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Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

nytimes.com

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Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#251

Post by Andrew_Quentin »

andrewflnr wrote: post #48
dwolfson20 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely abstract argument. It's a matter of degree. If everyone gave all their money to charity, we'd have no government at all.

You're taking my abstract argument farther than I intended; perhaps I should have been more careful. I'm not saying we should give all our money to charity, just that it should be strongly preferred to paying increased taxes, especially with the goal of helping people.

I think the rich can do both. They can pay taxes and give to charity like most ordinary people do. What is so special about them?

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#252

Post by HSO »

gaius wrote: post #238
cromulent wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. He's not trying to "make a donation", he's saying that everyone should share the burden - including himself and people like him. It's not just that the rich kids should pay for the park, it's that everyone but the rich kids are being asked to pay some extra.

Does Mr Buffett employ an accountant to do his taxes? Does said accountant employ any tax avoidance strategies?

From his biography ("The Snowball"):

"He did the bookkeeping himself and prepared his own tax returns. With its numbers, accuracy, and the measuring of results, the recordkeeping aspect of the job pleased him."

[...]

"Warren was still handling all the money and doing all the clerical work himself: filing the tax returns,..."

[...]

"'Bill started trying to convince me to get a computer. I said, I don’t know what it’s going to do for me. I don’t care how my stock portfolio is doing every five minutes. And I can do my income taxes in my head.'"

Seems like indeed he is doing them himself (his personal tax bill; to do it for Berkshire, they surely have hired help)

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#253

Post by kahawe »

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.

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

The only logical conclusion there would be moving out to a different country that offers equal or better living standards because the longer you stay, the more money you give to that government you do not trust.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#254

Post by cromulent »

gaius wrote: post #238
cromulent wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. He's not trying to "make a donation", he's saying that everyone should share the burden - including himself and people like him. It's not just that the rich kids should pay for the park, it's that everyone but the rich kids are being asked to pay some extra.

Does Mr Buffett employ an accountant to do his taxes? Does said accountant employ any tax avoidance strategies?

I don't know, but I would assume so. I think most people try to pay the minimum tax they are required to, and I guess that includes Mr Buffet.

However, that's not the point. He's not saying "I want to personally pay more tax", he's saying "Why are people like me not being required to pay the same percentage tax as middle-income earners"?

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#255

Post by vacri »

forkandwait wrote: post #186
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.

I keep trying to formulate my take on this, and failing, but here goes anyway: The democratic party and American leftists no longer understand non-college working people and, for the most part, no longer reach out to them. Working people think that the left today advocates either for weirdos or for the completely screwed up, and wants everybody to pay for its programs to help said weirdos and fuckups. There is some v…

I'm not sure what you're on about, because there's no party representing the left either. The US Democrats are a fair way to the right of the conservative party here in Australia, yet in my discussions with americans there are a great many people who would be considered left-wing here in Aus. There appears to be no choice for the left in the US, so how "the left better understanding the working class" would change things, I'm not sure.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#256

Post by JabavuAdams »

gaius wrote: post #238
cromulent wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. He's not trying to "make a donation", he's saying that everyone should share the burden - including himself and people like him. It's not just that the rich kids should pay for the park, it's that everyone but the rich kids are being asked to pay some extra.

Does Mr Buffett employ an accountant to do his taxes? Does said accountant employ any tax avoidance strategies?

That's not the least bit relevant. It's almost a category error.

Buffet's talking about setting the rules of the game, not about optimizing within the rules that have been set.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#257

Post by kahawe »

makecheck wrote: post #80
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…

Ask yourself how much you need to make in order to live comfortably, and feel "rich enough". Maybe $100,000/year would do it in most parts of the country? And probably a lot less. Now suppose you had a million dollars (and just a million, ignoring these billionaires for the moment). That mean you could risk, without really blinking an eye, $900,000 on any investment; even if you lost every penny, you'd still be left…

What I have always wondered: there has got to be a certain amount of money that by all normal standards HAS to be enough for a human being. If you are so rich, you can only have so many houses and cars and all sorts of other toys that you don't even need half of... then you want to leave something for your kids and their kids and generations to come, your relatives and family but still, that is considerably little. A few million go a LOOONG way.

So, after all the toys, investments and securing your offsprings, you are still left with a HUGE amount of money and assets which you will likely never make any use of anyway.

I know this goes against our ideals and system of capitalism but: if such a limit exists why not cut billionaires off above it and give the exceeding money directly to the government or charity?

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#258

Post by antidaily »

yyyyyyy5 wrote: post #223
wpietri wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is getting absurd. Poor people in America aren't as poor as you think. I absolutely hate it when people like you generalize how poor people live. Reading a blog post does not make you an expert on the poor or the bottom 1%. Try living it, like my family has. None of us are starving (a lot of us are fat in fact), and we all have smart phones and game consoles.

Obesity is directly related to being poor in the US. Its cheaper to buy off the Dollar menu than fresh produce, etc. etc.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#259

Post by Andrew_Quentin »

rdtsc wrote: post #54
dantheman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only do that because it pays off. If the government was more decentralized and controlled significantly less dollars the incentives wouldn't be there and it wouldn't happen. It's a structural problem that happens in any system. Where power is concentrated it becomes beneficial to influence it - the more concentrated the more that can be spent.

I bet it wouldn't phase them a bit. They would create a watchdog professional organization (see US Chamber of Commerce) that makes sure local elections and appointments are influenced just as effectively as federal ones. This already happens in judge elections in many states. Certain "business-friendly" candidates are showered in campaign money, with the expectations that when certain cases are appealed those judges…

I really do not understand why people in America elect judges. I find it perplexing. It is like electing a scientist, or a novel writer. Just weird.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#260

Post by arethuza »

maxxxxx wrote: post #248
gftrhfg wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countrie…

That's interesting. From my subjective observations while traveling in Louisiana and in Switzerland I'd say people in Switzerland are living much better. Where does all that GDP go?

I think that just goes to show how silly making comparisons based on a few isolated numbers can be.
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