None of you are rich. Why are you defending billionaires?

[Avatar4321]

A lot of people admire Buffet for what he's doing? You mean tax evasion?

Not only that, but the American people admire Buffet for trying to use the government to prevent others from working out of poverty and challenging his power?

Buffett has brought more people of poverty than anyone.

What kind of asshole attacks a great man like Warren Buffett?

Yet, he wants the government to increase taxes to prevent people from pulling themselves out of poverty.

BTW name a single person Buffet has brought out of poverty

 

[Chris]

Not only that, but the American people admire Buffet for trying to use the government to prevent others from working out of poverty and challenging his power?

Buffett has brought more people of poverty than anyone.

What kind of asshole attacks a great man like Warren Buffett?

Yet, he wants the government to increase taxes to prevent people from pulling themselves out of poverty.

BTW name a single person Buffet has brought out of poverty

Everyone who bought Berkshire Hathaway stock along the way.

And increasing taxes reduces the deficit and allows the government to function.

And we have the lowest taxes of any industrialized country except for Japan and Spain.

How's that working out for us?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Bullshit. Wanting to restrict the right to vote to people who have some sort of actual stake in the system has nothing to do with "despising" anyone. How utterly childish. It has to do with the basic realization that people with no motivation for making the system work properly will inevitably screw it up . . . as, in fact, they have.

Apparently he despises his children because he doesn't let them drive his car or use his credit cards.

Or make the rules of the house.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The top 500 richest Americans control more wealth than the bottom 50% of wage earners combined. How is that fair? That's how things are run in Rwanda. The bottom wage earners scramble from day to day actually producing while the absolute minority gets the money.

If you raise taxes on the lower income wage earners, you diminish their capacity to spend. there are many more in the bottom percentages of wage earners than, obviously, the absolute richest. How can the rich create demand? They are too few in number to consume enough goods to open new means of production. The lower wage earners represent the vast majority of consumers. Consumer spending drives demand. And demand drives job growth.

If you have to have the difference between the US and Rwanda spelled out and explained to you, then you're too willfully pig-stupid to even be worth the air it would take to talk to you.

Why? In Rwanda, the very few own everything while the very many own nothing. If the wealth of the United States continues to be consolidated among the very few, what, pray tell, could possibly make the difference between the system in Rwanda and the system here?

How did the wealth get so concentrated among the very few here? Take a hint: Supply Side Economic policies.

Think hard, and see if you can come up with the most obvious difference between the US and Rwanda, and then apply it to how THEIR "very few" got their money and how ours did. Feel free to ask around for as much help as possible. I realize that thinking is not your major talent in life.

And don't flatter yourself that you rate any more responses from me until you can clear this hurdle, because my rather limited pity just ran out.

 

[Londoner]

. . . [why do average people support policies that harm their economic interests, while at the same time supporting policies which contribute to the concentration of financial and political power of a small group of wealthy elites?]

The answer actually leads to one of the most spectacular political stories in American history. It has to do with a shift in populism which started with Nixon and was solidified under Reagan.

Here is a very brief history of the shift.

In the 60s, business started to worry about the power of Labor. This was prompted perhaps because their staggering postwar profits started to wane.

So they began investing in a political party. They used financial pressure to replace the Liberal Rockefeller wing with candidates who would help them lower labor costs, regulations, and taxes. In short, they wanted to end New Deal Capitalism (which taxed their profits in order to build a strong middle class).

They had a very serious hurdle. America was very prosperous during the postwar period, which lead to a broad consensus for the New Deal. In order to over turn the New Deal, the Right had to win the hearts and minds of the country. They had to break the New Deal coalition and sever the relationship the Democrats had with the middle class - especially in the South and Heartland.

It all started with LBJ and the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon and Goldwater used the Southern Strategy to weaken the hold the democrats had on the South, and they used 60s backlash to weaken the Democratic hold on the heartland. They basically told the south that they didn't think the Federal Government should tell them how to run their lives. Then, Nixon told his Silent White Majority that he would take the country back from the bra burning atheist antiwar free loving hippies. (notice how they shifted from postwar anti-business populism to values or "culture war" populism. This was a strategic way of getting poor people and workers into the tent)

By the time Reagan arrived on the scene the Dixiecrats had completely converted to the Republican party.

How would the GOP keep them in the tent? Remember: the Democrats offered them economic salvation. So what did Ronnie do? Sine he was put in office to help the rich, what kind of salvation would he offer to the poor, whose programs he was cutting. Enter Pat Robertson and the Moral Majority. Like Nixon, Reagan - a divorced man who never set foot in a church and was estranged from his children - shifted the populism from economic to family values.

In the back of the house, he helped big money take over Washington, while in the front of the house he would win elections by protecting middle America from drugs & sin.

The Republican Party won loyalty not by talking about tax cuts to offshore millionaires or how they were going to help business ship manufacturing jobs to Asian sweatshops, but by focusing on social issues, communists, and terrorists. In short, they would fight evil demons at home and abroad. This is how they got poor people to vote against their economic interests - by shifting the discussion from disappearing jobs to Islamo-fascist mexican socialists who are going to confiscate your guns and make your child gay.

(in other words. the GOP has cultivated useful idiots in order to win elections so that they can help their backers continue to get subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks for sending jobs overseas)

 

[OODA_Loop]

This is how they got poor people to vote against their economic interests - by shifting the discussion from disappearing jobs to Islamo-fascist mexican socialists who are going to confiscate your guns and make your child gay.

I would vote to keep my guns and child free from the gay.

 

[mudwhistle]

Buffett has brought more people of poverty than anyone.

What kind of asshole attacks a great man like Warren Buffett?

Yet, he wants the government to increase taxes to prevent people from pulling themselves out of poverty.

BTW name a single person Buffet has brought out of poverty

Everyone who bought Berkshire Hathaway stock along the way.

And increasing taxes reduces the deficit and allows the government to function.

And we have the lowest taxes of any industrialized country except for Japan and Spain.

How's that working out for us?

Horsepucky.

Even if that were true all you need do is add in state and local taxes and we pay more by far.

 

[mudwhistle]

. . . [why do average people support policies that harm their economic interests, while at the same time supporting policies which contribute to the concentration of financial and political power of a small group of wealthy elites?]

The answer actually leads to one of the most spectacular political stories in American history. It has to do with a shift in populism which started with Nixon and was solidified under Reagan.

Here is a very brief history of the shift.

In the 60s, business started to worry about the power of Labor. This was prompted perhaps because their staggering postwar profits started to wane.

So they began investing in a political party. They used financial pressure to replace the Liberal Rockefeller wing with candidates who would help them lower labor costs, regulations, and taxes. In short, they wanted to end New Deal Capitalism (which taxed their profits in order to build a strong middle class).

They had a very serious hurdle. America was very prosperous during the postwar period, which lead to a broad consensus for the New Deal. In order to over turn the New Deal, the Right had to win the hearts and minds of the country. They had to break the New Deal coalition and sever the relationship the Democrats had with the middle class - especially in the South and Heartland.

It all started with LBJ and the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon and Goldwater used the Southern Strategy to weaken the hold the democrats had on the South, and they used 60s backlash to weaken the Democratic hold on the heartland. They basically told the south that they didn't think the Federal Government should tell them how to run their lives. Then, Nixon told his Silent White Majority that he would take the country back from the bra burning atheist antiwar free loving hippies. (notice how they shifted from postwar anti-business populism to values or "culture war" populism. This was a strategic way of getting poor people and workers into the tent)

By the time Reagan arrived on the scene the Dixiecrats had completely converted to the Republican party.

How would the GOP keep them in the tent? Remember: the Democrats offered them economic salvation. So what did Ronnie do? Sine he was put in office to help the rich, what kind of salvation would he offer to the poor, whose programs he was cutting. Enter Pat Robertson and the Moral Majority. Like Nixon, Reagan - a divorced man who never set foot in a church and was estranged from his children - shifted the populism from economic to family values.

In the back of the house, he helped big money take over Washington, while in the front of the house he would win elections by protecting middle America from drugs & sin.

The Republican Party won loyalty not by talking about tax cuts to offshore millionaires or how they were going to help business ship manufacturing jobs to Asian sweatshops, but by focusing on social issues, communists, and terrorists. In short, they would fight evil demons at home and abroad. This is how they got poor people to vote against their economic interests - by shifting the discussion from disappearing jobs to Islamo-fascist mexican socialists who are going to confiscate your guns and make your child gay.

(in other words. the GOP has cultivated useful idiots in order to win elections so that they can help their backers continue to get subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks for sending jobs overseas)

It's funny. The left makes us poor so we'll vote for Democrats and their entitlement programs. So they spend all of their time trying to make the Middle-class unemployed and we're supposed to thank them for it.

How's that $16 muffin taste????

 

[Oldstyle]

. . . [why do average people support policies that harm their economic interests, while at the same time supporting policies which contribute to the concentration of financial and political power of a small group of wealthy elites?]

The answer actually leads to one of the most spectacular political stories in American history. It has to do with a shift in populism which started with Nixon and was solidified under Reagan.

Here is a very brief history of the shift.

In the 60s, business started to worry about the power of Labor. This was prompted perhaps because their staggering postwar profits started to wane.

So they began investing in a political party. They used financial pressure to replace the Liberal Rockefeller wing with candidates who would help them lower labor costs, regulations, and taxes. In short, they wanted to end New Deal Capitalism (which taxed their profits in order to build a strong middle class).

They had a very serious hurdle. America was very prosperous during the postwar period, which lead to a broad consensus for the New Deal. In order to over turn the New Deal, the Right had to win the hearts and minds of the country. They had to break the New Deal coalition and sever the relationship the Democrats had with the middle class - especially in the South and Heartland.

It all started with LBJ and the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon and Goldwater used the Southern Strategy to weaken the hold the democrats had on the South, and they used 60s backlash to weaken the Democratic hold on the heartland. They basically told the south that they didn't think the Federal Government should tell them how to run their lives. Then, Nixon told his Silent White Majority that he would take the country back from the bra burning atheist antiwar free loving hippies. (notice how they shifted from postwar anti-business populism to values or "culture war" populism. This was a strategic way of getting poor people and workers into the tent)

By the time Reagan arrived on the scene the Dixiecrats had completely converted to the Republican party.

How would the GOP keep them in the tent? Remember: the Democrats offered them economic salvation. So what did Ronnie do? Sine he was put in office to help the rich, what kind of salvation would he offer to the poor, whose programs he was cutting. Enter Pat Robertson and the Moral Majority. Like Nixon, Reagan - a divorced man who never set foot in a church and was estranged from his children - shifted the populism from economic to family values.

In the back of the house, he helped big money take over Washington, while in the front of the house he would win elections by protecting middle America from drugs & sin.

The Republican Party won loyalty not by talking about tax cuts to offshore millionaires or how they were going to help business ship manufacturing jobs to Asian sweatshops, but by focusing on social issues, communists, and terrorists. In short, they would fight evil demons at home and abroad. This is how they got poor people to vote against their economic interests - by shifting the discussion from disappearing jobs to Islamo-fascist mexican socialists who are going to confiscate your guns and make your child gay.

(in other words. the GOP has cultivated useful idiots in order to win elections so that they can help their backers continue to get subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks for sending jobs overseas)

Useful idiots? Reagan got the middle class to vote for him because the policies of Jimmy Carter had left the country in such bad shape they were looking for change, not because he "tricked" them. He wasn't elected because he ran on protecting people from drugs and sin. He was elected because he ran on protecting people from economic "malaise" brought about by big government controls.

 

[Oldstyle]

Buffett has brought more people of poverty than anyone.

What kind of asshole attacks a great man like Warren Buffett?

Yet, he wants the government to increase taxes to prevent people from pulling themselves out of poverty.

BTW name a single person Buffet has brought out of poverty

Everyone who bought Berkshire Hathaway stock along the way.

And increasing taxes reduces the deficit and allows the government to function.

And we have the lowest taxes of any industrialized country except for Japan and Spain.

How's that working out for us?

With all due respect, Chris...anyone who could afford to buy Berkshire Hathaway stock hardly qualifies as poverty stricken since it's the highest priced stock on the exchange and has been for a long time.

As for raising taxes reducing the deficit? Not in a recession. Raising taxes in a recession further slows the economy and results in additional losses in revenue. If you REALLY want to reduce the deficit then you should be looking to broaden the tax base by getting rid of tax loopholes and lowering overall taxes while at the same time cutting government spending.

In regards to the tax rate? Our personal income tax rate may be low but our corporate tax rate is the second highest in the world to Japan and that by only the smallest margin.

 

[asterism]

It costs a lot to live in the greatest country on earth.

True. Does it automatically have to cost more each and every year? Is a person's income subject to the whims of the masses? Do you see a problem with the majority agreeing to fund their preferences by taxing people other than them?

The strength and security of this Nation depends in large measure on the stability of its economy, which depends in turn on the distribution of its wealth resources.

Within the past three decades the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the developed world in its living standard, in its industrial productivity, in its upward mobility and in the education of its youth, each of which, and more, is a direct result of the incremental dismantling of the middle class, which has been achieved in part by the ability of corporations to export jobs to foreign countries and to import merchandise produced by slave labor without the imposition of protective tariffs. At the same time as these economically destructive practices have operated to systematically decimate the formerly affluent middle class other deviously conceived and cunningly enacted legislation has enabled the transfer of massive amounts of the Nation's financial resources from the middle class to a small number of politically advantaged individuals referred to by former President George W. Bush as his "base." The "haves and have-mores."

One of the ways this has been done is by gradually but significantly reducing the tax rates of the rich as shown:

The income tax rate of upper income levels:

1950 - 91%

1980 - 70%

1985 - 50%

1987 - 38%

2004 - 35%

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/f...y-june2010.pdf

The right-wing claim that increased taxation causes reduced productivity and growth is shown to be false by the fact that our Nation's most prosperous years, those years between 1950 and 1980, occurred at the same time as the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans were highest. And it is clear that the state of our economy declined in direct proportion to the gradual reduction of those rates.

You are speaking of top marginal rates and you are ignoring the countless loopholes, tax shelters, and favorable (to business) policies that also existed during those times of high marginal rates. You are also saying that the purpose of taxation is social engineering, not funding Constitutional roles of government and that's just not a sustainable situation.

Wealth redistribution by government decree is a recipe for massive economic collapse. High tax rates didn't cause the relative prosperity, economic freedom and people properly managing their money did that. Although the 1950s and 1960s weren't as grand as you imply, otherwise there would have been no need for Johnson's "Great Society." College was not as accessible to the middle class, otherwise there would have been no need for all the government financial assistance programs created then.

 

[asterism]

Why did Buffett become such a fucking tool for the most anti-business, anti-American POTUS ever?

Don't kid yourself. Warren Buffett doesn't advocate ANYTHING that he doesn't think will benefit his bottom line.

That's a crock of shit.

(Reuters) - Warren Buffett has donated another $1.93 billion to five charitable foundations, the third-highest amount since the investor began donating 99 percent of his wealth in 2006

Buffett's donations totaled $1.93 billion in 2006, $2.13 billion 2007, $2.17 billion in 2008 and $1.51 billion in 2009, according to regulatory filings and Berkshire's closing stock prices on the dates the donations were made. The size of the 2010 donation is just above the 2006 donation on that basis.

Warren Buffett donates $1.93 billion to charities | Reuters

Why didn't he send that money to the government if he thinks government needs more money?

 

[Nosmo King]

If you have to have the difference between the US and Rwanda spelled out and explained to you, then you're too willfully pig-stupid to even be worth the air it would take to talk to you.

Why? In Rwanda, the very few own everything while the very many own nothing. If the wealth of the United States continues to be consolidated among the very few, what, pray tell, could possibly make the difference between the system in Rwanda and the system here?

How did the wealth get so concentrated among the very few here? Take a hint: Supply Side Economic policies.

Think hard, and see if you can come up with the most obvious difference between the US and Rwanda, and then apply it to how THEIR "very few" got their money and how ours did. Feel free to ask around for as much help as possible. I realize that thinking is not your major talent in life.

And don't flatter yourself that you rate any more responses from me until you can clear this hurdle, because my rather limited pity just ran out.

I pointed out the means by which the rich consolidated their wealth. Supply side economic policies.

The comparison is apt.

If American debt can be aptly compared to Grecian debt, American wealth disparity can be aptly compared to Rwandan wealth disparity.

And bag the petty insults. You're not very witty, therefore the insults aren't very good.

 

[asterism]

Why? In Rwanda, the very few own everything while the very many own nothing. If the wealth of the United States continues to be consolidated among the very few, what, pray tell, could possibly make the difference between the system in Rwanda and the system here?

How did the wealth get so concentrated among the very few here? Take a hint: Supply Side Economic policies.

Think hard, and see if you can come up with the most obvious difference between the US and Rwanda, and then apply it to how THEIR "very few" got their money and how ours did. Feel free to ask around for as much help as possible. I realize that thinking is not your major talent in life.

And don't flatter yourself that you rate any more responses from me until you can clear this hurdle, because my rather limited pity just ran out.

I pointed out the means by which the rich consolidated their wealth. Supply side economic policies.

The comparison is apt.

If American debt can be aptly compared to Grecian debt, American wealth disparity can be aptly compared to Rwandan wealth disparity.

And bag the petty insults. You're not very witty, therefore the insults aren't very good.

Expound a bit an your point about Rwanda. By what means did the rich in Rwanda consolidate their wealth and what is the time frame and result? What is the distribution history of assets in Rwanda?

 

[Cecilie1200]

So you too are willing to stand against any cuts to HUD or WIC! That's a grand piece of thinking, as my Grandfather would say. Friends of the poor, you and I.

Why do leftist twits hear "help the poor" and immediately translate it into "get the government to give them money"?

Because it's an effective way to help the poor.

 

[Cecilie1200]

If you have to have the difference between the US and Rwanda spelled out and explained to you, then you're too willfully pig-stupid to even be worth the air it would take to talk to you.

Why? In Rwanda, the very few own everything while the very many own nothing. If the wealth of the United States continues to be consolidated among the very few, what, pray tell, could possibly make the difference between the system in Rwanda and the system here?

How did the wealth get so concentrated among the very few here? Take a hint: Supply Side Economic policies.

Nosmo King...you just don't understand. You are not allowed to compare America to Rwanda when discussing wealth disparity. But the right is allowed to compare America to Greece when discussing national debt...

Oh, my goodness. Bfgrn doesn't understand the concept of comparability. Excuse me while I DON'T fall over from any sort of shock and surprise whatsoever.

 

[Oddball]

If you have to have the difference between the US and Rwanda spelled out and explained to you, then you're too willfully pig-stupid to even be worth the air it would take to talk to you.

Why? In Rwanda, the very few own everything while the very many own nothing. If the wealth of the United States continues to be consolidated among the very few, what, pray tell, could possibly make the difference between the system in Rwanda and the system here?

How did the wealth get so concentrated among the very few here? Take a hint: Supply Side Economic policies.

Nosmo King...you just don't understand. You are not allowed to compare America to Rwanda when discussing wealth disparity. But the right is allowed to compare America to Greece when discussing national debt...

Right...Because the income disparity in one nation (America) where the poor have color televisions, multiple automobiles, indoor plumbing, central heating and air conditioning, is obviously analogous to the "income equity" in a nation (Rwanda) where virtually everyone is a dirt farmer or goat herder.

Sometimes, I'm positively astonished at the utter foolishness of the knee-jerk left.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Don't kid yourself. Warren Buffett doesn't advocate ANYTHING that he doesn't think will benefit his bottom line.

That's a crock of shit.

(Reuters) - Warren Buffett has donated another $1.93 billion to five charitable foundations, the third-highest amount since the investor began donating 99 percent of his wealth in 2006

Buffett's donations totaled $1.93 billion in 2006, $2.13 billion 2007, $2.17 billion in 2008 and $1.51 billion in 2009, according to regulatory filings and Berkshire's closing stock prices on the dates the donations were made. The size of the 2010 donation is just above the 2006 donation on that basis.

Warren Buffett donates $1.93 billion to charities | Reuters

That has nothing to do with his bottom line.....Unless he maintains an established bottom line, he wouldn't be so giving.

Now, it would nice to see such a giving man, STOP LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. And also pay his companies humongous tax bill.

Charitable donations have a LOT to do with the bottom line. Financial advisers for the wealthy and for businesses usually encourage them for the deductions, and for the favorable publicity.

And let's not forget that Buffet rarely donates actual cash. He tends to make his donations in shares of Berkshire Hathaway instead. Why is that?

Besides, much of Buffet's charitable giving just HAPPENS to be to the charitable foundations his own children run. Coincidence, right?

From the naive poster's own link:

Buffett donated on Thursday 24.54 million Class B shares of his insurance and investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc, according to a filing on Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

And again:

Other shares went to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for Buffett's late wife, and foundations for their children Howard, Peter and Susan.

 

[Cecilie1200]

A lot of people admire Buffet for what he's doing? You mean tax evasion?

Not only that, but the American people admire Buffet for trying to use the government to prevent others from working out of poverty and challenging his power?

Well, they don't know it, but they're admiring him for lying to them and using their gullibility and willingness to believe he's really altruistic and caring to increase his company's wealth. That old bastard makes money off of every one of his so-called "compassionate" suggestions that certain people should pay more taxes, never doubt it.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Yet, he wants the government to increase taxes to prevent people from pulling themselves out of poverty.

BTW name a single person Buffet has brought out of poverty

Everyone who bought Berkshire Hathaway stock along the way.

And increasing taxes reduces the deficit and allows the government to function.

And we have the lowest taxes of any industrialized country except for Japan and Spain.

How's that working out for us?

Horsepucky.

Even if that were true all you need do is add in state and local taxes and we pay more by far.

And it's not the tax rates that are the problem. The problem would be a federal government that spends like a drunken sailor on the last hour of his shore leave.