Majority of the comments seem to be discussing the merits / morality of taxation, rather than Buffet's central points. Entertaining the discussion on the merit

Majority of the comments seem to be discussing the merits / morality of taxation, rather than Buffet's central points. Entertaining the discussion on the merits of taxation, I've found John Rawls' Justice as Fairness to be especially enlightening. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_as_Fairness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_as_Fairness) Essentially, a just society is one in which decisions are made to benefit the worst-off in society. Given a majority of the factors that contribute to individual success are outside our control (what family you were born into, what neighborhood you lived in, what school you went to, etc), a just society would in turn be one which compensates for such naturally-occurring inequalities. He provides a well-thought out argument for how progressive taxation is a necessary (but certainly not sufficient) lever to do so. Now in practice, it is true that our government has been terribly inefficient in managing tax revenue and creating public goods. But that shouldn't discount the role government can play. Realizing the potential reach and role of government, the goal shouldn't be to neuter it, but to make it more efficient. On Buffet's central points, I find them hard to argue with. 1) Lower taxes on the rich in the last 10 years have been neither necessary nor sufficient for economic growth or job creation, especially in light of the 20 years before that. 2) The front-end drivers for entrepreneurs, VCs, and angels have more to do with product creation, addressing a market need, and simply playing the game. Money is of course a big part in too, but tax cuts only play a back-end behavioral incentive- they affect the NPV of behavior that was already in play. 3) Just because the actual tax revenue on the rich may not put a huge dent on the deficit (as some comments seem to imply), the point is that the billions in tax revenue it would raise could still stave of cuts to programs that the poor and middle class depend on. (And larger food for thought on the role of tax cuts, and how they've contributed to the deficit http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/the-chart-that-should-accompany-every-discussion-of-deficits/238786/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/the-char...)