Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#81

Post by swaits » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:19 AM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #67

TheSkeptic wrote: post #34

Funny. Buffett certainly didn't mind a little coddling in 2008. He was arguably one of the largest individual beneficiaries of bailouts which shifted ungodly amounts of toxic debt from failed private institutions to taxpayers. See http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/08/04/buffetts-b... . While it's now mighty generous of Buffett to invite the government to increase his taxes, he could spare us another ( http:…

Our deficit is $14.6 trillion. TARP, which cost ~$80 billion (with still more to be paid back), is a rounding error in that deficit. Changing tax rates would have a much bigger impact on the deficit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program#P...

You're confusing deficit and debt.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#82

Post by rhizome » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:19 AM UTC

MikeCapone wrote: post #41

TheSkeptic wrote: post #34

Funny. Buffett certainly didn't mind a little coddling in 2008. He was arguably one of the largest individual beneficiaries of bailouts which shifted ungodly amounts of toxic debt from failed private institutions to taxpayers. See http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/08/04/buffetts-b... . While it's now mighty generous of Buffett to invite the government to increase his taxes, he could spare us another ( http:…

The whole financial system and everybody that depends on it was a beneficiary of the bailouts. If everything collapsed, everybody would have suffered. Buffett just happens to own a bigger slice of the market than almost anyone, so of course he benefited significantly. But singling him out, especially since he's stayed away from wall street's games and made extraordinary efforts to keep things above board for decades,…

If everything collapsed, everybody would have suffered.

Citation needed.

There would still be demand that needed supplying, no? Some non-criminal companies would have happily stepped up to fill that void.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#83

Post by olalonde » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:19 AM UTC

revscat wrote: post #28

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.

I can't help but wonder what the hell you are doing on a venture capital firm's website.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#84

Post by cperciva » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:19 AM UTC

aj700 wrote: post #39

Taxing the money that moves - as it is earned - will only produce so much revenue. The rich need to be taxed, not beccause it will allow lots of lovely spending, because the gov will inevitably do a bad job of spending it. Though you could put it towards debt reduction first. You have to tax the money that doesn't move. The millions of unneeded unspent $ that the rich are sitting on, with a wealth tax. You may not ev…

That might have worked in the 1910s when the vast majority of people worked up to the day that they died. In the 2010s we have a concept of "retirement"; and in order for people to practice it, they need to save money while they're working.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#85

Post by rhizome » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:21 AM UTC

steins wrote: post #69

MikeCapone wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole financial system and everybody that depends on it was a beneficiary of the bailouts. If everything collapsed, everybody would have suffered. Buffett just happens to own a bigger slice of the market than almost anyone, so of course he benefited significantly. But singling him out, especially since he's stayed away from wall street's games and made extraordinary efforts to keep things above board for decades,…

Prehaps they all benefited, but it seems as if the bailouts benefited the most irresponsible people far more than the rest of society. The banks should have been allowed to fail. The only reason capitalism works is by providing a huge incentive to do things right. Bailouts like these will convince companies they can get away with the same thing in the future.

Get away with it? Heck, it's now a dependable feature of the US economy. A guarantee.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#86

Post by jeffool » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:22 AM UTC

A couple of recent quotes of his: "I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection."

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/warren-buffett-i-could-...

Also, he's against having a debt ceiling. "All it does is slow down a process and divert people’s energy, causes people to posture. It doesn’t really make any sense,"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59335.html#ixzz1V4...

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#87

Post by siglesias » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:22 AM UTC

carsongross wrote: post #76

Thanks for the advice, Warren. Can we have our Goldman bailout money back now? Yours, The U.S. Taxpayers

Most of it has been paid back or is on track to be paid back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#88

Post by jeffreymcmanus » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:23 AM UTC

Umofomia wrote: post #59

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…

It's interesting that all of these links talk about federal income taxes , but you talk about them as if they're talking about all taxes that people pay. Once you take into account payroll, sales, and sundry other taxes that people pay (many of which are pretty regressive), the system becomes much less progressive (it's still slightly progressive as a whole, but much less so than conservatives like to cast it).

This is one reason why Buffett suggests that we keep the 2% deduction in the payroll tax that President Obama proposed (and Congress passed) last year.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#89

Post by webXL » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:23 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #22

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.

This assumes low to middle income people are single issue voters and that issue happens to be the effective tax rate of billionaires. What's dumbfounding is that there are people who believe that wealth is zero-sum, and that by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, "justice" would be done, never taking into account what produces wealth or the fact that living standards have improved despite the rich getting richer. 99.9% of us will never become billionaires, but so what? If my neighbor has a nicer car than me, should I try to get the government to raise his taxes and decrease mine? Why not? Here's a possible reason: The conditions that permit my neighbor to drive a nice car are the same conditions that produce billionaires.

Just because I want Warren Buffet to be able to keep most of what he produces doesn't mean I believe I will be in his shoes one day, it just means that I don't trust people who are trying to take more of his money in order to improve my life. Warren may trust those people, but his life really doesn't need much improvement now, does it?

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#90

Post by reader2000 » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

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…

Stop spreading lies - it's incomplete data! Do you work at FOX News or something?

It’s true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes in 2008. But people forget that the income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.

Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That’s because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who earns $106,800.