trust capitalists with it.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#29

Post by dwolfson20 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #20

If we want shared sacrifice, maybe we should ask people at the bottom to share as well. Anecdotes of Warren Buffet's office aside, in general the richest people pay the largest proportion of taxes. We already lean quite heavily on the top 1% - the top 1% actually pays more in taxes than the bottom 90%. http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/22652.html A graph of the data in that article: http://i.imgur.com/wa8uu.png…

>Maybe the tax code needs tweaking at the level of the top 400, but it's very progressive up to the level of the top 1%.

If you read the whole piece, that's exactly what he says.

Post reply on HN