Thursday, August 25, 2011

Warren Buffet speaks

If you won't believe it from me, believe it from this guy:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

Stop coddling the super-rich
When even the billionaires are complaining that their taxes are too low, their taxes are too low. Republicans in Congress are objecting to extending the Payroll tax holiday even while they demand permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts, because the first one helps working people and the second one helps investing people.

Seriously. At what point do working people wake up and see what the Republican party stands for?

2 comments:

  1. The Rep are awake and know exactly what they stand for - GOD. That would be the protestant version of god.
    Or
    They, at the individual level, are like all subversive groups and believe they are the ones that will some how come out on top if those pesky rules will just go away.

    Like many "only the strongest survive" believers it has not occurred to them that the only reason they do survive is because the surrounding group tolerates their cheating of those rules. Remove or drastically alter the rules and the game becomes very different. That they may not survive is not an allowable factual thought process.

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  2. It is true that self-justification usually leads to self-destruction. That's how we know it's bad.

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