Warren Buffet's Stance on Taxes

[maxtower]

Bottom line - the government needs tax revenue to spend on whatever it thinks is important. Theft or not, fair or not, the government is going to collect.

Estate taxes are a good source of income because taking money from dead people (or the heirs who didn't earn it) is much preferable to the guy who actually earned his money the old fashioned way. I see no problem with high estate taxes if that means lower taxes from earned income.

[APXG]

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you really think i'm jealous of those people?

maybe of brian townsend or howard schulz or richard branson or others who got to incredible heights thru sheer determination that was likely instilled in them by amazing parents / friends / environment that i didn't have, but certainly not some member of the hilton or rockefeller family. i pity them, as im sure does any person who derives happiness from the process of making money, and not the proceeds -- to quote mr. buffett. these guys never got the chance to enjoy the process, which brings more true happiness than any amount of money ever could -- not to mention far greater contributions to the advancement of society

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The retardedness of an estate tax is not in the intention of denying half-brained Hilton princesses from inheriting hundreds of millions of dollars. It's in denying the rightful makers and owners of money the right to bestow it anywhere they see fit. This may be in the arts and libraries , like Carnegie and Getty did. It might also be in little gremlin children who we personally would like to strangle. But it's not our judgment to say who gets that money, because we didn't earn it.

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That I agree on. Its a pure libertarian standpoint, which I support unequivocally in basically anything else. With estate tax, I would be fully against it if there was only some method to "firmly encourage" rather than "force" people to make the correct decision and give away their money.

[vetiver]

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That I agree on. Its a pure libertarian standpoint, which I support unequivocally in basically anything else. With estate tax, I would be fully against it if there was only some method to "firmly encourage" rather than "force" people to make the correct decision and give away their money.

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If the start of your post suggests that you identify with purely libertarian ideas, that's not really compatible with finding ways for government to "firmly encourage" people to behave a particular way in their private lives.

Whatevs, I don't want to turn this thread into a death tax debate. GG, wp, to each their own.

[West]

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- It doesnt work i.e. reduce the gap between rich and poor. Its been in place almost the entire time the gap has grown.


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That's an absurd point. Like your posts though in general.

[CrushinFelt]

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- It doesnt work i.e. reduce the gap between rich and poor. Its been in place almost the entire time the gap has grown.


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That's an absurd point. Like your posts though in general.

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How is that absurd when Buffett brought it up in his statement?

[Jimbo]

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What I find depressing is how so many people seem to lack any ability to empathize with those less fortunate than themselves, but at the same time seem to have no trouble at all empathizing with the very wealthy, who, let's face it, don't need your empathy.


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You get depressed that easily? Wow! I grew up poor and didn't need or want any empathy, I'm not rich by any means now but I don't care whether there are poor people now any more than I cared about them when I was one of them. So what has changed? Why should it change?

Remember without poor people you might actually be forced to work hard West.

One last question; Just how is empathizing with the poor going to help them? It isn't going to put food on their table. It won't send their poor kids to college. It won't feed them gourmet meals? So why?



Jimbo

[DesertCat]

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- It doesnt work i.e. reduce the gap between rich and poor. Its been in place almost the entire time the gap has grown.


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That's an absurd point. Like your posts though in general.

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Stop trolling, if you actually have anything of value to contribute, then do it. Buffett points out how the super-rich are taking increasing percentages of our national wealth, and thinks we need the estate tax to prevent this so why is it absurd to point out the estate tax has existed through out the entire time that gap has grown?

[Mook]

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sadly, the average american is worse at managing his money than even the us government, so THEIR money is actually best off in the govt's hands.

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This is a genuinely laughable statement, and one which I hope on further reflection you'll retract. It's not even a matter of debate. We have decades of empirical evidence from dozens of societies where the bulk of economic decisions were made not by the people, but by those in the highest levels of government. And what, exactly, became of all of these socialist, centrally planned paradises?

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i do support the theoretical notion of allowing everyone to decide how to allocate their own capital(and the illegality of the government forcibly making these decisions for them)

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You could have fooled me.

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but this would NOT lead them OR the government to be better off in the end. it would simply transfer more wealth to the likes of buffett who have figured out how to capitalize on the severe money management flaws these "average people" have.

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Let's return to my (or rather Ric Edelman's) admittedly exaggerated example above. The point he, and I, was trying to make - one which continues to elude many of this world's otherwise bright minds - is simply this:

Capital formation is not a zero-sum game.

In the aggregate, my turning my savings over to you to invest in well-managed public companies benefits both me and them more than my keeping that savings under my mattress or in gold coins would. Similarly, whatever government can do to get the hell out of the way of people trying to build wealth not only benefits those people ... it benefits the government as well, because the additional taxable base they'll be entitled to their cut of will far, far outweigh the time value of the money they've lost out on in the meantime.

You're right that it wouldn't result in people OR the government being better off ... in fact it would result in people AND the government being better off. Much, much better off, in fact.

Mook

[West]

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- It doesnt work i.e. reduce the gap between rich and poor. Its been in place almost the entire time the gap has grown.


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That's an absurd point. Like your posts though in general.

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Stop trolling, if you actually have anything of value to contribute, then do it. Buffett points out how the super-rich are taking increasing percentages of our national wealth, and thinks we need the estate tax to prevent this so why is it absurd to point out the estate tax has existed through out the entire time that gap has grown?

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It is obviously absurd to suggest that the estate tax, which by it's definition takes money away from only the extremely wealthy "doesn't work" in reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, just because that gap has been increasing during the existence of the estate tax. Obviously this doesn't occur in a vacuum. The gap didn't increase because of the estate tax, but it increased by a smaller amount than it would have because of it.

[CrushinFelt]

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It is obviously absurd to suggest that the estate tax, which by it's definition takes money away from only the extremely wealthy "doesn't work" in reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, just because that gap has been increasing during the existence of the estate tax. Obviously this doesn't occur in a vacuum. The gap didn't increase because of the estate tax, but it increased by a smaller amount than it would have because of it.


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I hope this is a joke. But I don't think it is lol