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

151–160 of 354 posts

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#151

Post by henryprecheur »

drblast wrote: post #36
netmau5 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point exactly. It's easy to consider who's paying what taxes and thinking about if that's fair, but the right question to ask is, "Is this a worthwhile investment?" Who pays what in taxes is really a diversion.

> Who pays what in taxes is really a diversion.

The "who" is actually pretty important.

Tax the working man more, and you'll discourage working. Tax the rich, and he might move to another country.

There are many ways to raise money for the state, and none is really "fair". There will always somebody who'll be screwed in some way.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#152

Post by orangecat »

bandushrew wrote: post #65
andrewflnr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, does it require more than 30%?

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.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#153

Post by bluedanieru »

redthrowaway wrote: post #142
ginsweater wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that - even when we're talking Warren Buffett here, the scale of the US govt is totally different. Buffett's entire fortune ($50B according to Wikipedia) would only cover a few weeks' worth of borrowing and then we're right back where we started only Warren Buffett has no more fortune. It's silly to say we should expect him to do that. What he's saying by advocating tax raises is "I will pay more if I k…

>What he's saying by advocating tax raises is "I will pay more if I know that everyone else will also pay more." No he isn't. He's saying precisely the opposite: "I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax...But for those making more than $1 million...I would raise rates immediately on taxable income…

Don't be obtuse, the parent (and Warren Buffet) clearly meant others in his income bracket.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#154

Post by bluedanieru »

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…

The US government is apparently better at spending money on health care than private industry, if Medicaid and Medicare are anything to go by.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#155

Post by dget »

ck2 wrote: post #46
breck wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. -Ulysses S. Grant Peo…

I've come to the conclusion that the logic becomes "well if I can't have it, no-one will". People basically trying to take away assistance/help to others by trying to vote it away from everyone, since they somehow perceive themselves as better than others suffering on the lower rungs on society. This also explains why people try to vote away unions and benefits for teachers/schools, the very foundation of society, wh…

I think your last sentence is painfully false. I don't think most people are OK with CEOs dodging taxes. I also don't think they have the slightest clue (I sure don't..) of what to do with it. These things are decided in the details (capital gains vs income in this case) that I think can very easily fly past most people. Then it comes down to rhetoric/politics, and no one ends up winning once it's at that point.

I also don't think that people are trying to vote away unions and benefits for teachers/schools, but unions/benefits for crappy teachers/schools. It's incredibly difficult for schools to get rid of bad teachers, and a decent number of people come into contact with it. This doesn't do anything for the other side of the equation — getting less bad teachers, but again, I don't think spite is the reason people vote against teachers unions.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#156

Post by monkeypizza »

systemtrigger wrote: post #137
dmayle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Check your math. $16.9 billion * (29.2% - 21.5%) = $1.30 billion. As to the additional revenues Buffett wants from the 236,883 richest households, if we assume the average of those households had taxable income of $5 million and if we raise their rates by 10% we get $118 billion.

No, he is talking about restoring the 1992 rate onto the 2008 income, which was 90.9 billion NOT your 16.9 billion. So the increase would be about 7 billion.

from the article: >In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#157

Post by orblivion »

ginsweater wrote: post #73
geebee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that gifts to charity aren't coercive. I know, it's strange to say that it's a problem if it isn't coercive, and I'd agree that many of the inefficiencies of government stem from the coercive nature of taxes (no need to convince people to give you money if you can just take it by force). But I'm really a moderate in all of this - I personally don't think a modern state can survive on donations, or a "p…

It's not just that - even when we're talking Warren Buffett here, the scale of the US govt is totally different. Buffett's entire fortune ($50B according to Wikipedia) would only cover a few weeks' worth of borrowing and then we're right back where we started only Warren Buffett has no more fortune. It's silly to say we should expect him to do that. What he's saying by advocating tax raises is "I will pay more if I k…

Why not? It's not like it's all or nothing. The taxes paid by the others today will be at least somewhat useful to the federal government before the billionaires pay their "fair share". If Buffet pitches in, it's just that much better for the federal government, and an example to set for his friends.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#158

Post by gftrhfg »

dreww wrote: post #138
webXL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

living standards have improved despite the rich getting richer. Citation needed. Please explain how the living standard in the US can have improved if real wages have fallen. Oh wait, the answer is an incredible increase in consumer debt. That seems to be working out. Keep calm and carry on.

"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.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#159

Post by mmorett »

hans00 wrote: post #112
mmorett wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may not even make the poor richer, but you will make the rich poorer. Good. "Unneeded, unspent money" is none of your business. It's not your money.

Right. It's all of our money, because we all share the same society. Sorry, "it's mine, all mine" doesn't cut it outside an Ayn Rand fantasy novel or a Ron Paul forum.

No. Let me repeat that. It's not your money. You are not entitled to someone else's money by virtue of their mere presence in the country.

Want money? Work for it. Save it. Earn it.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#160

Post by bgentry »

reader2000 wrote: post #90
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…

Do you work at FOX News or something?

Unnecessarily inflammatory remark.

Post reply on HN