<p>“For some bizarre reason, the concept that somebody is going to have to pay seems to be foreign to a lot of people here.”</p>
<p>People don’t understand what government spending cuts are. They think they are going to save money with spending cuts when the reality is some government spending cuts are going to end up costing people more money.</p>
<p>Along with this, shifting costs from the federal government to state governments will increase state taxes, property taxes etc</p>
<p>Doct, you are right.</p>
<p>Warren Buffet should put his money where his mouth is. He takes his income in long-term capital gains rather than salary. He could just write a check for what he thinks he should be paying instead of pontificating. He could have done nothing to avoid estate taxes and let 55% of his considerable wealth go to the federal government. Instead he bequeathed it to the Gates Foundation. Doesn’t he trust the feds to wisely spend his money?</p>
<p>If the government enacts Buffett’s tax policies, Buffett’s taxes are going to increase dramatically. Not enough though. I would like to see something done with the inheritance tax to capture some of Buffet’s wealth.</p>
<p>If inequality keeps increasing we are going to get more and more proposals like this. I hate this.</p>
<p>“Wealth inequality has worsened for two decades and is now at an extreme level. Replacing the income, estate and gift taxes with a progressive wealth tax would do much more to reduce it than any other tax plan being considered in Washington.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/opinion/to-reduce-inequality-tax-wealth-not-income.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/opinion/to-reduce-inequality-tax-wealth-not-income.html</a></p>
<p>Do you have a problem raising taxes on people that make over 500,000 a year?
Over time, almost everybody is going to pay more or receive fewer benefits.</p>
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<p>Yes, we do. It is not about saving money per se, it is about being responsible for my expenses, and not for somebody else’s. </p>
<p>Earlier you asked somebody else what would they want to do about SS and my answer would be get rid of it or at least completely revamp so that it mimics pension plan and not the ponzi scheme it is right now. </p>
<p>I am also sick and tired of people calling payroll tax regressive. Since the benefit is (somewhat loosely) tied to how much money you put into the system, then making it progressive does not make any sense, unless of course people think that in this situation I also have to pay for other people retirement. </p>
<p>Dstark, reading through some of your posts I see that we have deep philosophical divide. In your posts you talked about necessity of SS because people don’t save enough. I think people should have the freedom to do whatever they want to do, but then they have to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. If the people do not save enough, it is not government’s responsibility to save them with social security. </p>
<p>I am all for no deductions (and simpler tax rate structure) because I don’t think government should be in business to encourage certain types of behavior, while you are in favor of no deductions because we can get higher tax revenues.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it is going to happen in Buffet’s case. He has no plans to leave his vast fortune to his children.</p>
<p>“I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing”</p>
<p>“I think people should have the freedom to do whatever they want to do, but then they have to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. If the people do not save enough, it is not government’s responsibility to save them with social security.”</p>
<p>So what’s your solution when millions of people do not save enough?</p>
<p>Lerkin, we all live here together. We don’t walk around in a bubble. We are an individual in a society. The economic system was developed by millions of people in this country. And it was developed with the help of the government. And the government is us.</p>
<p>You don’t get everything you want in life. You compromise with your spouse, your kids, your family, your community, and yeah, your government doesn’t always give you what you want. That includes the fact that in your opinion, the government is too big for you.</p>
<p>I think capitalism is the best economic system that has been developed so far, Compared to socialism and communism, but it has flaws. I am
interested in having the best economy for a majority of people and that is a mixed economy, capitalism with government help.</p>
<p>And a mixed economy costs money. The arguments are who is going to
pay. I believe that ability to pay is a factor in who pays. If I thought that it really would hurt the economy if capital gains taxes were higher than 15 percent, or the top rate with deductions of 39.6 percent would
hurt the economy, I wouldn’t support these things. But guess what? There is no economic proof that the higher tax rates than those I mentioned hurt the economy. In fact, the numbers show differently. </p>
<p>We need higher revenues because the facts are we spend the money. If we didn’t spend the money, I would change my mind. But the federal
govt does spend over 20 percent of
Gdp. It has under both republicans and democrats. Booms and busts. Doesn’t matter. So your idea of taxation does not work. I am interested in things that work. I am not interested in some ideology that doesn’t work.</p>
<p>Individual freedom sounds so great. Where can I get some? Who is going to build the bridges, the roads, the airports, the schools, provide the education, the military, healthcare, (the government is 50 percent of healthcare already), the water, the electricity, the mail, the legal system, patents, clean the air and water, make sure our food is clean and our drugs are safe? </p>
<p>And don’t tell me the private sector does the above better. The private sector does not do the above better.</p>
<p>The private sector does well in innovation, developing products and providing some services, consumer goods. The private sector does not do better in many areas. The private sector’s goal is to make money. That is fine when you are trying to sell a computer or a tv, but health care? I
think health care should come first and profits second. And this idea is not coming out of my tush, it is implementd all over the world. We are the only first world country that doesn’t provide universal health care. People can get sick and go bankrupt in this country. Even Switzerland,
where there is a profit motive along with putting health care first, thinks it is ridiculous that people can go bankrupt because of the cost of healthcare.</p>
<p>SS was developed because our capitalistic system was failing. Poverty among the elderly was very high. People don’t save enough. They don’t.
It is real easy to say, it is your fault, you didn’t save enough, too bad. Take care of yourself. Go live in the streets. NOT MY STREET THOUGH. I will have you arrested if you come anywhere near my street.</p>
<p>We have private, TAX supported retirement plans. People are free to put there money in these plans. Of course, I have to pay for it with my taxes. I am supporting the private financial industry with my taxes. In addition, people are allowed to save whatever they want. Nobody is stopping people from saving whatever they want. And what is the average net worth of people in retirement? $100,000? Yeah…go for it. Try to live on $100,000 for 17 years.</p>
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<p>Sorry this sounds to me like a fancy talk in the same class of it will trickle down. I think it is as big as it sounds.</p>
<p>TatinG–Buffett does put his money where his mouth is quite frankly. He has challenged other Billionaires to do the same. Just “giving” his wealth to the government would be an option but leaving it to the Gates Foundation will also do a lot of good for the children of our country…</p>
<p>Igloo, Ok. This scary stuff. How do we get the scary numbers? How are they derived?</p>
<p>No idea. But I don’t plan to listen on. People use some fancy accounting to make convincing cases of opposite conclusions. I think they should both reduce entitlement and increase tax revenue. I get suspicious when anyone suggests there’s an easy way to get around, like the debt isn’t serious or you don’t need to raise revenue.</p>
<p>“I would like to see something done with the inheritance tax to capture some of Buffet’s wealth”</p>
<p>And why? He has pledged to give 99% of his wealth to charitable organizations, most notably the Gates Foundation…which, unlike the government, looks very carefully at what they invest in. If they think it isn’t working, they pull the funds.</p>
<p>Do you think if 99% of his wealth went to the government, they would do a better job with it? I laugh to think at that one.</p>
<p>Now, Buffett may be a hypocrite while talking about taxes, doing everything to lower his tax rate and complaining about not paying enough taxes. But he’s not a hypocrite about where he puts his money. Even he knows the govt will squander the money while the Gates Foundation actually uses it wisely.</p>
<p>If charities had worked so well in the past, SS and medicare would never have existed.</p>
<p>From yesterday’s wall street journal</p>
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<p>This is the folly of worrying about a fiscal cliff. We are in deep trouble. Buffett could have done a little good if he had reminded people of the bedrock message in his “Buffett rule” op-ed from a year ago. It was this:</p>
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<p>If this seems new to you, its because the bums who report the “news” don’t like the idea of spending cuts, so they left out what is clearly the most important part of Buffetts prescription. Until we face up to the reality that we aren’t going back to “happy days are here again”, we are just digging deeper grave for our grandchildren’s economic outlook.</p>
<p>My point is that Buffett does not want HIS estate going to the gov’t, but he would have other people’s estates confiscated at 55%. He might think that the Gates Foundation will spend the money more wisely than the government. I know that my kids will spend my estate more wisely than the government.</p>
<p>I’ve read a few annual reports from the Gates Foundation and they seem to try to make the most efficient use of their funds. Their scope is worldwide, too; not just the United States.</p>
<p>They also do not tackle problems where there are greater political issues involved. An example would be donating something to a group of people where the goods are actually diverted to those in power to sell for their own profit.</p>
<p>So they do a good job but they don’t tackle every problem out there.</p>
<p>BTW, I read that Buffett wants Dimon for Treasury Secretary. Buffett gets enough sweetheart deals with Treasury, the Fed and the big banks. Maybe he has a little too much influence and patronage?</p>
<p>On taxing high earners - nobody saw the article about the UK?</p>
<p>“No idea.” Ok. That answers that.</p>
<p>Why busdriver11? Because Buffet made his money because he lived in the United States. He wouldn’t have made that wealth elsewhere. Buffett has said this himself. His own words. And it costs money to run the United States. And if we don’t get the money from Buffett, we are going to have to get the money from others. Those others are people like you, busdriver11.</p>
<p>That is what is really going on. It has been decided that we are going to have to cut spending and increase taxes to the tune of 3 percent of gdp. 3 percent of gdp is a lot. Guess what? The wealthiest people in this country don’t want to pay much of it, if any at all.</p>
<p>But it has been pretty much decided that the US is going to have tax increases and
spending cuts that add up to 3 percent of gdp. </p>
<p>And if the Warren Buffett’s of the world don’t contribute, then busdriver11, you are going to contribute a lot more to the government than you would have to otherwise. The government that you think is inefficient. You are going to have to pay a lot more in taxes to the government that you think is bloated and lose a lot more benefits.</p>
<p>Averages are really interesting.</p>
<p>If I add up all the numbers starting at number 1 and ending at 75, I am going to get an average of approximately 38.</p>
<p>If I had come up with 38 of something because that was the average for 75 years when the first year, I only had 1 of it, that would be a big problem wouldn’t it?</p>
<p>That is what the first part of post 156 is.</p>
<p>What a stupid analysis by somebody that doesn’t understand numbers.
Or is that an analysis by somebody with an agenda?</p>
<p>We are going to cut more than 1.5 trillion over 10 years. That is pretty much in agreement. Who is paying for this? That is the disagreement.</p>