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

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#211

Post by gftrhfg » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:30 AM UTC

david927 wrote: post #180

gftrhfg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please explain how the living standard in the US can have improved if real wages have fallen." I cannot believe the ignorance of Ycombinator at times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#... Keep calm. Carry on.

I can't believe it either. Some even believe in the economists' equivalent of a cosmological constant: PPP, which when employed miraculously turns Louisiana into a richer place than Switzerland.

What? Louisiana has a GDP per capita (PPP) of $37K. Switzerland has a GDP per capita (PPP) of $41.6K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_...

In regards to GDP by PPP:

"Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made on the basis of nominal GDP, which does not reflect differences in the cost of living in different countries (See List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita). Using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in living standards on the whole between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using just exchange rates which may distort the real differences in income."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#212

Post by pakitan » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:41 AM UTC

I'm a huge fan of Warren Buffet but in this case I think the math just doesn't seem right. I don't have the exact numbers, I took data from wikipedia and the NYT article, so, please, let me know if my math is way off.

From the article, there are about 200,000 people with income of $1M+. Let's make it $5M per person. That's 1 trillion USD combined income.

The rest of the taxpayers seem to be about 200,000,000 with an average income of about $25,000. Combined income = 5 trillion.

So, if they reduce the tax of the bottom group with 2%, as Mr. Buffet suggests, the tax of the upper bracket has to be hiked with 10% just to compensate. And if we add another 10%, just for the fun of it, that's 100 billion taken from the rich but it's still a measly part of the budget (around 3 trillion) not to mention the debt (15 trillion). And don't forget that people with 1M+ income have a vast number of legal and semi-legal tricks at their disposal to reduce their tax rate. The moment you increase the tax too much, you start seeing money flowing to offshore locations.

So, while "tax the rich more" and "let them share the burden" are great feel-good slogans, I don't think they offer any practical solution for the huge USA deficits.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#213

Post by wpietri » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:41 AM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #77

wpietri wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we want shared sacrifice, maybe we should ask people at the bottom to share as well. Do you actually know anybody at the bottom? I would be fascinated to hear what you'd suggest someone cut when they're earning ~10-15k/year. For those likewise unfamiliar, I recommend sci-fi author John Scalzi's "Being Poor": http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ Both the article and the comments are worth reading.

> Do you actually know anybody at the bottom? yummyfajitas lives in Pune, India. Read through his comment history for comparisons of the rich in India to the poor in the US; it's eye-opening.

I'm not asking for his generalizations; I'm asking if he personally knows actual poor people in the US. E.g., a single mom, an elderly widow, a recovering alcoholic, a laborer whose back is shot.

Also, I utterly refuse to accept third-world conditions as a baseline for "poor enough". You might as well use the 15th century for all the relevance it has.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#214

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:43 AM UTC

Umofomia wrote: post #194

yummyfajitas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have data showing that including payroll or state taxes change this picture, feel free to post it. I gave the best data I have access to.

The link that he gave already adjusts the numbers for payroll taxes (but it's obvious from looking at how the tax is collected that it's regressive -- i.e., flat rate up to $106k and then no tax on wages above that). With regard to state taxes, this report gives a pretty thorough analysis for all 50 states: http://www.itepnet.org/state_reports/whopays.php It's pretty evident from the data in this report that state ta…

The link he gives does not provide % of tax burden / % of income earned, nor do I see any way to figure that out from the data given.

I agree that payroll taxes are regressive past $106k, but it's hardly clear that this changes the picture significantly. I.e., the 12.4% a poor person pays in payroll taxes need not outweigh the 0% they pay in income taxes.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#215

Post by bandushrew » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:46 AM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #152

bandushrew wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

surely you should have an answer to that question before you start claiming that 30% is screwing you?

Exhibit A would be the lack of societal collapse during the 90s, when government spending per-capita and as a percentage of GDP was significantly lower than today.

hmm? Tax rates are lower now than they were in the 90s.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#216

Post by gftrhfg » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:48 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #71

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…

I love the lies with statistics. "We already lean quite heavily on the top 1% - the top 1% actually pays more in taxes than the bottom 90%." The chart of course only shows federal income tax. What about federal payroll? What about excise taxes? And at the state and local levels, what about sales taxes? Here's a much better link: http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_ric... From this article you'll…

Warren Buffet is specifically talking about federal income taxes, not payroll taxes such as Social Security and Medicare, which can be considered benefits because people contributing will get a return when they retire (it's actually a progressive system, in which the poor get more than what they contribute).

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3213&type=0&sequenc...

These federal income taxes aren't lies.

http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#217

Post by rdl » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:48 AM UTC

The really low hanging fruit, IMO, to raise tax revenue without "raising taxes" (in the sense of raising tax rates) is to reclassify carried interest as ordinary income.

That, combined with a few other similar changes (mortgage interest deduction, maybe funding ssi and medicaid separately from old age and medicare) and huge cuts in defense (due to ending 1-4 of the wars), seems like it would be fairly effective.

What I'd like to see is a flat income tax for ordinary and dividend/capital gains at 25-35% for all income, huge cuts in spending, combined with a single refundable tax credit set at ~subsistence income, universally applied. However, that's a much bigger change and pretty unlikely to happen.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#218

Post by learc83 » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:49 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #70

dwolfson20 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can't vote away multi-million dollar CEO bonuses, though.

They vote against "clawback" taxes on those bonuses, it's the same thing as saying the bonuses are okay.

There is a huge difference between voting on compensation for public employees, and punitive taxation on private employees.

Plus the vast majority wouldn't vote for teacher pay cuts. There are a few exceptions, but look at the trends for education spending. America spends more per capita on education than most developed countries.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#219

Post by wpietri » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:54 AM UTC

JVirissimo wrote: post #179

wpietri wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point remains, paying higher taxes is not an efficient way to help your fellow man. Maybe true, maybe not, but totally irrelevant. Taxes solve the free rider problem. Individual charity can't.

True, but what solves the forced rider problem and why presume that it is more benign a problem than free riding? One man's public good is another man's public bad.

There's no a priori answer: democracy is how we decide. But one way to check how we're doing is by comparison with other countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu...

The US's tax burden is already the lowest of the OECD countries bar Chile and Mexico. It's 30% lower than Great Britain, and half that of Denmark. And what that hides is we spend an extraordinarily large portion of that on "defense", so in terms of money spent on citizens, we're necessarily lower.

But if that's still too much governmental interference, then tax haters are able to select from a wide variety of third-world countries. I might suggest Somalia, where effective tax burden is zero. There being no effective government at all, of course.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#220

Post by yyyyyyy5 » Mon, Aug 15, 2011, 8:55 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #210

yummyfajitas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalzi's article about "Being Poor" is definitely not a description of poverty in the United States. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1713461

Yes, I am certainly going to believe your hazy handwaving over his direct statements: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/#comment-64... Of course, I didn't need that to know where he went wrong: I know actual poor people in the US. Maybe you should go meet some.

My family is actually at the bottom 1%. We can afford a solid standard of living at $15K-$20K salaries because of corporate behemoths like Walmart, which I assume you despise, feed, clothe, and entertain our family at $15 per day.

Maybe you shouldn't generalize about poor people.