Warren Buffett: The Hypocrite
Seems Warren's Berkshire Hathaway is very late on paying taxes, yet he wants taxes raised on the rich. What a typical lefty hypocrite.
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Great sources there guy.
haha, tabloids
There's a specific reason I put the NY Post in there.
Hows this?
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2010ar/2010ar.pdf
You sound like an idiot when you throw statements like these in your posts. If you want to bitch about Warren Buffett, fine. No one gives a shit about how much you hate the left. It's not like your point isn't blatantly obvious.
Then why read my post? It's not about hate, by the way. I have very close family members who are registered Dems.
Because I wanted to read the article, not hear you bitch with some obnoxious blanket statements.
It's interesting how much the country has moved to the right with Barack Obama making Gerald Ford look like a socialist and Lindsey Graham and Grover Norquist getting called RINOs.
I think the pendulum is at full swing and it's going to come crashing down on the Republicans maybe not in 2012 but definitely by 2014. In 20 years, we're going to have a Jimmy Carter president who will show the Tea Party what socialism REALLY looks like. Did anyone see a wolf?
Won't happen. We'll be Greece by the time we get to that point.
Put a sock in it.
Not sure if you're referring to me, but read my above post.
On a side note, I don't align with the Tea Party. I agree with a lot of what they say/do though.
Limited government was a great policy when we had millions of square miles of frontier and could help the middle-class by handing out cheap land out west. And Reagan provided a needed reduction in the size and scope of government. But what is the Tea Party pushing for? We cut $200 billion/year of spending from the budget and if they repeal healthcare reform and slow the growth of medicare, they've achieved all of Reagan's objectives.
Opposing further cuts doesn't mean you're a socialist- it just means you'd be a fairly typical Republican in 1994.
Or we can fix things and accept some tax hikes to keep the US's fairly modest social safety net- which has a smaller safety net outside of Medicare Part D than it did ten years ago- running. The real debate is on healthcare and I think that's going to get rolled back.
As I've said time and time again, I am ok with tax hikes, but they must be allocated 100% to debt/deficit reduction.
I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think it's really fair to ignore Medicare Part D. Isn't it supposed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion a decade? I mean, that's hugely expensive, why pretend it doesn't exist? Just because it's a Bush program?
Also, OP... waiting to pay your taxes is good business. negative OWC is a source of funding. Banking 101. Maybe Warren Buffet is sharp enough to work within the existing laws to benefit his shareholders, while personally believing the laws should be changed.
Dude I posted a link to their financials. Read it. Besides, is he not a leftist? I'm sorry you take offense to that term, might want to have a little more pride in your party.
Idk why you think that if Berkshire pays their taxes late, that makes him a hypocrite?
Berskshire has been negotiating with the IRS for almost 10 years. More than a little late...
Warren Buffet wants the ultra rich to have to pay taxes at a rate similar to what people who work for their money pay.
BRK's tax return has nothing to do with Buffet's point.
So glad that people are willing to vigorously defend the top .0001% of this country while getting fucked over themselves.. I'm sure they appreciate it.
It's his company, how does it have nothing to do with him?
I am not defending the .000000000001% of the country. I am defending all taxpayers. The government is a wasteland. There is no argument there. Most everything they do is inefficient. No argument there.
It's still swinging right, and Jimmy Carter is in office. You guys obviouslt just read the talking points on the Tea Party. Yeah, they're working class rubes who share the same opinions many of you do on here - that solvency is a good thing. The republicans will fuck something up down the road like they always do, but this is premature.
This thread's a non-sequitir contest. It's not about defending the ultra-rich, hell I wouldn't defend the majority of you shitheads on here who are just trying to get past $200k. It's pandering to the working class (and you, apparently) to say taxing the rich is going to close all of these shortfalls when spending is shooting through the roof. And it is also the Tea Party people getting fucked by runaway spending, BTW ... if you don;t see that we'll have to agree to disagree.
txjustin, people online always find a reason to fight online, ignore them..
As to your article, I agree with you. I think it is absolutly hypocritical. However, it seems that Warren Buffet understands the kind of influence he holds. It can be almost related to when JP Morgan had to inject capital into the market because there was no Fed during the Great Depression. He was the big player of that time and Warren is the big player of our time. Their positions basically require an action on their parts whether it be capital injection or a confidence booster.
It is amusing to read your articles, as it goes back to age old statement, "pracitce what you preach." Does not seem to be the case here.
^^ Because he wants rich people to pay. Just because his company pays taxes late (but still paid) does not reflect on his views in any way. If he on the other hand had paid late, it might be different, but still wouldn't since even though they are late, he pays in the end. This is such a strange conclusion that I don't even know how to express how odd it is. BRK has nothing to do with him even though he runs it. It's a company, not a person.
They haven't paid them yet, even after the better part of a decade.
^^ Still has nothing to do with Buffet himself. Even if he was the sole owner of the company, you're comparing apples to oranges.
Why should BH not attempt to minimize their tax bill like every other corporation in America? If anything that would be a breach of their fiduciary duty.
This is a case of someone at a conservative advocacy group's piece on a pretty common occurrence in 10Ks getting picked up by a conservative tabloid and further blown out of proportion.
There's a huge difference between BRK and Buffett himself. Warren Buffett the person does not have a fiduciary duty to minimise his tax outflow, but Warren Buffet the CEO does.
BRK's tax return is a cluster fuck, our corporate tax code is also a cluster fuck. BRK and the IRS could negotiate for 50 years and still never come to a conclusion. This is the issue.
And we both agree government is a bureaucratic nightmare and is horribly inefficient. I was basically saying that most of this sites tax bracket (Upper middle class but not super rich) seems to get a raw deal in the tax structure, but all everyone wants to talk about is the ultra rich or the welfare queens.
I couldn't agree more. My above post suggest adding tax brackets and closing loopholes.
I have said this many times, but just in case anyone in this thread doesn't know:
I am fiscally conservative and socially "I don't give a shit". I am for a total reconstruction of the tax code. I favor a fair/flat tax hybrid model. In order for our current tax system to be fixed we need to add 2 more classes and close all loopholes.
I am for slashing government spending in all areas. That's all I can think of at the moment.
[quote=txjustin]I have said this many times, but just in case anyone in this thread doesn't know:
I am fiscally conservative and socially "I don't give a shit". I am for a total reconstruction of the tax code. I favor a fair/flat tax hybrid model. In order for our current tax system to be fixed we need to add 2 more classes and close all loopholes.
I am for slashing government spending in all areas. That's all I can think of at the moment.[/quote Well, as far as i know humans are "social animals" : that's why we"ve built big cities through our histories and we live in a community entities( towns, cities, etc).. ..and every human deep inside wants to be validated by his peers.. So i don't buy your fairytales about "" socialli i don't give a shit"" etc And each of us who works in financial industry think that "I'll belong to a top 1% someday soon", in other words that's just selfish greed talks in us, let's face it P.s. don't bejust greedy-greedy, be greedy for something good
ESL?? I really can't distinguish what the fuck you're saying, but I'll take a stab at it.
"Socially I don't give a fuck" means that I don't care what you do as long as it doesn't affect me. You wanna fuck your brother? Go for it, it doesn't affect me. You wanna marry the same gender as you? Go for it, it doesn't affect me.
It has nothing to do with greed and I don't know how you came up with that conclusion. I am not even in IBD and don't make anything compared to those who do. I plan on being out of finance in the next few years so you are totally off base. I believe in some form of taxation. I don't in income taxation, I believe in other forms. That's besides the point. We need a total tax overhall.
Government should be reduced. Liberty should be maximized.
I used to respect Buffet, but he is getting soft or delusional. It is sad that someone who donates most of his wealth would advocate for some of that wealth to be taken by the government and misused.
Politicians have one incentive and that is to be re-elected. They take tax dollars and spend them in the way that benefits their re-election chances the most. There is no effort to truly help or benefit this nation, but only to win another term. This is why government spending is always less efficient than private spending.
I support cutting taxes on the rich because half this country pays nothing. You can't pay less than zero.
Assuming this is true, I'll bite.
Why is government spending always less efficient than private spending? After all, private sector employees have only one incentive, and that is improving shareholder returns in order to receive higher compensation. Equity prices being so influenced by notoriously short-term analyst projections and earnings figures, it is highly unlikely that the private sector spends its money in the most efficient long-term manner. Furthermore, the very bottom deciles by wealth of Americans have little if any stake in our country's public markets. The private sector therefore has no fiduciary duty to them and no spending is done on their behalf save the private sector's. I personally believe it's likely that the private sector does a better job of allocating capital than the public sector, but that isn't a given, particularly in the long-term to which most of the private sector is blind.
Why the egalitarian demands all of the sudden? Can't we agree that socialism produces suboptimal economic outcomes? If the point is to reduce government and increase freedom, why should we spend more (taking taxes from 100% more people!) on a group that can do little to replenish our coffers and will suffer the greatest loss in freedom from diminished income? By taxing the rich more, we can spend on projects that will increase our freedom in the long-term (infrastructure, restructuring health care, reducing our debt) while causing short-term discomfort to those who will feel it the least. In capitalism, there are winners and losers. Punishing the losers while keeping the winners from sowing the seeds of continued and long-term success (Buffett can't repave our roads on his own) is reckless and the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot for purely ideological reasons.
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