Warren Buffett: I 'Should Be Paying A Lot More In Taxes'

[phenomena]

Ricter is an aging delusional ex prison guard. He did too many drugs when he was a hippy, back when marxist clap trap was en vogue. His brain was so fried from doing drugs when he was a hippy that he confused this clap trap which was used to bed dirty, slutty hippy women for actual solid logic. Now, decades later, having seen that every nation which undertook to make such ideas into policy has miserably failed, and usually killed millions of their own people through starvation, disease, or political purging, his fried alcoholic/drug ravaged brain still thinks of the "good old days" and clings to these stupid, dated ideologies... Don't worry about him, he's pretty harmless. Good for entertainment and insight into deranged marxist thinking.

 

[rew]

I am all in favor of a law taxing the income of Warren Buffet, George Soros, and every other billionaire in favor of Obama at 90%. Leave the rest of us out of it.

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from Ricter:

I believe I read that Buffet and a few other billionaires recently gave billions to charity. Anyone but government is a better recipient, right?

Anyway, he's correct. When the rich finally got on board in the late 30's, they helped to pull the US out of its mess. Taxes remained high on the top earners for decades after that, and coupled with redistributive policies largely driven by unions, the middle class exploded and grew to an unprecedented size, making the US the mightiest productive engine the globe had ever seen.

Your objections are merely ideological, you will not be affected by higher taxes on the top earners, because if you were a top earner you would not be here.

The middle class exploded because we bombed the f*ck out of Germany and Japan.

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from tomdavis:

1. The US did not prosper in the 1950s-1960s because of high taxes, but rather because of the aftermath of WWII. The period of 1945-1965 established the US as the leading manufacturing country in the world, not because of our manufacturing prowess, but rather because of our military might. At the end of WWII, the US had 5% of the world's population and almost 70% of the world's intact manufacturing and transportation infrastructure because most of Europe and Asia had been bombed to ashes during the war. For about 20 years, the US had the highest manufacturing price/wage structure in the world, from which the American middle class benefited greatly. By the mid-1960s, the rest of the world had rebuilt and the US had to actually compete against countries like Japan and Germany. Our market dominance began to erode in the 1970s, and the erosion increased in velocity during the 1980-90s as India and China entered the world markets. When hundreds of millions of people enter the global manufacturing workforce and are willing to work for fifty cents an hour, wages are going to fall, manufacturing is going migrate, and there's nothing anybody can do to stop it. It's inevitable that the economies of China and India will overtake the US because China's population is 4X the US and India is 3X. It's simple math, the economic forces of gravity in action.

2. Though once there were "published" tax rates of 70-91%, very few ever paid taxes at those rates. Back then, there was something called "leveraged non-recourse tax shelters" that wealthy people used to eliminate as much as two-thirds of their tax burden. In addition, most very wealthy individuals kept a large percentage of their wealth offshore (e.g. Switzerland) where it was hidden from the IRS. A study by the IRS in 2003 showed that the richest people in the country paid about 23% of their income in federal taxes during those high tax rate periods (1950s-1960s). In the 1960s, Kennedy lowered tax rates; then Reagan further lowered the rates and also eliminated most tax shelters. In recent years, the tax benefits of offshore banking have been all but been eliminated.

3. People often argue about taxing the rich, but they seldom want to define what rich means. Everyone agrees that Warren Buffet is rich, but is a small-business owner who makes $500k per year really rich? I'm amused by the number of people who claim that the high tax rates of the 1950s kicked in at $200k per year, and therefore $200k per year defines rich. They don't stop to consider that $200k in 1955 is the equivalent of about $3 million in today's dollars. (Back in the 1950s you could buy a house in Beverly Hills for $80k or a new Cadillac for $3k.) So the question remains: What does "rich" mean?

Sorry I posted before I saw that you adequately dealt with the topic. I swear to God Tom, for years I've been on this board trying to get people to understand the source of our prosperity. Liberals want to believe it was the "New Deal" and the "Great Society" and the empowering of the labor unions when it reality it was our military might. Quite ironic that the left attacks the military so much when it was that same military that the left used in the 1940's and 1950's to give them their prosperity.

 

[Mercor]

Warren Buffett represents big business, in fact he is big business. He knows deficit spending hurts big business. He also knows Government spending helps big business. Therefore Big business perfers higher taxes.
Buffett is the grand lobbyist for big business.
Why do Liberals think he represents anything but big business.

 

[Ricter]

All that about the US success after WWII, because our manufacturing was intact and the rest of the world needed our products is true, but misses my point. Those conditions could have allowed a two-tiered slave or fascist state to prosper, for a few, as well. Our middle class grew because it was encouraged to grow, and it was taxes and redistribution via a social contract written together by unions, business, and government that made it happen. This is not to say that entrepreneurship, the freedom to start and own a business did not play a part, it did. But entrepreneurs of the time succeeded despite the high taxes.

Now that the world no longer needs our production (as much), a process in the "making" for 30 years, the promises made, eg. pensions, and the social contract, are largely gone.

 

[phenomena]

Fascism is pretty "progressive" economically speaking. Fascism advocates for progressive tax structures, lots of benefits/reductions for families/children. Economic protectionism, housing for single mothers, large families, etc.

It's mostly just a nationalistic version of socialism, with the top tax brackets being a bit lower typically...

And yes, pensions are largely gone because they have bankrupted the companies who were strong armed into offering them by the mafia let unions. Then of course the big companies learned how to buy out the growing government in order to survive. Now they whole is falling apart.

Quote from Ricter:

All that about the US success after WWII, because our manufacturing was intact and the rest of the world needed our products is true, but misses my point. Those conditions could have allowed a two-tiered slave or fascist state to prosper, for a few, as well. Our middle class grew because it was encouraged to grow, and it was taxes and redistribution via a social contract written together by unions, business, and government that made it happen. This is not to say that entrepreneurship, the freedom to start and own a business did not play a part, it did. But entrepreneurs of the time succeeded despite the high taxes.

Now that the world no longer needs our production (as much), a process in the "making" for 30 years, the promises made, eg. pensions, and the social contract, are largely gone.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Quote from Ricter:

I believe I read that Buffet and a few other billionaires recently gave billions to charity. Anyone but government is a better recipient, right?

Anyway, he's correct. When the rich finally got on board in the late 30's, they helped to pull the US out of its mess. Taxes remained high on the top earners for decades after that, and coupled with redistributive policies largely driven by unions, the middle class exploded and grew to an unprecedented size, making the US the mightiest productive engine the globe had ever seen.

Your objections are merely ideological, you will not be affected by higher taxes on the top earners, because if you were a top earner you would not be here.

the fact that the rich should give more is not a given. however, i object to the raising of taxes until the government gets its spending in order. the solution is not raising taxes WITHOUT responsible spending. otherwise you just get california.

 

[FightTheFuture]

Buffett should have been paying 90% rate right from the start decades ago.

He would now be known as Warren Who?, the common thousandaire screeching for lower taxes, for his grandchildren that he disowned.

 

[tomdavis]

You keep insisting that rich people paid high taxes. They did not. Let me repeat what I said in my previous post. Rich people in the 1950s-1960s paid about 23% of their income in federal taxes due to the utilization of tax shelters (leveraged non-recourse) and offshore banking. The very wealthiest people in the country (eg, Rockefellers) kept large portions of their wealth out of the country and away from the IRS. There never were high "effective" taxes for rich people in this country, only high "published" tax rates.

Also, do some research on per capita government spending on federal social programs and education in the 1950's and 1960s. Adjusted for inflation, it was 50% LESS back then than it is now. There is more government redistribution of wealth today than there was back then. In the 1950s-1960s the largest part of the budget was spent on fighting the Korean War, Vietnam War and a massively expensive Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Unions did improve standards of living for the middle class in the 1950s-1960s, but that was because the US was a virtual manufacturing monopolist for 20 years after WWII. Large manufacturers could not easily move to a low-cost location back then, so they gave the unions high wages in exchange for not striking. The manufacturers then passed those higher wage costs along to their customers in the form of higher prices. That's impossible in today's competitive global manufactruing environment.

Quote from Ricter:

All that about the US success after WWII, because our manufacturing was intact and the rest of the world needed our products is true, but misses my point. Those conditions could have allowed a two-tiered slave or fascist state to prosper, for a few, as well. Our middle class grew because it was encouraged to grow, and it was taxes and redistribution via a social contract written together by unions, business, and government that made it happen. This is not to say that entrepreneurship, the freedom to start and own a business did not play a part, it did. But entrepreneurs of the time succeeded despite the high taxes.

Now that the world no longer needs our production (as much), a process in the "making" for 30 years, the promises made, eg. pensions, and the social contract, are largely gone.