Warren Buffet: stop coddling the richest Americans

[gaelic cowboy]

So if you want to tax the mega rich at higher rates okay maybe i could tolerate that but make sure its the actual mega rich....... someone making 380k a year doesn't even sound mega rich to me. This fictional hyper rich 5% they want to tax the hell out of is just the upper middle class.

308k a year is more than comfortable, personally I wont weep for them if there squeezed a bit more.

[Centurion1]

308k a year is more than comfortable, personally I wont weep for them if there squeezed a bit more.

It certainly is not mega rich.

[gaelic cowboy]

It certainly is not mega rich.

No it's not mega rich but then the bar is so much higher these days, 308k per year is greater than the average house price in the majority of the USA.

308k is I would safely say rich they can afford one or two percent more per year.

[Centurion1]

No it's not mega rich but then the bar is so much higher these days, 308k per year is greater than the average house price in the majority of the USA.

308k is I would safely say rich they can afford one or two percent more per year.

Only 80k.

Someone living in say SD California is going to pay around 300k for a decent townhouse in an area like La Mesa which isn't that great a location. By the same note I could spend 300k in Georgia and buy a sprawling abode.

Also you seem blissfully unaware of the actual point, that is the top 1% of earners in the united states. And it is an average......... which means that number includes people who make millions upon millions of dollars per year...... does say 200k sound like a rich person to you as well?

And smart people would be able to make the distinction between corporate profit and personal income. Smart people, especially entrepreneurs, can generally get their head around how percentages work, too. They know that 50% of $200K is more than 100% of $40K. Smart people could also point out that the vast majority of entrepreneurs are owners of small/medium business for whom taxes don't make the tiniest bit of difference when it comes to the number of people they have on the payroll: their companies are too small to have (afford) positions which are pure overhead, instead what makes a difference is the amount of spending by their customers (again, typically small & medium business and/or consumers). And finally, smart people could point out that for entrepreneurs what matters most is the feeling of freedom from being your own boss, not the net pay. Startups would not ever be founded, if those entrepreneurs looked at it from the paycheck angle.

Start ups are formed with the desire to get ahead and become wealthy..... not to be your own boss. That is a secondary factor at best for most entrepeneurs and the desire to make oodles of cash and expand is the goal of the majority of people.

By what your implying smart people believe if a small business owner is presented with a proposal that would require a 150k expansion for profits far exceeding that they would first make sure that they would not lose their precious freedom of choice. I counter that the vast majority of human beings on the planet want the additional cash and knowledge that expansion of their business is always capable.

[Montmorency]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Gee, the government sure did go hard on our poor, poor, forefathers.

[HoreTore]

Warren Buffet is a COMMUNIST!!!!

And he obviously knows nothing about how to create values and jobs! All he knows is how to steal money from hard-working americans!

[Tellos Athenaios]

Start ups are formed with the desire to get ahead and become wealthy..... not to be your own boss. That is a secondary factor at best for most entrepeneurs and the desire to make oodles of cash and expand is the goal of the majority of people.

The failure rate of start ups, the paperwork etc. etc. all dispel this notion. People who merely want to “get ahead in life” make a career in the employ of someone else without the financial liability should things go wrong. I agree that being your own boss is not necessarily the driving force behind start ups or entrepreneurs in general, but it is a recurring theme in what these people value much more than what they might hypothetically end up earning if this startup turns out to be among the tiny minority which does not fail within the first year.

... But more pertinently: in this tax debate the issue is not whether or not 5% hike in income tax would reduce the number of jobs. That's simply not an issue, at all: large companies don't hire nearly as much staff as what they lay off, it is the small and medium businesses where the jobs are created. And for those businesses it is the money spent by customers that counts, rather than an modest income tax hike which assuming a uniform distribution* of customer incomes affects spending of less than 10% of their customers anyway.

* And this distribution of affected spending will not be uniform, actually: most small and medium business sells relatively mundane articles which are in demand. It's the small & medium business which specialise in luxuries such as jewelry that would be affected more than the petrol station for instance.

[gaelic cowboy]

Only 80k.

Eh wha??

Someone living in say SD California is going to pay around 300k for a decent townhouse in an area like La Mesa which isn't that great a location. By the same note I could spend 300k in Georgia and buy a sprawling abode.

Even if the average is greater they can well afford that house in SD on 308k.

Also you seem blissfully unaware of the actual point, that is the top 1% of earners in the united states. And it is an average......... which means that number includes people who make millions upon millions of dollars per year...... does say 200k sound like a rich person to you as well?

200k does sound quite comfortable afterall it's prob about 4-5 times the average yearly wage in the USA.

average wage USA but it only goes to 2009 still it hardly changed that much lately

Start ups are formed with the desire to get ahead and become wealthy..... not to be your own boss. That is a secondary factor at best for most entrepeneurs and the desire to make oodles of cash and expand is the goal of the majority of people.

There are a lots of reasons people start companies and profit while a big one tis not the only reason people start there own company.

[Centurion1]

Eh wha??



Even if the average is greater they can well afford that house in SD on 308k.



200k does sound quite comfortable afterall it's prob about 4-5 times the average yearly wage in the USA.

average wage USA but it only goes to 2009 still it hardly changed that much lately



There are a lots of reasons people start companies and profit while a big one tis not the only reason people start there own company.

Someone with a wage of 308k is not living in a townhouse in SD la mesa.

its only 80k higher.

200k before taxes. and it sounds upper middle class to me nothing more nothing less.

[gaelic cowboy]

Someone with a wage of 308k is not living in a townhouse in SD la mesa.

Come on now Centurion1 308k in a year is more than comfortable, you used the example of an SD house being worth 300k if I earn 308k a year I can afford that house easy. Most people have to buy a house that is 2-3 times there yearly wage however in your example the wage is 8000 more than the house itself even with the credit crunch the bank would practically murder people to give you a mortgage on that wage. Even if we take it that this is before tax there bringing home around 205-210 a year and they can still afford that house in SD.

Say they put aside 28-30% a month for the house thats 60-70k a year roughly (I didnt work it out it could be more or less) which means they spend after tax and the mortgage somewhere between 120-130k a year to live.

So there not Warren Buffett big deal there not worrying about there meals either.

its only 80k higher.

so what

200k before taxes. and it sounds upper middle class to me nothing more nothing less.

Upper middle class denote better than most though, the average middle class family is probably closer to 100-150 (before tax)