Why Billionaires like Buffet want to pay more taxes

So it doesn't register in what passes for your mind that other rich Americans support what Buffett is saying?

Don't you read newspapers?

(BTW, 70% of ordinary Americans want tax increases on the rich as well. But I suppose you don't read polls either. But it could be a problem for rich Americans come election time.)

 

Nope. I haven't really paid much attention to polls in the past. I don't really see why I should start now.

You take certain people which identify both sides of the spectrum. If you ask them what they believe or what they want, it's all over the board. They'll tell you that they want their neighbor to be taxed at a certain amount and I also want this massive entitlements. If you ask them who they're going to vote for it won't link up to any of those policies.

You can write a poll to mean anything you want.

 

I see. So now all polls are crooked.

This one: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/08/09/poll.aug10.pdf

And all these:

And most Americans are stupid to believe them?.

 

Americans can believe whatever they want. I'm just telling you what I don't believe. I've never supported polls. Not even the polls which support my point of view. I would love for everyone to agree with me on everything (not true), but the reality is that they do not.

Polls don't reflect popular opinion. Polls shape popular opinion, into whatever the person who is conducting them wants them to be. There were plenty of polls about how 60 percent of the country thought that the stimulus was working (Obviously not true). And polls saying that 72 percent of Americans wanted health care reform.

I don't really buy into any of that stuff. There is really no way to know what Americans really want, all at one time.

 

Polls aren't perfect, but they can be (and typically are) compiled as a form of useful 'snapshots' and ultimately applied to predicting outcomes, much as sports statistics are used in certain ways.

I would agree that every poll we view may not predict what it may seem to... but that data can be used to predict certain end-results.

 

The only polls I really take into consideration are job approval polls, which tend to be more accurate than polls about any particular policy.

 

Anyone in the U.S. can take advantage of a 15% tax rate.

If you buy a stock, hold it for a year, sell it for a profit....you are taxed at a 15% rate. If you hold the stock you are not taxed until you sell.

If you hold a stock for less than a year you pay regular income taxes on it.

That is why you sell the losers and keep the gainers.

 

"Definition of HYPOCRITE

1: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2: a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
3. Warren Buffet

Examples of HYPOCRITE
the hypocrites who criticize other people for not voting but who don't always vote themselves"

From Merriam Webster - by the way, I added number 3.

 

He's not paying income tax. He's paying capital gains tax. Even at his fifteen percent, he's paying several thousand percent more in actual dollars than the secretary's income tax percent, which might be 20 or so.

I'm always amused when someone says that 37% of a million dollars is the "same" (or less) as 22% of sixty thousand dollars. Where did you learn about percentages? I bet it was public school.

And as for the word "fair"...well, we'd need a therapist to delve into our parents treatment of us to figure out what you mean by that.

 

Yep. To get good favor with the BMOC. He already saw what they did for GE.

 

Finally, someone gets me! Half the time I'm goofing around a serious point. The other half, I'm making a serious point sound goofy. The litmus test is separating those who get upset and don't get it and those who get it and start talking.

I'm so glad I started this thread. I got to meet you!

 

This is something I’ve been trying to drive home with the conservative branch for years, percentages are the same regardless of the total amount involved, so 15% of 100 is 15, 15% of 1,000 is 150. If you have to give up 20% of every $100 you earn, you only bring home $80 out of every $100 you made, but if tax loop holes can knock that down 15% or less for the most wealthy, they are keeping way more money proportionately than the common worker, when they do not even need it as bad as the common worker.

To put it into simple perspective, let’s say a person has the chance to earn $100.00, they pay 20% in taxes out of that, what do they have left? $80.00, right? Now let’s make that figure $1,000.00 with the exact same percentage. That person just paid $200.00 in taxes and still has $800.00 left.
Which one of these two people can actually afford to buy more than food now? Even thought the person who made more actually contributed ten times more than the first person into the taxes, that second person still has more options and advantages of what to do with the money they made. The person who made the least amount is less likely to have anything to save for an investment or spend on a luxury item, what little they have buys them just enough to get through another day.

Now to put this into perspective, if you are talking about millionaires and billionaires, then you multiply that fist figure by a million or a billion, it gives you an idea of how much money the government is missing out on, even if it is 15%, and how much easier it is for those people to make it compared to those on the bottom. Let’s face it, even a billionaire could live pretty good on a $1,000.00 a day in actual spending money, so all that extra money is just that, EXTRA MONEY!!!

If anyone thinks they are hurting, than I can only pray to hurt like that, and I would gladly give up most of it to taxes.

 

But you have four flat tires and a malfunctioning carburator. You can never make it home that way.

But that's the most important point that you're missing. Yet, even as you say this memic fallacy, you go on to say that percentages are not the same and the total dollar amount is a mega-disparity (I know disparity is a term you like.)

Your math is fine. Your logic is Swiss cheese. Capital gains tax is not a loop hole. It is a tax paid on money invested and earned in the market. When a person invests money in the market they have already paid income tax on that money before it went there, at whatever rate their income accrued at that time. So the evil rich have already paid 37 cents on the dollar they earned before they invested, and will pay another fifteen cents on everything they earned after they sell their interests, or earn dividends on those interests. Is that their fair share?

So what? You can choose to save, or you can choose to squander. The eponymous icon in the title of this post has proclaimed many times to have had nothing when he started out. He is a self made billionaire. So are scores of others. I've followed lots of success stories of rags to riches people and there is a common thread. It goes like this - "I didn't whine or cry or lament what life gave me, I just determined I wanted something more, so I worked for it." ie - They saved and sacrificed and educated themselves and became huge successes. We are a country of equal opportunity, not equal standing.

How do you or the Federal Government know what EXTRA MONEY!!! is? How do you calculate what the "fair share" is, when you can only think of ways to redistribute? What gives you the right to decide for other people how much money they should have?

 

It is by the time you add in all the unacknowledged tax loop holes and other high profile money managing tricks, which in turn will knock that down to more like 4%.

So he was excessively greedy and had insight most people don’t have access to, so what indeed!
As wealthy as he is, he can pay as much proportionately as the little guy, there is no real excuse why he can't.
Besides, why should people on the lower financial branches of life be punished for being poor? That’s the other side of the exact same coin, so even low income people should have the right to a decent living no matter how much money 1 person can make.

If there is just one person in all the world with all them money in the world, and nobody else had anything, would that be fair? You better belive nobody is going to live like that, so it’s better to quit while you are ahead rather than to push things until you loose your head like they did in the French revolution!

That would be quite easy really, all you have to do is add up all the basic living requirements for a household based on a national average, maybe even double it for good measure, and ANYTHING above that is extra money, simple enough.

People who do nothing in life but accumulate money do not even comprehend or understand what it’s really worth anyway, even if they started with nothing, they lose track of what is really important in life. Why do you think Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol”?

 

Is Buffet's check writing hand broken or something? Surely he has a secretary or someone who can help him out?

 

Warren Buffet has no income, therefore he pays no income tax. He pays capital gains taxes on his dividends which is why he says his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does, she/he has an earned income.

 

"Why Billionaires Like Warren Buffet...." That would imply there's a list of them. Isn't this rather like, "Chefs like Jeffrey Dahlmer...."? Warren and Jeffrey might make a workable team with a restaurant but individually they're one of a kind.

Oh, Warren's support for higher taxes involve his ownership of insurance companies which shelter money from taxes.

 

Buffet gets a salary of 100,000 a year to run Berkshire Hathaway.

I am pretty sure that is income.

 

I've read in certain magazines that he chose to work for free. So many it is, maybe it isn't.

 

Can you name those tricks, or substantiate the 4% number you quoted?

You conflate what people have a right to. Why is it 'greedy' for someone to accumulate money because they are good at it? We're talking about the guy who wants everyone to pay more taxes, after all.

When you play monopoly, do you (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) and moan because someone other than you gets park place? The French revolution analogy is correct, except the way you meant it doesn't apply.

And it's your choice to decide what they should earn or not earn, right? Why work at all? I think, because of your ideology, I'll stop working tomorrow and start sleeping in the park. Why should I try to cure cancer anyway? I'm going to get the same pension as a homeless loser anyway. Thanks!

Well, that was kind of the point of the post, but not in the way you imagined. I'm a Dickens scholar, by the way. He was not advocating wealth redistribution in "A Christmas Carol." It was a morality tale that you could not possibly understand.

 

Too tired to go further then the second post but..

He paid I think 17 or 18% income tax. Lower than his secretary just illustrating the FACT that rich people pay less taxes.

Both parties are guilty of causing this. Though more so the Republicans.