Another Recession????

[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

Here's another good read by Bill Gross...long but well worth it.

-spence

you are joking right?

[spence]

Originally Posted by scottw

you are joking right?

I know it is a lot for you to read at one time. If it helps try thinking about baseball.

If that super rich guy went up your ass then this will push it even deeper...get out the lube.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/op...h.html?_r=2&hp

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: August 14, 2011

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

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.

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.

Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

-spence

[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

I know it is a lot for you to read at one time. If it helps try thinking about baseball.


-spence

you've become even nastier than Paul Krugman...perhaps more demented too..if they gave out a Nobel Prize for cranky, delusional leftists...well....

it's excessively long...and boring.. because he's used twice as many words as was necessary to try to impress the progressives...

June 24, 2011
Paul Krugman: It's Not the Madmen in Authority, It's the Fact That the Academic Scribblers Are Mad...

The Triumph of Bad Ideas: Bill Gross of Pimco calls for more fiscal stimulus and denounces the “anti-Keynesian” consensus. Now he tells us. But can we note just how bizarre our situation is? Keynesian economics has actually come through the crisis with flying colors. The only knock on it is the “Obama tried stimulus and it failed, neener neener” thing — but those of us who took our Keynesianism seriously warned literally from the beginning that the stimulus was far too small. And yet in the political domain Keynesianism is seen as discredited, while various forms of crowding out/austerity is expansionary talk, which have in fact totally failed — look at interest rates! — have become orthodoxy.

concensus...concensus...where have I heard that bef--...ohhh...this means that Bill Gross is a D-E-N-I-E-R!!!!!
...........................

Great argument for Keynes

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: 'But even if you were, wouldn't John Maynard Keynes say that if you could employ people to dig a ditch and then fill it up again, that's fine, they're being productively employed, they'd pay taxes, so maybe Boston's Big Dig was just fine after all."

So in Zakaria's view, the government employing people to do absolutely nothing of value would fix the economy.

Krugman..."the stimulus wasn't nearly big enough"
Gross...."more fiscal stimulus"-government spending
Fareed Z...."dig holes and fill them in to stimulate the economy"
Jeffrey Sachs..."Sachs says he would've been fine with a massive stimulus that had been focused on green jobs, "in which the fall in consumer spending would be offset by investments in sustainable energy."-Ezra Klein

like this one
http://www.bostonherald.com/business...8&pos=breaking
hey, how many Obama touted Green Jobs Companies have gone belly up now and how much has it cost the tax payers???

these guys are great I think we've located Spence's "most economists"
................
Spend>>>spend>>>>spend!!!!

arguing for bigger government, more spending and "stimulus", a more statist approach BRILLIANT!!....and citing the Three Stooges of Keynesian economics and Crony Capitalism...Fareed Z, Krugman and Immelt, that's just novel.............wonder if Fareed and Gross know that Krugman recently called for an alien invasion to stimulate military sending to bring the economy back?...

On Sunday's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," New York Times columnist - and, ahem, Nobel laureate - Paul Krugman actually advocated space aliens attack earth thereby requiring a massive defense buildup by the United States that would stimulate the economy.


it's clear Spence that you would be far more comfortable in one of those little socialist countries across the pond

[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

-spence

so... write a check Buffet .....between Soros and Buffet..the left sure champion some real low life billionaires

Buffett pretty much owes his entire fortune to the death tax. #^&#^&#^&#^& Patten notes that one of the less renowned legs of Buffett’s business is “a huge casualty and life insurance business which provides massive reserves of cheap capital to support his other two investing activities.” The third leg of Buffett’s business specializes in the purchase of “family owned businesses at fire sale prices.”

These people were never high rollers, but assets (like farmland) have enough value on paper when it is passed to heirs that their estates end up owing as much as 55% in death taxes. When heirs can’t pay these high taxes without liquidating the business, businesses like Buffett’s development arm swoop in and pick up the property at bargain basement prices.

Back in 1931, the liberal son of an immigrant banker knew what to call this kind of business. Matthew Josephson wrote The Robber Barons to argue that the industrial giants of the 19th century had not created wealth in the right way. They had acted like the feudal barons who for centuries had dominated the mountain passes through the Alps. The great corporations of the Gilded Age "monopolized strategic valley roads or mountain passes through which commerce flowed" just like the old barons-of-the-crags.

Hello, Warren? Isn't your business model exactly the one that so offended young Matthew back in the Great Depression after he got back from a decade living la vie bohème as an ex-pat in Paris? Aren't your businesses sitting at an economic choke-point, exploiting the unintended consequences of bad government economic policy, gouging successful family businesses both coming and going, and exploiting grieving widows?

Warren E. Buffett urged Congress Wednesday to maintain the estate tax, saying that plans to repeal the tax would benefit a handful of the richest American families and widen income disparity in the United States.

Mr. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, told the Senate Finance Committee that advocates of repeal were “dead wrong” to call the tax a “death tax.”
It would be more appropriate to call it a “death present,” Mr. Buffett, 77, said. “A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy.”

Several members of the megarich class, including Buffett, George Soros and William Gates, Sr (Bill Gates' father), opposed efforts by the Bush administration in 2001 to eliminate the estate tax. Gates testified in Congress and expressed concern that eliminating the estate tax would reduce charitable donations.

Although there is little empirical evidence linking charitable contributions to a motivation to avoid taxes, giving away your fortune before you die is one sure way to avoid the estate tax. In 2004, The Wall Street Journal suggested to Buffett that he should make sure his money would go to the government if he felt so strongly about the need for an estate tax. The Journal challenged him not to take advantage of the loophole in estate-tax laws by donating his wealth to a foundation before his death. However, as everyone knows by now, this is exactly what Buffett did when he pledged to give $31 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and another $6 billion to foundations run by his children. typical