Warren Buffett: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

[Texanmike]

Now if somebody who wasn't superrich pointed out the REALITY of taxes, they'd be accused of CLASS ENVY.

But as Warren is among the richest of the rich who is telling it like it REALLY IS, well....the apologists for the Bankster class cannot accuse of him class envy or being a socialist or a communist, so they fire their only ad hominen shot.

He is a (gasp!) liberal!

No he's not.

He's a nationalist who worrys about what is happening to this nation.

Unlike his so-called conservative detractors who clearly don't give a flying fork what happens to this nation.

You're right. He's a nationalist. He should go to a country that has a national government. I am so sick of uneducated statements about our government and the system we have. If he wants to pay more, pay more. Hell, get his buddies to pay more; I'm ok with that.

Or is this the same position that the left and right get along on. That people are uncapable of doing the right thing unless forced to do it. Is that the issue here?

Mike

 

[martybegan]

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

MORE: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/o...h.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&seid=auto

Note that he states the 17% he paid as his "federal tax bill" but when he quoted the others in his office he used the term "tax burden" Is he including stuff in thier percentage but not his?

And adding FICA is a cheap way of boosting thier perecent and lowering his as FICA is capped at $106k.

 

[tinydancer]

He has..

Op-Ed Contributor - Warren Buffett - Buy American. I Am. - NYTimes.com

He flooded the market with his own money to add liquidity when the markets were in panic.

It staggered to the decline.

LOL>

He squeezed Goldman Sachs by the schnutz

It's to bad Goldman went the way of Lehman..

Oh wait.

Didn't Geithner turn down Lehman Bros?

 

[Lakhota]

Buffett is right.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Buffett has almost all of his assets in a trust that can't be taxed. LOL What a Limousine Liberal!

Taxes for thee, but not for me!

Some animals are more equal that others

The very fact that there is someone as obscenely rich as Warren Buffett is a testament to the success of Conservative Corporatism and a Failure of Liberal American Capitalism.

Buffett picked stocks and he picked them better than anybody ever did.