http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIqyCpCPrvU

Hopefully, at least some of Buffet’s 44 billion is providing working capital for companies that employ workers. I.E. the idea that “rich’ people are the creators of jobs. How many peoople does his secretary employ?

Lower rates of taxation have always stimulated economic activity which generated larger tax revenues.

The vast majority of politicans who advocate higher rates of taxation are rich or super-rich socialist idealogues who care nothing for the good of the country or those of us who make this great county “work”. They care only for their obscene greed for power over other people. These people such as Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barrack Obaama are the most practiced of consumate liars who can look you straight in the eye and lie to you even in the face of hard evidence that what they say is a lie. Look at what they do, not at what they say.

These people are worse than liars. They are no better than street punk burglars who will steal you blind and then lie about it when caught red-handed. They began raiding the Social Security “Trust Fund” when their policies of high rates of taxation cut government revenues. Then when a period of economic prosperity resulting from the lower rates of taxation of the Reagan era,(when lower rates of taxation doubled the amount of revenue collected due to economic growth) produced high amounts of revenue into the Social Security system they put the system “on budget” so that they could use those high collections to claim that they had a budget surplus. Without the higher Social Security collections being mingled with the general fund revenues there was no surplus. The federal budget was still in deficit. Lies, lies and more damned lies.

But let me make a correction first – Buffett has been referring to the “Super-Rich”, not your average paper-rich average middle-class joes. He has made his statements very clear on TV, as well as before Congress.

“Income” vs. “investment” is exactly how the rich (and especially the super rich) reaps great benefit, and this is a flaw that Mr. Buffett is keenly aware of and one point he is presciently making. (The man is amazing is seeing what is coming so many years ahead)

I myself intend to exploit that flaw to the fullest, making all my money from “investments” and not from “income”, until that day when Congress realizes that taxing the middle class to death using the “notion of working income” can no longer generate enough revenue. On that day, we will not be debating about this silly point.

Buffett is being Practical, not unrealistically ideological. Get with it, people.

so you see it doesn’t matter what buffet does… it will all eventually end up with the “taxpayers” that got him there in the first place…

remember .. anybody who bought stocks when the dow was 700 in the ’70s is going to look like a genius… IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH..!!

and also please note Birkshire Hathaway.. 40 percent drop from high to low.. just like the rest of the market..

we just appreciate he is doing such a fine job..
only concern is he underpays his staff.. their salarys should be triple the going market..

good job warren… and i am sure you are enjoying plenty of “free” food.. !!

I think you just made an argument that non-cap gains income tax rates (wages, self-employed income, S Corp earnings, interest etc.) should also be lowered to 15% or less. I’d go for that.

The real problem is gov’t spending because it drives taxation. Money is only a medium of exchange and a somewhat unreliable measurement of wealth. So money is not the key, but the total goods produced is a better measurement of wealth creation. And all wealth is created or produced by the free market. Gov’t does not produce wealth and cannot since it does not own the means of production (i.e. factories, mines, oil wells, power plants, etc.). So whenever gov’t intrudes into the market place to remove funds through either direct income taxation or borrowing from the private sector, it removes real wealth from the citizens. Now if the gov’t was more efficient at investing this back into production than the free market (i.e. they had a crystal ball and knew which companies, technologies, would produce the greatest economic progress), then we would all be better off if the gov’t took all our money and gave us enough back to live on and reinvested it into the areas it produced the greatest benefit (this is known as communism, which failed miserably). But gov’t is extremely inept (i.e. old Soviet Union), it wastes money that would’ve been put to better use if it was left in the free market. So the extra goods/services/new technologies that would’ve been produced had the money been left in the free market, don’t get produced and we all end up paying higher prices because of it, rich or poor, regardless of tax bracket. It is therefore irrational to argue for higher tax rates.

Jason, Jonathan, et al. who are limited gov’t types. You are correct, this is why the founding fathers (especially Thomas Jefferson) sought to limit the ability of gov’t to take money from its citizens. They wanted the federal gov’t to protect the several states from invasion, set up a court system, and pretty much leave everyone else alone. Thomas Jefferson was a big proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, which pretty much ended in the 19th century.