Someone needs to get this over to Barack Hussein ASAP...
Given that long, well-publicized history, there isn't much news to be found in Buffett's latest Times op-ed this morning, calling once again for a minimum tax on millionaires. Except that Buffett opens this one with a rifle shot at Grover Norquist specifically, and supply-side economics generally:
Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. This is a good one, he says enthusiastically. Im in it, and I think you should be, too.
Would your reply possibly be this? Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain youre saying were going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent. Only in Grover Norquists imagination does such a response exist.
It's a catchy opener, attracting headlines and guffaws from the expected quarters. But I'm struck by his opener because I can think of at least one real-world example in which a rich investor nearly spiked a deal due to taxes: Warren Buffett himself, as recounted in Alice Schroeder's terrific biography, The Snowball (pages 230-232).
Early in his career, Buffett invested heavilyalmost one third of his early fund's capitalin Sanborn Map, a company that mapped utility lines and such. But he soon grew frustrated with the company's leadership, which "operated more like a club than a business," and which refused to return greater dividends to investors. So Buffett amassed more and more stock, and with control of the company finally in hand he pressed the board of directors to split the company in two (one for the mapping business, and one to hold the company's other outsized investments).
Finally, the board capitulated. But with victory finally at hand, Buffett nearly scuttled the deal because of ... taxes. As Schroeder recounts, quoting Buffett, one director proposed that the company just cleanly break the company, despite the tax consequences"let's just swallow the tax," he suggested.
To which Buffett replied (as he recounted to Schroeder):
And I said, 'Wait a minute. Let's -- "Let's" is a contraction. It means "let us." But who is this us? If everyone around the table wants to do it per capita, that's fine, but if you want to do it in a ratio of shares owned, and you get ten shares' worth of tax and I get twenty-four thousand shares' worth, forget it.'
Buffett was willing to walk away from a deal because the taxes would have taken too much of a bite out of it. Fortunately for him, the board gave in and allowed him to structure the deal that he liked, saving him from his own Norquistian response.
Hypocrisy... it is the cornerstone of the idiot liberal dumbocrat. As Andrew Wilkow so brilliantly stated: "Buffett wants to pull the ladder up behind him". He's made his billions, now he wants to pull the ladder up so that no one else can climb to the same level he did through business and personal wealth crushing taxes. It ensures his wealth and power for himself and future generations of his family.
Watch What Warren Buffett Does, Not What He Says | The Weekly Standard
Given that long, well-publicized history, there isn't much news to be found in Buffett's latest Times op-ed this morning, calling once again for a minimum tax on millionaires. Except that Buffett opens this one with a rifle shot at Grover Norquist specifically, and supply-side economics generally:
Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. This is a good one, he says enthusiastically. Im in it, and I think you should be, too.
Would your reply possibly be this? Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain youre saying were going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent. Only in Grover Norquists imagination does such a response exist.
It's a catchy opener, attracting headlines and guffaws from the expected quarters. But I'm struck by his opener because I can think of at least one real-world example in which a rich investor nearly spiked a deal due to taxes: Warren Buffett himself, as recounted in Alice Schroeder's terrific biography, The Snowball (pages 230-232).
Early in his career, Buffett invested heavilyalmost one third of his early fund's capitalin Sanborn Map, a company that mapped utility lines and such. But he soon grew frustrated with the company's leadership, which "operated more like a club than a business," and which refused to return greater dividends to investors. So Buffett amassed more and more stock, and with control of the company finally in hand he pressed the board of directors to split the company in two (one for the mapping business, and one to hold the company's other outsized investments).
Finally, the board capitulated. But with victory finally at hand, Buffett nearly scuttled the deal because of ... taxes. As Schroeder recounts, quoting Buffett, one director proposed that the company just cleanly break the company, despite the tax consequences"let's just swallow the tax," he suggested.
To which Buffett replied (as he recounted to Schroeder):
And I said, 'Wait a minute. Let's -- "Let's" is a contraction. It means "let us." But who is this us? If everyone around the table wants to do it per capita, that's fine, but if you want to do it in a ratio of shares owned, and you get ten shares' worth of tax and I get twenty-four thousand shares' worth, forget it.'
Buffett was willing to walk away from a deal because the taxes would have taken too much of a bite out of it. Fortunately for him, the board gave in and allowed him to structure the deal that he liked, saving him from his own Norquistian response.
Hypocrisy... it is the cornerstone of the idiot liberal dumbocrat. As Andrew Wilkow so brilliantly stated: "Buffett wants to pull the ladder up behind him". He's made his billions, now he wants to pull the ladder up so that no one else can climb to the same level he did through business and personal wealth crushing taxes. It ensures his wealth and power for himself and future generations of his family.
Watch What Warren Buffett Does, Not What He Says | The Weekly Standard
