State of the Union: The Buffett Rule Returns Along with Buffett’s Secretary

Not just incompetent but boring.

President Obama has to be disingenuous about raising the Capital Gains rate from 15% to whatever.
Why didn’t this “great” injustice get dealt with during the first 2 years of his presidency when he had total Demo control?
The 15% capital gains rate is nothing new.
The answer is that the Demos would and will never raise the Capital Gains rate, risk their political careers and take the chance at stifling investment.
There are reasons the rate is 15%.
This Buffett rule is a campaign ploy meant to deceive the American people.

800000 manufacturing jobs lost, 1.6 million out of work and that in just 3 years. Maybe he can start telling his czar for jobs in America Jeff Immelt to bring back the jobs he outsourced to China.

The President does not want a fair system. He wants more money. Period. If he was for fairness he could have made it a point to get around to tax reform as he promised last year. He didn’t and he continues to try and create hatred and disdain among the classes. If sensible taxation were to be his aim then those of us who don’t earn much would pay a little less, those who pay none at all would pay a little and those who earn a lot would pay a lot. He knows that a fair tax system would elimiante, eventually, thousands of “Govment” jobs and he just can’t have this.

The 15% capital gains rate is nothing new
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Wrong again. That rate was set by…you guessed it…George Bush and the Republicans. Who else?
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Posted by: baloney patrol | January 24, 2012, 1:40 pm 1:40 pm

Wrong still yet again.
Bush is old news, so last decade ago.
like I said the 15% capital gains rate is nothing new.

nd guess what else? President Obama had the senate and house two years scott free. Without any problems they could have done away with that provision, raised the rate and been fat dumb and happy. They didn’t. Why not?

Posted by: david | January 24, 2012, 3:02 pm 3:02 pm

Because you don’t raise taxes in the middle of a free-fall economic collapse like was left by the Bush administration?

“Because you don’t raise taxes in the middle of a free-fall economic collapse like was left by the Bush administration?” – Dan

Hey Dan let me remind you that you said the collapse started in 2006.
2009 is 3 years later and now you say the collapse was still in free fall at that time.
W o w.
That is one long collapse.

The Demos didn’t do away with the Bush Tax Cuts because they have no intention of raising the Capital Gains Rate. They only want to use the issue to try and get re-elected.

You state “Don’t raise taxes in a recession” We are still in one.
Following your logic-Shouldn’t we lower corporate taxes to get out of the malaise?
Why would you put more money in the hands of the government when they have shown over the last 3 years that they are totally ineffective in allocating it.

Because you don’t raise taxes in the middle of a free-fall economic collapse like was left by the Bush administration

With both houses they could have passed a law that said we are raising them back to where they were when Bush was in office at such in such date….they didn’t.Obama needed something to campaign on. And Boo hoo on that Bush leaving him a mess. He will leave one far greater.

Funny how any of you actually think you know what’s going on … Nobody knows what’s really going on, not even me. People will believe what they want to believe. Obama has become a scapegoat. We have many more problems than him. Even if he had a good idea, I think many of you would already write him off before you heard him out.

And Boo hoo on that Bush leaving him a mess. He will leave one far greater.

Posted by: david | January 24, 2012, 6:44 pm 6:44 pm

You might think the situation Bush left the country in is funny. Ask the 8.5 million people who lost their jobs. Ask the tens of thousands of people whose small businesses went bankrupt. Ask the tens of thousands who lost their homes. Ask the millions who were added to the food stamps program just to survive.

Posted by: Dane | January 24, 2012, 8:08 pm 8:08 pm

You might think the situation Bush left the country in is funny. Ask the 8.5 million people who lost their jobs. Ask the tens of thousands of people whose small businesses went bankrupt. Ask the tens of thousands who lost their homes. Ask the millions who were added to the food stamps program just to survive.

“Because you don’t raise taxes in the middle of a free-fall economic collapse like was left by the Bush administration?” – Dan

Hey Dan let me remind you that you said the collapse started in 2006.
2009 is 3 years later and now you say the collapse was still in free fall at that time.

Posted by: Noz | January 24, 2012, 4:51 pm 4:51 pm

Yes, the the housing market began to collapse in the last quarter of 2005 and the first of 2006. And yes it accelerated. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer Noz. Let’s just leave it at that.

“What railroad line is that?”

Posted by: I Don’t Think So | January 24, 2012, 8:22 pm 8:22 pm

Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC

You might think the situation Bush left the country in is funny.

No, nobody I know thinks it was or is funny. What is terrifying is that the money is gone, we are in debt- more debt than ever and increasingly getter worse faster. Shovel ready jobs! They didn’t exist. What did exist was half billion here and there to a donors fake company,taking contributions from the very people he called fat cats. Not to mention killing a pipeline that would have added some high paying jobs. And some of the oil that was to be transported by pipeline will now come by rail-which is absolutely more dangerous than a pipeline- and rail partially owned by that low paying tax guy;Mr. Buffet . Crony Capilistism! Period.

“What is terrifying is that the money is gone”

Yeah right, the money is gone….that two trillion dollars corporations and the wealthy are just sitting on for example doesn’t really exist!

Posted by: the Republican governor of Nebraska | January 24, 2012, 9:46 pm 9:46 pm

There are oil pipelines all over the country. Many are decades old. We have oil pipelines in a nearby town that were built during WWII. Nobody has ever had oil in their drinking water. The Keystone XL pipeline will be the safest pipeline ever built. Route the pipeline around Nebraska and deny Nebraskans those jobs. Works for me.

Posted by: BP | January 24, 2012, 10:19 pm 10:19 pm

Wouldn’t have been a problem if those platforms were closer to shore as BP requested (or on land). But those thousands of high-paying American jobs are now gone so it’s all good. We don’t need jobs. We’ll be Brazil’s best customer and give Brazilians those jobs (along with $2 billion). Hey, it’s Change!

I wish they did-we have millions of barrels here just waiting for the go -ahead from Mr Obama.

We don’t have to cry to Washington for money-we already get royalties from the private industry oil revenues.We want them to continue-so we don’t get shafted paying the taxes you folks in the lower 48 pay.Or maybe you would rather freeze.

About Buffett’s secretary: There’s a different way of comparing what Buffett and his secretaries/assistants contribute. Their “social spending”, for lack of another word, is like everyone else’s, in that there’s more than just taxes. People also contribute to society via charitable donations. Charity typically solves problems that otherwise the government arguably ought to solve with tax money.

So it’s not enough to just compare what percent of Warren Buffett’s income goes to taxes compared with the percentage his admin-secretary pays. We should look at the total wealth they will earn over their lifetimes, and consider what percent each will contribute in taxes plus charity combined.

Warren Buffett has stated that he intends to give away most of his billions of dollars. He has already given away a lot. That’s sort of like paying well over 90% of his wealth in taxes.

Like Buffett, many wealthy people will use corporations to defer or avoid taxes, and won’t give away most of their wealth until they are at or near the end of their lives. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. If rich people aggressively resist funding the government’s social spending via taxes, but are remarkably generous when allowed to control the social spending they do via charity, then maybe they should be allowed to spend that way.

Allowing rich people to do that minimizes their resistance to social spending. It also makes possible certain kinds of projects that would never happen otherwise. For example, they sometimes act as early stage investors in new businesses. Also, the government might fail to fund certain social welfare projects due to lack of imagination, fear that the project might fail or be criticized as wasteful, shortages of money, or fear of offending certain voters or interest groups. Rich people answer to nobody, so they can gamble on projects.

I have no opinion about how much tax the wealthy should pay. But it seems risky for a society to complain about rich people and to demand more money from them. I fear that might scare some of them away to more wealth-friendly nations. A government and society must make the first move to attract and keep both the wealthy and the people who aspire to becoming wealthy (such as entrepreneurs). This means keeping taxes and government spending at reasonably attractive levels, and spending tax money on social welfare as it becomes available.

Some social democratic countries do the social spending right away, raising taxes immediately to afford it. The risk is that such countries will never experience enough economic growth to allow social programs to be funded at lower tax rates. Potential immigrants will prefer to go elsewhere (all other things being equal), and the wealthy will have less money to spend or invest.

Perhaps Ms Bosanek should publish her tax filings so we can see what she makes. Perhaps she makes more than ABC imagines which is why her earned income rate is so high. Does she earn 80 to 100K$, or does she make 36K? It makes a difference. Does she also have unearned income? If ABC is ho insistent that people should be upset about the gross contrast, it seems to me that we deserve much more specific information.

The 15% capital gains rate is nothing new
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‘Wrong again. That rate was set by…you guessed it…George Bush and the Republicans. Who else?’

Correct — now look at the revenue from capital gains after the tax CUT. The government received MORE tax revenue at the LOWER rate from 2003-2006 after the cut. Would you prefer a higher tax rate and LESS revenue??