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

331–340 of 354 posts

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#331

Post by orangecat »

bandushrew wrote: post #215
orangecat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and I agree we need to raise taxes (putting me in a very small minority of libertarians). But as to the question of how much government needs to spend in order to have a functioning society, the clear answer is "much less than it spends today".

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#332

Post by scottjad »

DenisM wrote: post #320
scottjad wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, thank you for your informative response. Without a corporate income tax owners can withdraw the incomes minus dividend taxes. With corporate income tax they can withdraw income minus corporate income tax minus dividend taxes. How can you say they're not the ones paying the tax when the money could go directly in their pockets if not for the tax?

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 employee…

My understanding is that most tax incidence economists believe the corporate income tax is primarily born by shareholders. Sure it's a very complicated issue, but if you pin it on one party then shareholders is the least inaccurate.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#334

Post by dantheman »

jeffreymcmanus wrote: post #314
dantheman wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think you should limit how much time someone can volunteer on a campaign? What about famous people expressing their opinion? These have the same effect as someone donating money. They just favor different groups of people. It's not bribery to try and support someone whose views you agree with, or to have experts available to answer questions on complicated issues. Remember, campaign contributions don't give th…

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.

I'm saying it's not the quid pro quo. I'm saying that generally are multiple sides to an issue, and people want to represent their side. A corporation would just fund the person who represents the views that are most inline with theirs. Corporations would tell the candidate what they feel is important, and then when he espouses the views the candidate receives anonymous donations.

And by corporation I don't just mean GE etc, I'm thinking of any group of people who have a shared ideology and are working to influence policy.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#335

Post by learc83 »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #268
learc83 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the amount of time the average American has to work in order to by food. It's much less than it used to be. The only reason it feels like we have less money is because we have more stuff to spend it on.

Look at how long the average American has to work to pay for the housing that is considered socially acceptable.

That just proves my point. Once again, we feel poor because we have so much more stuff to spend money on. Houses in America today are HUGE compared to what was acceptable in the past. A nice house today would have been considered outrageously opulent 40 years ago.

This was also primarily caused by a housing bubble. A bubble that was created in part because of government intervention causing increased demand for houses (mortgage interest deduction, low interest rates).

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#336

Post by dbingham »

jterce wrote: post #325
cromulent wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Do you realize that the "same percentage tax as middle-income earners" would be LOWER than what they currently pay? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States...

Only if you take into account the marginal rates and ignore the many, many breaks and loopholes.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#337

Post by cpeterso »

jterce wrote: post #325
cromulent wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Do you realize that the "same percentage tax as middle-income earners" would be LOWER than what they currently pay? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States...

Buffet is not talking about income tax. He's talking about capital gains taxes, since most wealthy people are making money from investments, not paychecks.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#338

Post by j_baker »

tapp wrote: post #96
j_baker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Our deficit is $14.6 trillion. Just in the interest of precision: it's actually our national debt which is approximately 14.6 trillion. Our deficit this year will be closer to 1.5T. http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12039 Not that they aren't both mind-boggling numbers

I was thinking about the cumulative 10-year deficit. I swear I've heard the number $14.6 trillion somewhere, but maybe I'm thinking of the debt. At any rate, I wasn't that far off. From the link you gave:

By 2021, the budget deficit would be about double the baseline projection, and with cumulative deficits totaling nearly $12 trillion over the 2012–2021 period, debt held by the public would reach 97 percent of GDP, the highest level since 1946.

Adding in this year's deficit, it comes out to $13.5 trillion.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#339

Post by bandushrew »

orangecat wrote: post #331
bandushrew wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, and I agree we need to raise taxes (putting me in a very small minority of libertarians). But as to the question of how much government needs to spend in order to have a functioning society, the clear answer is "much less than it spends today".

I suspect that hinges greatly on your definition of a functioning society.

To be honest I am not following your points at all well.

Re: Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

#340

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #219
JVirissimo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN