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Is that all he can come up with?


Cardboard

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http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/07/news/economy/obama_taxes/index.htm?iid=Lead

 

"But one thing is a sure bet: The president will be sounding the theme many times over in his re-election bid."

 

The U.S. has high unemployment and people with lower education are certainly the ones bearing the worst of it. And all that we hear from the President is that the rich should pay more. Make them pay more and move on! This issue certainly won't fix unemployment and the very large deficits. I am sure that the vast majority of millionaires, would prefer to pay higher taxes than being stuck with this stagnant economy forever.

 

Let's look at rough numbers. He is talking about 25% of millionaires. Well, that is about 1 million people. For the sake of it, let's just say that as a whole they would pay $100,000 more a year in income taxes. That is $100 billion in additional revenues. Maybe a step in the right direction to reduce the deficits, but still a tiny step. There is nothing in there that will help the economy or the poor.

 

That is why I am saying that he lacks imagination and worst, by keeping the issue solely on that, he has created things like OWS and likely bigger and much more maligned protests down the road if things don't get better.

 

I don't care if you are democrat, republican or other, but this is a joke. An adult needs to get control of this White House sooner or later and try to address the big issues in a meaningful way.

 

Cardboard

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I think you're giving politicians too much credit. I doubt the next president will be able to do much without Americans revolting. It's curious; if you ask them, most citizens appear to want us to reduce the deficit, but if you ask them, they'll also they want to keep all of our entitlement programs and will get quite upset if someone decides to cut or eliminate them.

 

It certainly doesn't help that America can't seem to figure out what it wants. In 2008, the Democrats took control of the White House and increased their majorities in the House and Senate. In 2010, the Republicans took back the House and reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate. In 2012? The Democratic president has a net negative job approval rating of 8.2%, the Congress is almost universally despised, and yet the Democrats have a lead of 1.2% in the generic Congressional poll average.

 

I think the biggest thing is that America needs to decide what it wants and quit playing hot potato with government every few years. That's just in my opinion, of course, and it's not worth much.

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Well, that is exactly why I said that an adult needs to control the White House. Someone who won't care so much about what people want, but that will make the right calls to straight the ship for the long term. A dictator if you will, but one that will surrender his power 4 years afterwards.

 

No one wants to pay higher taxes. Tell Buffett that going forward, unrealized gains will be marked to market at the end of each year and that taxes will payable on them or as they are in Canada for insurance companies. Things are going well in Canada after all Mr. Buffett so why not reapplying? You will hear a bunch of: hmmm, well, hmmm and few coughs in there. Well, you need to do your part too Mr. Buffett, your real part. Not just a higher tax percentage on the income of a minuscule portion of your wealth. Then, we will be able to really compare your taxable income with your secretary.

 

Equally, no one wants their entitlement cut.

 

So who will go in there and change the retirement age? Deny social security to anyone above a certain income? Reform medicare?

 

These are things that certain European countries are now forced to contemplate because they were not proactive. They waited for the crisis to occur and now it may already be too late.

 

Cardboard

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Just own Berkshire stock with your $1b and then put $10m in tax-exempt municipal bonds.

 

Net worth $1.01 billion.

Maybe 500k income

0% tax rate.

 

Need more income?  Buy more municipals instead of some of that Berkshire stock.

 

Recently they decided to return cash to shareholders via a buyback -> tax free once again.

 

It's a joke really, this idea that you can get the rich to pay more in tax.  They don't have to pay more if they don't want to.

 

One probably needs to mark capital gains to market like Cardboard wrote to get Mr Buffett on board in helping with the tax bill.

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