Warren Buffett and the myth of the ‘good billionaire’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
>In other words: I believe in higher income taxes on people like me, but I’m highly organized to avoid having income to report, and I don’t really believe in taxes because I think I should decide how these surplus resources are spent.
I really don't like this slant. If somebody truly believes in taxes, they would pay taxes they don't need to pay? Nonsense. It assumes so much and paints charitable contributions as... malicious? Or at least it implicitly assumes that Buffett's billions aren't deserved (in whatever sense the author thinks it means to deserve something), and should be assumed to be the property of the public.
Buffett's signed the Giving Pledge, and has given tremendous billions to charity, with many more billions to come. The charitable causes he supports aim to solve real problems that governments are often poorly suited to solve. Having a policy preference of a higher tax rate while minimizing the taxes you pay is not hypocrisy for either billionaires or middle class Joes.
Seems to me that throwing Buffett under the bus is equivalent to saying... "we don't care if you try to help the world. If you're a billionaire, you're evil." If that sort of opinion becomes popular, good luck getting billionaires to give to charity when they're just gonna get yelled at for it.
Perhaps Buffett doesn't have a singular genius for applying his wealth to charity. It's anti-democratic on its face to just surrender control of "what problems are solved" to a single person, regardless of the decision metric. Is it truly better for one person to control all of that on a whim? Even assuming the best of intentions, he may pick a disease charity based on a close association with a victim rather than any broad rational analysis. You're just hopping right on board with his unquestioned assertion "I'm better at picking," did you give that one any pause or just hopped right up to carry that water?
What are the problems that governments are 'often' poorly suited to solve? Would governments be more or less suited to deal with these issues if they hadn't been defunded to support the personal wealth and charitable whims of billionaires?
At a certain level, any decision made by any individual with autonomy is anti-democratic. The greater that person's autonomy, the larger the effects, and for billionaires those effects are large. They aren't always "better at picking" than the government, but having diversifying our methods of problem solving yields better results. The world would not get eradicated of polio as quickly if the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation didn't work on it. The Against Malaria Foundation does a more cost effective job of preventing malaria than just about any organization on the planet. Habitat for Humanity completes an amazing mission of building affordable housing, teaching skills to interested volunteers, and helping people invest in their community all at the same time.
If government is the only tool in the toolbox, you'll only hammer the nails that governments can hammer.
When billionaires take food out of the mouths of workers' families, they're lucky they're not made an offer they can't refuse. Even a few interested people amongst millions who have had more than enough of billionaires buying politicians, buying tax laws, stealing from society, and cheating workers out of living with dignity would make a difference to send a message. Strike the shepherd and the herd will follow. and Chop enough hands, theft disappears.
They should feel lucky to not have their stolen treasure reclaimed to help people, rather than overbidding on real estate to park it in empty homes that real owners could live in.
If we can determine whether we agree or disagree about whether Warren Buffett is more or less virtuous than the average billionaire, then we can have a productive conversation.
Feel free to have that "productive conversation" by yourself.
Creating an abstract notion of what he represents as a member of the billionaire class is talking about something entirely different, and something that is distracted by notions of class warfare, social justice, and a thousand other emotionalized predispositions. It's less accurate and less useful if you care about judging an individual as an individual.
Buffet's wealth has increased, but the vast majority of that is held assets increasing in value. If you have signed baseball card in your attic and something occurs to make the value of that card skyrocket, your personal wealth has increased but you don't owe any taxes on that increase. Eventually if you sell that item you'll owe taxes on the gains, but you are under no obligation to sell. Increase in value is not income, Buffett wasn't getting handed hundreds of millions in cash every month.
Buffet's wealth went up by 37% from 2014 to 2018. In the same time period the Dow Jones rose 49%. The difference is billions of dollars Buffett was giving away (had he kept the money instead of making donations his wealth would've risen 55% in that time period). Tax credits for philanthropic gifts are neither new nor malicious.
Trying to make being a billionaire impossible(which is what the author of the article seems to have as a goal) will end up giving more power to politicians to try to pick winners and losers more so than the current system.
It's just very undemocratic to have the most important matters in society being largely managed by single or small groups of individuals who have grossly disproportionate levels of power and little accountability. And this is what we're dealing with when giant private companies are in control of things like our access to information, healthcare, transport, etc.
Wealthy people have influence - that is the ability to persuade people, bribe people etc. Politicians have power, that is, the ability to coerce people.
The purposeful gamification of the US tax system is self-evident by it's Enron-like accounting complexity.
The accretion over decades of a litany of exemptions and credits, numerous changes to the tax codes, and minimization/dodging chicanery are the evidence of regulatory capture by the rich to make themselves richer.
Furthermore, the special privileges afforded to the rich for their income and balance sheets compared to the property, savings, retirement, and income of individual workers is completely unfair.
Over a certain point of income, personal or corporate, the tax rate should increase geometrically.