Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

I'll assume you're trolling but the relatively inelastic nature of fix costs like room and board, food, entertainment etc. is part of the reasons for promoting a progressive tax system. Those who have made fortunes here in the us are likely those who have benefited from federal and state oversight and infrastructure, which is an additional justification behind taxing the wealthier members of society at a progressive rate.

For the anecdotal insight on this: paying about 20k a year in federal taxes with my current annual salary is nothing compared to the impact of the 5k or so a year in taxes I paid when I was a poor waiter/college student in terms of its impact on my budget. At this point I could easily pay out an extra 10 or 20k with out severely impacting my quality of life or rate of savings; corollary, a few extra thousand back when I wasn't making all that much money would have been the difference between sleeping on an air mattress versus a real bed, or having enough good (as in nutritionally worth while) food to eat.

You're missing the point. Limiting campaign contributions is not a part of this. The point is to anonymize donations so that there can be no way for the candidate to correlate a contribution to a donor. That way the quid pro quo that is implicit in campaign contributions would go away. Politicians would have to go back to representing voters again.

Ah, the poor little rich minorities. We've simply got to protect them from everything. They "create jobs" or something, after all.

Though, that's actually wrong, too. 98% of small business tax filers earn less than US$250,000 a year, yet account for 64% of the job creation (or "net new jobs") in the last 15 years and employ over half of the working US population [1].

I'm sorry, but the rich are not bothering with a This whole mess is the placation of the rich because they'll "move" if we don't give them everything. The question is, what country would they move to? I mean, I'm sure Singapore is nice and all; but it's hot as hell there, and don't they have Universal Healthcare with government-mandated price controls, which is supposedly every rich man's nightmare according to Fox News?

Russia is nice, too, I suppose. If and only if you're former politburo or an officer, or just a jackbooted mafioso thug (or willing to take any or all of those on without Uncle Sam backing you up).

Hong Kong is part of a communist country that only recently has conveniently added capitalism to their repertoire. If that doesn't work out for them, how soon would they "nationalize" all of that island and it's hard-won successes contained therein?

Of course, others have noted Somalia, Mexico, and various developing countries. Take your pick.

"If you want to set the income tax at 95% of all money made over a million bucks? Have at it. It's not important."

If it's not important, why all the falsities about "taking everything from the rich" and stopping all defense spending and it not mattering? It would matter a shitload, no offense. DoD + discretionary spending (which the military swallows almost all of) is almost 40% of the entire budget.

What's left is Medicare and SS, which in 2000 was well-funded and flush with +2 Trillion in the kitty. The tax breaks of 2001 and 2003 and the wars of roughly the same time erased nearly all that and left IOUs. Now, you're blaming those programs for our downfall.

So, yeah, you're right, it's not about taxes, it's about those "poor people" who "do not even pay an income tax".

[1] http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8420

I'll try to help you out a bit.

Taxation is Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed On.

The phrase was used by Dr. Garrett Hardin in his 1968 essay on global overpopulation, "The Tragedy of the Commons".

Oh, and the example Hardin explicitly cited as an example of mutual coercion? Taxes:

"Who enjoys taxes? We all grumble about them. But we accept compulsory taxes because we recognize that voluntary taxes would favor the conscienceless. We institute and (grumblingly) support taxes and other coercive devices to escape the horror of the commons."

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_...

The "just pay voluntary taxes" has been very, very dead for well over 40 years.

Corporate money belongs to the corporation, not to the shareholders. Corporation is a separate legal entity, it has its own property rights and its own will power. It also has an obligation to heed the interest of all stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, managers, customers, the public etc. Shareholders exert certain level of control over corporation, similar to how the board, the management, the employees and the customers have their own power, and while shareholders can change the board, they don't have any kind of fine-grained control, and even their control over the board might be limited by the corporate charter.

To say that corporate money belongs to the shareholdes is to trivialize a very intricate balance of powers.

Corporate income tax is a tax on corporate income. You can't call it shareholder tax any more than you can call it employee tax (or employment reduction incentive, if you will), or manager bonus tax, or capital re-investment tax. It's all of the above, and then some. It's not just one of the above.