OT: Warren Buffett on"Class Warfare"

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Interviewed yesterday on "Charlie Rose": "Class warfare? It's been going on for a long time, and my class has won -- not just 'won': we're killing them."

Perce

[Country]

Buffet probably knows that if something isn't done soon, the class to which he belongs will go the way of Tsar Nicholas II. That is what always happens when the rich ruling class of the gets too small and the poor class gets too big.

-C-

[Roy]

Buffet is an old fraud. His type will ruin the USA before long.

[trader4]

If Buffet is concerned that the rich are paying too little in taxes, why doesn't he just send an extra check to the IRS? And why doesn't he just structure his business and income so that he will pay taxes at the ordinary income tax rate? Best question of all, why has his company, Berkshire Hathaway, been battling the IRS for years over the IRS's claim that they owe $1bil in taxes they have not paid?

In other words, he's just another lib hypocrite.

[Country]

Unlike Conservative hypocrites, lib hypocrites tell the truth from time to time.

-C-

[krw]

But you admit that libs don't pay their taxes. Interesting.

[HeyBub]

There's nothing wrong with being a hypocrite - liberal or conservative. Eighty-five percent of gynecologists are males.

[krw]

He challenged everything but.

Coming from a loony leftist, such statements hold no water.

[Douglas Johnson]

I was watching Fox News the morning Obama proposed his millionaires and billionaires tax and this idea got a lot of play. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. First, how do we know he didn't? Second, why does someone have to send a check to the IRS before they can express an opinion about the tax code.

What do you have in mind? BK is a publicly traded company. Most of Buffet's income is from dividends and capital gains from that. How can he change that without adversely affecting the other shareholders?

Buffet has a fiduciary duty to his other stockholders to act in their best interests, including paying only those taxes they legally have to pay.

-- Doug

[Kurt Ullman]

He doesn't. But if the general thesis is that OTHERS should be doing something, it lowers the hypocricy factor by a few hundred points if he takes the lead and does it without being mandated.

>

[Han]

Kurt Ullman wrote in news:cLqdnbLNbq77WRTTnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Then the argument can be turned around too. Those who are so damned concerned about the deficit should ALL voluntarily contribute to reduce it. Just a thought ...

[Kurt Ullman]

Have absolutely no problem with that. It would make their arguments more persuasive.

[Douglas Johnson]

Point taken. But it seems to set a high bar that would seriously limit public discourse. I can't advocate deficit reduction unless I send back (part of) my social security or unemployment? Do I have to stop driving on Interstates? Stay out of national parks? Not fly?

Or is it the reverse? I can only advocate elimination of programs that I use. Welfare, food stamps, or Medicaid?

I'm really uncomfortable calling someone a hypocrite when my own house isn't too clean. I doubt any one of us acts to the standards we are trying to hold him. There's a word for that, I'm sure I'll think of it.

-- Doug

[Percival P. Cassidy]

And how would the IRS accept it? Under what heading would they record it? If you overpay the IRS (i.e., pay more than you are required by law to pay), they give you a refund.

Do you *choose* whether to get capital gains or interest? If you buy a stock and sell it again at a higher price, that's a capital gain, and the tax rate is only 15%.

There is a legal distinction between Berkshire Hathaway (a "legal person") and Warren Buffett (a "natural person"). As someone else pointed out, he has a legal obligation to maximize the corporation's profits for the benefit of its shareholders.

Perce

[Douglas Johnson]

You don't send it to the IRS, you send it to:

Attn Dept G Bureau of the Public Debt P. O. Box 2188 Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

People have paid over $2.4 million so far this year.

At that rate, we'll have that deficit thing licked in... Let me see now... Ah! 4,000,000 years. Give or take a bit.

-- Doug

[krw]

No, the *only* solution to the deficit problem is to SPEND LESS.

[trader4]

That my friend is precisely the problem. No matter how much money the politicians get their hands on they spend it all and borrow more too. You could have had higher taxes for years and we'd still be at about the same place with regard to the national debt.

The one oversight the founding fathers made in protection our freedoms was not putting a limit on the size of government. We can just a surely lose our freedoms by govt spending and taxing us into working serfs as by them shutting down the presses or locking us up in jail with no recourse.

It's understandable given that back then we had no measure of things like GDP, incomes, etc. Now that we do, it's long past time to pass a Constitutional ammendment that limits govt spending to a max percentage of GDP. To exceed it would require a national emergency and a 3/4 vote of Congress. Congress. Not perfect, but at least a start.

Of course we know which party wants nothing to do with either a balanced budget ammendment or the above idea.....