5 ms·

Harvey Golub's Response To Warren Buffett

18 points by nhebb 15y ago

forensic 15y ago
The top 250,000 people basically run the government, so his polemic needs to be addressed at them. All the special interests he talks about are from his cohort of the top .1% Basically, this article amounts to "Let Them Eat Cake"
- phamilton 15y ago
  Or it, as other articles have said, says that talk is cheap and if Buffet really thinks he should pay more taxes, stop trying so hard not to pay taxes. The rest of the article says that the government is wasting his money. He lists a few good examples.
- gcb 15y ago
  care to elaborate "The top 250,000 people basically run the government"?
  - pyoung 15y ago
    Look up the citizens united case. The supreme court essentially said that money = speech, and therefore, spending money to influence political campaigns and elections is protected by the first amendment.
    - gcb 15y ago
      but i think the 250000 people is just the poor with a good life.... isn't that about the <1% you are taking about?
      - pyoung 15y ago
        Not sure I understand. The top 1% have little in common with the poor, especially when it comes to political interests. Due to the supreme court case, they can now spend unlimited amounts of money to try and influence politics, which means that despite their significant difference in population sizes, they are over-represented in our government.
        gcb 15y ago
        the top 1% buys peanuts that cost 250.000 each.
joezydeco 15y ago
"Of my current income this year, I expect to pay 80%-90% in federal income taxes, state income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal and state estate taxes." Huh? What is he possibly doing that warrants this high of a tax on his income?
- jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
  It's particularly odd that he's planning on paying estate taxes (unless he plans to die this year). Estate taxes are paid by the estates of decedents, not by living people.
- pyoung 15y ago
  I think he needs to get a new tax accountant. Either that or he is lying, or using some really deceptive stats.
- wisty 15y ago
  He pays 30% income tax, 15% payroll, 15% social security and medicare, then accrue a tax of 30% on his estate. That adds up to 90%. Don't question it. Or maybe he has untaxed (or lowly taxed) assets that are crashing, and moderately taxed salary. Lose 3 million due to crashing assets (untaxed), make 4 million salary with a 25% tax rate, and your total tax rate is 100%. But that wouldn't be a typical year.
jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
I don't understand the often-repeated conservative talking point that "almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all". There are only two kinds of people who pay no income taxes at all: the desperately poor and the super-rich (who are taxed on investments at the 15% long-term capital gains rate). Is the conservative proposal really that we should tax the desperately poor? Because that seems not only a terrible public policy choice, but an extremely inefficient way to close our budget gap.
- dantheman 15y ago
  I did a little googling for you, from 2009: "About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization." ... "In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax." http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-a...
  - wycats 15y ago
    Low- and middle-income families pay most of their taxes in the form of payroll taxes, which are a mandatory 15% tax (shared by the employer, who also pays their salary) on all income. Consumption taxes also apply to everyone, and for those who spend most of their income each year, this amounts to at a 5-10% additional tax. Virtually nobody, with the exception of the very poor who qualify for the EITC, are safe from these tax. The "50% pay no tax" is a right-wing talking point that is intentionally dishonest.
    - NeilCJames 15y ago
      What makes Golub's point so misleading is that he counts consumption taxes, payroll taxes, state taxes, and even future estate taxes when he pays them, but only looks at federal income tax to get the "half the people pay nothing" line.
jmspring 15y ago
Tax rates were higher under Clinton and the economy was booming. Oh, and there was a budget surplus. Along comes W, we end up in multiple confrontations over seas, cut incoming revenues (of which I will admit to benefiting), and end up with huge deficits? Clearly going back to anything in the Clinton era would tank the economy. The particular article is particularly fluffy in the "private enterprise will solve all problems" with comments about infrastructure programs like trains, etc. The fact that we are spending less on infrastructure (roads, rail, fiber, etc) is one reason we are seeing an overall quality of service decline. I will certainly admit there are issues with the US tax code and there needs to be more efficiency in the system. It is pretty clear that relying on private industry for infrastructure (especially where there is a (or near) monopoly, the companies do NOT do what's write for the country. Another local to California example PG&E and the gas pipeline debacle.
- dantheman 15y ago
  The problem isn't taxation, it's spending. If we went back to Clinton levels of spending we'd have a massive surplus. The big cuts that are coming due to the debt ceiling negotiations aren't actually cuts, they're decreases in predicted spending increases -- we can't even hold the budget steady. This is complete madness.
  - headShrinker 15y ago
    You're both right.
    - gcb 15y ago
      ...and slightly off topic.
  - jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
    The problem is neither taxation nor spending. It's a failure to correlate revenue to our financial commitments. We will not be able to cut our way to deficit reduction in our lifetimes; there's just too much deficit there. The superstitious belief that we can balance our books by cuts alone (thereby likely throwing the country into a second recession, which would make matters worse) is the real madness in this discussion.
wisty 15y ago
Did he actually read Buffett's article? Warren Buffett points out that while the rich do pay quite a bit of income tax, they often don't pay the same share of other taxes. Then he claims he pay's 80%+ tax. Um, really? I guess if you had massive losses of lowly taxed income, and a really high salary, they could balance each other out and you could pay unbounded taxes. But over 80% does not seem typical.
birken 15y ago
This response is nothing more than political talking points, whereas Warren Buffett's article was a thoughtful and meaningful piece about a simple positive change the country could make to help control the deficit. I'm not saying some of his points aren't possibly valid, but nothing as written in this article is deep enough to be meaningful.
gaurav_v 15y ago
There are a number of huge problems with this argument, but the most important problems are the common ones: 1. There's just so much waste! The byline reads: "Before you ask for more tax money from me, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely." This is then supported by a few examples which don't address any of the big entitlement programs necessary for nontrivial tax-reform. 2. I pay such a large percent of the taxes! He draws authority from the fact that "Today, top earners—the 250,000 people who earn $1 million or more—pay 20% of all income taxes, and the 3% who earn more than $200,000 pay almost half. Almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all. Clearly they earn less and should pay less. But they should pay something and have a stake in our government spending their money too." This is clearly a less meaningful statistic than percentage of income paid, which was the crux of Buffett's argument. If I posses say, 90% of the assets in some country X, certainly it doesn't make sense for me to yell, 'hey, I pay like, 60% of the taxes in this place, and all of you Xonian slackers in the bottom 5% are skating by on a free ride.' It particularly doesn't make sense if, as he proposes, there is no tax on gifting money to your (grand)children, and so perhaps I just inherited the wealth.
kitsune_ 15y ago
What strikes me as most odd is the fact that conservative'ŝ constantly point out that 50% of people pay no taxes at all. They use this figure to illustrate a demand for raising taxes on these people. I never heard a conservative ask the question: Why are there such large income disparities within our society? And how can we fix them? The answer would not be raising the taxes on the poorest, but to lift them out of poverty. However, most people know damn well that this would not work without some major adjustments to the way we do business.
- pyoung 15y ago
  I do agree with you, but I feel I should provide a slight correction. The claim is that 50% of people pay no federal income tax. They still pay payroll tax, state tax, and sales tax. So when conservatives make the '50% claim' they are being fairly deceptive.
buff-a 15y ago
There is a useful and effective fiction called "property" that I continue to support. However, when 3% of the people earn 50% of the money, and use this fact to complain about paying 50% of the taxes, then it may be time to demonstrate that this fiction exists only as long as it is mutually beneficial, as opposed to some God given right or a fact of nature.
njharman 15y ago
Yeah, "you earned it". Not your children. Why should they get free ride? Estate taxes exist to encourage doing something productive with your immeanse wealth rather than just hoarding it.
comex 15y ago
Jon Stewart recently took down the argument to tax the poor rather effectively: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare---the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-o...

18 points by nhebb 15y ago

The top 250,000 people basically run the government, so his polemic needs to be addressed at them. All the special interests he talks about are from his cohort of the top .1% Basically, this article amounts to "Let Them Eat Cake"

phamilton 15y ago
Or it, as other articles have said, says that talk is cheap and if Buffet really thinks he should pay more taxes, stop trying so hard not to pay taxes. The rest of the article says that the government is wasting his money. He lists a few good examples.
gcb 15y ago
care to elaborate "The top 250,000 people basically run the government"?
- pyoung 15y ago
  Look up the citizens united case. The supreme court essentially said that money = speech, and therefore, spending money to influence political campaigns and elections is protected by the first amendment.
  - gcb 15y ago
    but i think the 250000 people is just the poor with a good life.... isn't that about the <1% you are taking about?
    - pyoung 15y ago
      Not sure I understand. The top 1% have little in common with the poor, especially when it comes to political interests. Due to the supreme court case, they can now spend unlimited amounts of money to try and influence politics, which means that despite their significant difference in population sizes, they are over-represented in our government.
      - gcb 15y ago
        the top 1% buys peanuts that cost 250.000 each.

joezydeco 15y ago

"Of my current income this year, I expect to pay 80%-90% in federal income taxes, state income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal and state estate taxes." Huh? What is he possibly doing that warrants this high of a tax on his income?

jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
It's particularly odd that he's planning on paying estate taxes (unless he plans to die this year). Estate taxes are paid by the estates of decedents, not by living people.
pyoung 15y ago
I think he needs to get a new tax accountant. Either that or he is lying, or using some really deceptive stats.
wisty 15y ago
He pays 30% income tax, 15% payroll, 15% social security and medicare, then accrue a tax of 30% on his estate. That adds up to 90%. Don't question it. Or maybe he has untaxed (or lowly taxed) assets that are crashing, and moderately taxed salary. Lose 3 million due to crashing assets (untaxed), make 4 million salary with a 25% tax rate, and your total tax rate is 100%. But that wouldn't be a typical year.

jeffreymcmanus 15y ago

I don't understand the often-repeated conservative talking point that "almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all". There are only two kinds of people who pay no income taxes at all: the desperately poor and the super-rich (who are taxed on investments at the 15% long-term capital gains rate). Is the conservative proposal really that we should tax the desperately poor? Because that seems not only a terrible public policy choice, but an extremely inefficient way to close our budget gap.

dantheman 15y ago
I did a little googling for you, from 2009: "About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization." ... "In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax." http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-a...
- wycats 15y ago
  Low- and middle-income families pay most of their taxes in the form of payroll taxes, which are a mandatory 15% tax (shared by the employer, who also pays their salary) on all income. Consumption taxes also apply to everyone, and for those who spend most of their income each year, this amounts to at a 5-10% additional tax. Virtually nobody, with the exception of the very poor who qualify for the EITC, are safe from these tax. The "50% pay no tax" is a right-wing talking point that is intentionally dishonest.
  - NeilCJames 15y ago
    What makes Golub's point so misleading is that he counts consumption taxes, payroll taxes, state taxes, and even future estate taxes when he pays them, but only looks at federal income tax to get the "half the people pay nothing" line.

jmspring 15y ago

Tax rates were higher under Clinton and the economy was booming. Oh, and there was a budget surplus. Along comes W, we end up in multiple confrontations over seas, cut incoming revenues (of which I will admit to benefiting), and end up with huge deficits? Clearly going back to anything in the Clinton era would tank the economy. The particular article is particularly fluffy in the "private enterprise will solve all problems" with comments about infrastructure programs like trains, etc. The fact that we are spending less on infrastructure (roads, rail, fiber, etc) is one reason we are seeing an overall quality of service decline. I will certainly admit there are issues with the US tax code and there needs to be more efficiency in the system. It is pretty clear that relying on private industry for infrastructure (especially where there is a (or near) monopoly, the companies do NOT do what's write for the country. Another local to California example PG&E and the gas pipeline debacle.

dantheman 15y ago
The problem isn't taxation, it's spending. If we went back to Clinton levels of spending we'd have a massive surplus. The big cuts that are coming due to the debt ceiling negotiations aren't actually cuts, they're decreases in predicted spending increases -- we can't even hold the budget steady. This is complete madness.
- headShrinker 15y ago
  You're both right.
  - gcb 15y ago
    ...and slightly off topic.
- jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
  The problem is neither taxation nor spending. It's a failure to correlate revenue to our financial commitments. We will not be able to cut our way to deficit reduction in our lifetimes; there's just too much deficit there. The superstitious belief that we can balance our books by cuts alone (thereby likely throwing the country into a second recession, which would make matters worse) is the real madness in this discussion.

wisty 15y ago

Did he actually read Buffett's article? Warren Buffett points out that while the rich do pay quite a bit of income tax, they often don't pay the same share of other taxes. Then he claims he pay's 80%+ tax. Um, really? I guess if you had massive losses of lowly taxed income, and a really high salary, they could balance each other out and you could pay unbounded taxes. But over 80% does not seem typical.

birken 15y ago

This response is nothing more than political talking points, whereas Warren Buffett's article was a thoughtful and meaningful piece about a simple positive change the country could make to help control the deficit. I'm not saying some of his points aren't possibly valid, but nothing as written in this article is deep enough to be meaningful.

gaurav_v 15y ago

There are a number of huge problems with this argument, but the most important problems are the common ones: 1. There's just so much waste! The byline reads: "Before you ask for more tax money from me, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely." This is then supported by a few examples which don't address any of the big entitlement programs necessary for nontrivial tax-reform. 2. I pay such a large percent of the taxes! He draws authority from the fact that "Today, top earners—the 250,000 people who earn $1 million or more—pay 20% of all income taxes, and the 3% who earn more than $200,000 pay almost half. Almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all. Clearly they earn less and should pay less. But they should pay something and have a stake in our government spending their money too." This is clearly a less meaningful statistic than percentage of income paid, which was the crux of Buffett's argument. If I posses say, 90% of the assets in some country X, certainly it doesn't make sense for me to yell, 'hey, I pay like, 60% of the taxes in this place, and all of you Xonian slackers in the bottom 5% are skating by on a free ride.' It particularly doesn't make sense if, as he proposes, there is no tax on gifting money to your (grand)children, and so perhaps I just inherited the wealth.

kitsune_ 15y ago

What strikes me as most odd is the fact that conservative'ŝ constantly point out that 50% of people pay no taxes at all. They use this figure to illustrate a demand for raising taxes on these people. I never heard a conservative ask the question: Why are there such large income disparities within our society? And how can we fix them? The answer would not be raising the taxes on the poorest, but to lift them out of poverty. However, most people know damn well that this would not work without some major adjustments to the way we do business.

pyoung 15y ago
I do agree with you, but I feel I should provide a slight correction. The claim is that 50% of people pay no federal income tax. They still pay payroll tax, state tax, and sales tax. So when conservatives make the '50% claim' they are being fairly deceptive.

buff-a 15y ago

There is a useful and effective fiction called "property" that I continue to support. However, when 3% of the people earn 50% of the money, and use this fact to complain about paying 50% of the taxes, then it may be time to demonstrate that this fiction exists only as long as it is mutually beneficial, as opposed to some God given right or a fact of nature.

njharman 15y ago

Yeah, "you earned it". Not your children. Why should they get free ride? Estate taxes exist to encourage doing something productive with your immeanse wealth rather than just hoarding it.

comex 15y ago

Jon Stewart recently took down the argument to tax the poor rather effectively: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare---the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-o...