So Easy Even A Billionaire Can Do It
By Amit Singh | Monday, August 15th, 2011 | PoliticsWarren Buffett’s statement today requesting to be taxed more will be repeated over and over again by anyone trying to justify why we need to raise taxes. While it took Mr. Buffett only 80 years to come to this epiphany, somehow it has escaped him that he does not need Congress to tax him more to get his money. Warren can simply donate online whatever extra he wants to gives via Pay.gov to pay down the debt or several other options. Perhaps if he actually donated a few extra million a year for a few years in a row, I would have more respect for his statements. Personally I much rather have billionaires such as himself follow the lead of Bill and Melinda Gates and use their business acumen to start philanthropic organizations that are efficiently run and focus on delivering results. I greatly admire Warren Buffett for donating most of his wealth to the Gates Foundation and find it odd that he thinks the U.S. government can use his money more effectively.
Perhaps Buffett is thinking about his legacy but I will remember him for funny Geico commercials.
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4 Responses to "So Easy Even A Billionaire Can Do It"
Didn’t we hear this crew last year? Is this the new rant? Buffet, tax me more and Gates, Death Panels, maybe these guys ought to give their money up, it’s going to their heads.
I thought this was funny when I heard it. It would be almost comical if our country wasn’t in so much trouble.
Amit,
Nowhere did Buffet say where the US Government can use his money more effectively.
What he did say was he doesn’t see the current Federal Tax schedule as just or equitable.
“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.”
How can you, or anyone, justify that fact?
“Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. 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.”
Hell, if we had a flat tax he’d be paying a higher rate that that. He’d at least be pay the same as those making much, much less than he is.
And if you’d like the link to his op-ed piece in the NY Times here you go, I think you’ve got your first link mixed up: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=warren+buffet&st=cse
Either Tor’s logic is weird or Warren Buffett’s is. ToR contends that Buffett did Not imply that the Government could make more effective use of his money. But Buffett did say that he was paying too low a rate which means that he thinks the government Should get more money from him. So ToR thinks that Buffett wants to pay more to the government even though they will make poorer use of it. Buffett of course could have written a check for the difference but he didn’t. However this has nothing to do with the income tax rate since that is far higher than what Buffett pays. So we are talking about capital gains and loopholes. The capital gains rate was lowered by Bill Clinton something that ToR won’t mention. Loopholes are a specialty of Dem legislators with an assist from Repubs. ToR does not want to say who put in the corporate jet deduction either. After all this rant ToR ends up by saying that a flat tax would be better. This would be Less progressive than the current system and is Not approved by Obama or Media Matters or DailyKos. I hope ToR doesn’t get in trouble.
Let me offer an alternative theory. Warren Buffett is a longtime Dem. He can bend the tax system any way he wants to no matter what the rate is. But he wants protection from the media and the Dems. So he makes statements to the media that Dems (including Tor) find pleasing without having the least inclination to follow through on any of it. And he knows that Dems will never bother him.
Warren Buffett does not really want to pay taxes, but he wants the rest of
us to. Even if this game ends up costing him a little more, he sees this as
a net gain as everyone else will paying a much larger share of those things
he wants the government to do. He knows that by increasing his tax rate
that everyone else’s tax rate will go up also and result in the Govt
receiving more money for those things he would like to see done.
Some may want a talent such as Buffett to be in charge of the tax money, but
that would be misguided. Buffett is good only with his money and the money
he invest as part of his job. For the most part, this talent is checked at
the door when presented the chance to spend taxpayer money. Once you pay
any kind of money into Govt coffers, you can kiss it and be assured that it
will never be as efficiently used as you would use it. Some people wastes
their money, but it gets wasted the way they want to waste it. In Govt,
they take waste to a whole new level and if Buffett were ever part of the
U.S. Govt, I am certain he would be on the spend end of the tax and spend
process. The same can be said of everyone, even our favorite conservatives.
This applies anytime they have our money. The only way to avoid it is to
reduce their access to our money. The less money they have, the better they
will use it. The more money they have, the more they will waste.
Buffett is old and he will soon be dead and we will not have to worry about
him anymore. We can be sure there is no miracle fountain of youth drug or
due Buffett would be on it right now, instead of being just an old leftist
who wants to decide where his money goes and wants the rest of us to be
taxed in order to finance his vision of how he thinks things ought to be.
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