Buffet: Stop coddling the super-rich

reply to post by Aeons


A lot of this rich vs. poor business is nonsense, false and done to support political ideology, not sound economic policy.

There are two guys:

Joe has $100 million dollars and makes $1 million dollars a year off of investment income

Steve has $100 dollars and makes $1 dollar a year from working at a store

Over a 5 year period, Joe doubles his wealth, Steve's wealth remains the same.

Now Joe has $200 million and makes $2 million/year

Now Steve still has $100 dollars and makes $1 dollar a year

Joe certainly got richer, but did Steve get poorer?

Assume that inflation has remained constant throughout, hence both Steve and Joe's purchasing power has remained constant.

How has Steve gotten poorer? Of course he hasn't. He's exactly where he was. The fact that Joe got richer is what the problem is with folks.

This entire rich got richer and poor got poorer is class warfare trash.

reply to post by Rockdisjoint


higher taxes also destroy market cap which makes it easier to go around and buy up other companies they also destroy dividend yield because that cost is passed off to the share holders.

and dont even get me started on one of the great legal ripoffs called insurance.

meh.

reply to post by David9176


Nice avatar David!

Amazing that tax breaks for the mega rich are even considered to be a good thing, people will continue to argue, "if you raise the taxes of the super rich, they wont be able to hire new people, or expand their business..." blah blah blah

I feel sorry for the mega rich, what a raw deal they have.

reply to post by sicksonezer0


What's a "tax break"? That the government gets a dime from anyone is a break for the government. It is after all not their money to begin with.

If a person is taxed at x percent and the tax rates go to x-y percent, how is that a tax "break" how is someone who is giving less of his own wealth to the government getting a break? A "break" from what?

If that is a tax break, what do you call it when that person's taxes go from x percent to x + y? Is that a tax penalty? Is it "appropriate confiscation"? Is it "fair"? If its "fair" what makes it fair?

I would love it if liberals were at least honest.

"we don't like the fact that the rich are so much richer than the average person so we're going to take more of their money from them and give it to folks who don't have as much money" OK! I understand that. The language is clear and its honest.

I just don't understand this "break" and "fair share" nonsense

instead of asking to pay more taxes( which i dont think is a bad thing)why doesnt he set up a charitable organization that funds deserving people who need money to start small business. there are plenty of smart people out there who just cant get the funding up to do that. or start an organization that teaches people to be self reliant or at least create a scholarship for smart underprivileged kids.

that or do what all the other mega rich people do and lobby. he can lobby to increase taxes for the rich. yeah right

reply to post by dolphinfan

You couldn't be more mistaken, sir. Here's why:

As people accumulate wealth, this wealth is invested as capital. Now, it is true that some capital goes to pay wages, but for the most part, these days, capital goes into rarified financial games involving derivatives, CDOs, bonds, FOREX, speculation in raw materials...that's where the action is. Not in paying out wages. As outsourcing continnues, wealth in the form of wages to middle-class and working-class workers is diverted into capital markets, where it can earn more in the arcane speculation that passes for high finance these days. This is the true, hidden story of inequality -- it is a zero sum game after all, and the accumulation of wealth as capital for the wealthy comes at the expense of wages for the vast majority.

reply to post by Never Despise


I'm not wrong, its simple math, something that statists have difficulty with. Statists have difficulty with math because it is void of emotion and liberal policy, particularily economic policy is all about emotion. How about this:

I have two cups, both sitting under faucets, both are 1/10th full of water. One of the faucets has a slow drip the other works properly

Over a period of time the cup under the leaky faucet has a lot more water in it that it did and a lot more than the other cup. Does the cup under the working faucet somehow have less water in it? Sure, it has less comparatively speaking, but that is not the liberal argument with respect to fiscal policy. Its not that "the rich get richer and the poor stay the same" its "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".

The core issue is the distribution of wealth, not in the vehicle of wealth creation. Derivatives, CDOs, short selling, overlay strategies and the like don't make people who don't invest in them poorer. It is like saying that books that someone does not read makes them more ignorant.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Your metaphor is flawed because the water in your metaphor flows from outside the system (the faucet). In reality, while not a zero-sum game exactly, the creation of wealth and prosperity is closer to a system in which water that goes into one cup must be taken from the other. More specifically, capital used for speculation is capital that must be diverted from other uses, including wage payouts that allow consumers to both live and drive the economy.

This is when you know the wheels are coming off the wagon.

An attempt to go on record about doing 'the right thing' to be wheeled out to placate the mob with the pitchforks and torches.

3 decades too late. Its the economic equivalent of a Deathbed Conversion and just as tacky.

reply to post by David9176
The problem is that with the current bunch of idiots in D.C., if they received an additional 1 trillion due to taxing the super wealthy, they would just spend an additional 1 trillion dollars.
So it would be pointless except for making the class-warfare people happy.

Originally posted by dolphinfan
reply to post by Aeons

 

A lot of this rich vs. poor business is nonsense, false and done to support political ideology, not sound economic policy.

There are two guys:

Joe has $100 million dollars and makes $1 million dollars a year off of investment income

Steve has $100 dollars and makes $1 dollar a year from working at a store

Over a 5 year period, Joe doubles his wealth, Steve's wealth remains the same.

Now Joe has $200 million and makes $2 million/year

Now Steve still has $100 dollars and makes $1 dollar a year

Joe certainly got richer, but did Steve get poorer?

Assume that inflation has remained constant throughout, hence both Steve and Joe's purchasing power has remained constant.

How has Steve gotten poorer? Of course he hasn't. He's exactly where he was. The fact that Joe got richer is what the problem is with folks.

This entire rich got richer and poor got poorer is class warfare trash.

Yes your BS theory works in the inmaginary world in your head. Unfortunately, in the real world, Joe uses his money to pay lobbyists to form favorable legislation for him, and pays the media to form favorable opinion of him, then uses these people under his thumb to say that Steve should pay more in taxes, while Joe himself should pay less. And people like you help people like Joe help keep the poor poor. And thats how it works in the real world....reality, you may want to interface with it.

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by David9176

 

The problem is that with the current bunch of idiots in D.C., if they received an additional 1 trillion due to taxing the super wealthy, they would just spend an additional 1 trillion dollars.
So it would be pointless except for making the class-warfare people happy.

Yes, and they would spend 9/10s of that trillion on war machines, and people like you would be bitching about the 1/10 that went to actually help their own countrymen.

reply to post by Never Despise


That is illogical. You make the assumption that the only capital in the economy goes to wages and individuals as well as that capital is constrained within national boundries.

Were for example the defense budget to be halved which would be roughly $400bn/year depending on how its calculated and that money to flow back into the economy and the tax burden to the rich was by reduced that amount, how do the poor get poorer? If US businesses explode with international sales and associated revenue and as a consequence market capitalization grows significantly and those who hold stocks get significantly richer, how do the poor get poorer?

They don't. You are playing the typical liberal zero sum game, needing to reduce the gap between the rich and poor. As I have said before, thats fine and a reasonable policy if that is your belief. It is not an economic policy it is a social welfare policy and the way it is described by liberals in the context of tax breaks and "paying their fair share" is disengenuous.

Why is it that liberals can not simply be honest about their beliefs regarding tax policy and the purpose they feel that it serves? Why can't a liberal simply come out and say "look, we have folks who, for what ever reason are unable to attain success in our society. There are folks who, for different reasons are very successful. We're not going to make generalizations about the two groups. We're going to take property from the wealthy and give it to the unsuccessful and we're going to distribute the property of the wealthy to the poor through various government programs. We do this because we think its the right thing to do"

By your logic, when ever someone won the lottery or hit it big in Vegas, the poor would get poorer.

reply to post by aching_knuckles


You can go into what the rich do with their money and how you may feel that their actions pervert the free market. Despite their actions, they do not make the poor poorer.

What they are doing is spreading their money around. Hiring lobbiests, media firms, pr firms, lawyers, hence those folks are getting richer. What they do does not take money away from the dude working at the 7-11.

Now you might find that the policies the rich engage in harmful to society and in some ways I would agree with you. That being the case there are legal and legislative remedies to correct those percieved problems.

One thing to think about...even the "super rich" depend on a certain level of social stability for their wealth to be preserved. If the very fabric of society collapses, their investments are worthless, their holdings impossible to hold amid chaos, and so on. Who will be there at the Peninsula Bar to pour the perfect bloody mary? The uber-wealthy may have access to bunkers but that doesn't mean they want to live in them if they don't have to. However, historically very few elites have realized the value of social capital until it was too late. See fr example the French and Russian revolutions...

reply to post by silent thunder


While the connection between the French and Russian revolutions is interesting, they are not germane to the current day. Capital markets are global in nature and there are thousands of investment vehicles that did not exist at the time. All wealth was essentially held in property and commodities, where that is a tiny fraction of what the rich own today.

There was really no such thing as an investment strategy at the time, not in the modern context and wealthy people will execute strategies to maximize returns during an implosion or simply pull their money out and take off. There are many places in the world where citizenship can be purchased, even more where permenant resident status can be obtained where the rich are valued and treated as valued members of the society. Many of these are nations who thumb their nose at wealth repatriation schemes pushed by the US government. There are more people renouncing their US citizenship now than at anytime in the nations history. Its not poor folks who are leaving.

If it hits the fan here, the rich will be gone and they will take their assets and wealth with them.

Originally posted by sicksonezer0
reply to post by David9176

 

Nice avatar David!

Amazing that tax breaks for the mega rich are even considered to be a good thing, people will continue to argue, "if you raise the taxes of the super rich, they wont be able to hire new people, or expand their business..." blah blah blah

I feel sorry for the mega rich, what a raw deal they have.

edit on 15-8-2011 by sicksonezer0 because: (no reason given)

What if i posted an avatar just like that of Michelle Obama?
------------
I'm guessing the CEO of ATS would demand it removed immediately.
I wonder what the moderators think?

reply to post by Eurisko2012


I think that perhaps the avatar (and there is a similar one out there with Perry) is forecasting that any republican will eat Obama for lunch in November 2012.

It is getting comical that absent the ability to make a thoughtful defense of both the effectiveness of the Obama policies or his leadership that his supporters are now resorting to ridicule and offensive pictures.

Its going to be nothing but Hail Mary passes until the election. Sad, actually. Childish and sad

So, the super rich, whom we can't tax due to the job creation trickle down myth in this country, are busy laying off Americans and exporting jobs to places like China. The same ones requiring their current employees to take on an ever increasing workload instead of hiring.

The reality is that even if we eliminated all taxes for the wealthiest Americans, there would not be an increase in employment. Without demand for jobs or services, there is no incentive to hire or invest. What would be the point of creating a company with no customers or hiring employees with no work to do.

Now there is some truth to taxes affecting employment, but that tends to be by middle class small business owners whom have tight budgets. People that might like to hire, but simply don't have the money to do so.

Originally posted by Gannicus
Why doesnt Buffet set an example and send a 5 million dollar check to Washington?

newsbusters.org...

PAT BUCHANAN: No, I’m writing a note to Warren Buffett. But look, I’m a little fed up with these people who come on, you know, their big op-eds, all these admonitions. Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion. You know, you had a plan up there, I talked to Howie Carr at Boston where the super-rich could contribute an extra amount. It was something like one-tenth of one percent did it. You get all this noise from these big rich folks. Let them send checks and set an example instead of writing op-eds.

If Buffett cuts a check to the government today, what will it be spent on?
---------------
Will it get us out of this economic mess?
Warren Buffett should do something constructive and tell Obama to remove
the wet blanket that he has wrapped around free market capitalism.