No, it’s not a headline from The Onion. It’s billionaire hypocrite Warren Buffet complaining yet again how the capitalist system that made him so rich shouldn’t be so capitalist any more. “The taxation system has tilted towards the rich and away from the middle class in the last 10 years. It’s dramatic; I don’t think it’s appreciated and I think it should be addressed,” says Mr. Buffet, oblivious to the economic facts to the contrary.
He doesn’t specify what he should pay more taxes on, of course, or how much more he should pay. But the bottom line is that I don’t believe him. The simple fact is that no one is stopping him from paying as many taxes as he wants.
Oh, they may not go to the IRS. But he could spend his $52 Billion on any public works project, philanthropy for the poor, or even the hundreds of charities that support and supplement federal spending on the military.
$52 Billion is a lot of money. Let’s even take back $1 Billion for himself, which is more than enough for him to live comfortably for the rest of his life. What could he do with all that money that the government should be doing with it anyway?
$51 Billion is enough to give $170 to every man, woman, and child in the United States. It’s enough to fully fund the recently vetoed expanded SCHIP plan for 4 years (or the original SCHIP for 20 years), with a few billion left over for incidentals. It’s enough to give Hillary’s $5,000 baby bond to the next 10,200,000 infants to be born in the country. It’s enough to buy endless tracts of land to make into parks or simply let return back to the wilderness. It’s enough to give those 42 million individuals supposedly languishing without health insurance $1,214.29 a year to put towards private insurance premiums (which means a family of four would have $4,857.14).
Not that Mr. Buffet isn’t very generous – he has donated billions upon billions of dollars already to various charitable causes, and he is to be commended for it. (Although the second richest man in the world giving the first richest man in the world a few billion as charity seems a bit odd…)
But if he feels like that isn’t enough, what is he waiting on the government for? Why not step it up himself? After all, that way, he can avoid the waste that comes with government bureaucracy, and he can ensure his money is spent only on causes he thinks are worthy, or programs he knows to be efficacious. And does he really think that George Bush or the US Congress will manage his money more efficiently and effectively than he already has?
The answer is that big tax hikes won’t hurt him nearly as much as looking “generous” by demanding the government take away other people’s money helps him, at least in certain circles. But they would hurt millions of middle class Americans who don’t have a couple extra billion to fall back on. And that’s not even taking into account the harm to our economy’s growth that higher tax rates would cause.
Buffet’s demand for higher tax rates “for the rich” is nothing more than insisting government enforce more charitable giving at the point of a gun – and at that point, it’s not charity, it’s thievery. His dream of welfare redistribution is ultimately selfish, in that it makes him feel good about himself (with no real harm or sacrifice to his own lifestyle) at the expense of other people’s right to retain as much of their own earned wealth as they can, and at the expense of the economic growth which provides so much opportunity for us all.
He is, of course, entitled to his opinion. And I don’t begrudge him a single penny of his wealth. I just wish he’d live up to his own admonitions before seeking to impose his own sense of “generosity” on me.
If Warren Buffet is really paying less percentage of his income in tax than the people who work for him, then all the more reason for a flat tax.
Exactly. He may not have any illegal tax shelters, but he’s certainly declaring all those charity dollars for the deductions. (I wonder – is the IRS seriously knocking down his door and forcing him to itemize his tax return?)
The irony is that had he been taxed more, he would have far, far less money to give to charities of his choice. Instead, it would have gone to government bureaucrats, ineffective programs, bridges to nowhere and Woodstock museums.
And by the way – which creates more jobs: a rich guy investing in new businesses, or the government? It’s so irritating to hear how people earning taxable income and hiring people so the government doesn’t have to support them is somehow greedy or not in the public interest.
Charity is great, but jobs are better. If I was homeless, I’d rather have 3 or 4 billionaire investors show up in my neighborhood than all the soup kitchen volunteers in the world.
I guess 3 or 4 billionaire investors would increase the volueme (and possibly improve the quality) of the trash you’d be able to pick through.
Until the additional police forces hired with the additional tax dollars that the investors generated came at the request of the investors and threw you into the new bad part of town because the investors want it to look nice in their part of town.