Buffett made $62,855,038 last year

[alwaysinvert]

No, I didn't realize the tax cuts were temporary in any sense, but my argument about the years was not legal but philosophical (or to be more precise, logical).

 

My status quo on the other hand is a moral standpoint - what exists before the government messes with markets. Just like your status quo, that of returning to the tax rates that existed before an in your view failed tax break, is a moral sentiment.

 

As for the analysis of the actual tax breaks it seems that we pretty much agree. I said earlier in the thread that there are lots of better taxes to cut than capital gains if you want to have an effect on unemployment and you agreed to that. Our differences lie in where that takes us. Being a libertarian kind of guy that doesn't lead me to the conclusion that you should raise the capital gains tax back up again, necessarily.

 

Now, I don't know enough about your balance sheet problems to be able to tell if you could cut your way out of this without touching social security and that other kind of insurance stuff (medicare and medicaid I guess, if there is something more like that I'm ignorant of it, sorry) of which there are no alternatives for many people due to the current structure of the system. But if you could, I wouldn't favor any tax increases at all.

 

Regarding social security, I think it's kind of ironic that we have a more privatized system than you guys. I recommend everyone to read about that in Nudge by Richard Thaler if you haven't yet.

[UhuruPeak]

AZ_Value,

It would be interesting to see what France has achieved with free tuition (I believe it still is) vs the U.S.

Late response and out of turn, apologies if others already jumped in to answer this question.  France has free education for university, engineering school but it can be quite expensive (relative to the average household income) in business schools.  University is very hard because the kids are left alone, there's a lot of attrition during the first 2 or 3 years; I believe it gets pretty good for anyone sticking with it a bit longer however, and you can go up to PhD level (or MD, JD equivalents) for free.  Unless you have one of these professional degrees however, perspectives after a University degree aren't very good, companies like engineers better typically.  These schools are often free but not always, and French engineers are well respected outside of France as well as inside.

Now, even assuming this all is free doesn't mean kids have equal chances - sons and daugthers of professionals & teachers do significantly better than others on average.  I'd think the German system is superior in that sense, with any kid able to chose a field of his/her choosing and opportunities real & well remunerated even after trade school.  In both countries, one of the downside is that students do not have much sense of urgency so they can end up costing a pretty penny to the tax payers.