View: Warren Buffett and the Myth of the ‘Good Billionaire’
economictimes.indiatimes.com
economictimes.indiatimes.com
He's given away something like $27 Billion so far. Getting upset because he has only paid tax on the money he has physically received and not on his net wealth seems a little disingenuous.
For example, in the article the author laments that Buffett's wealth went up by $X, but he only paid $Y in taxes, and that's not fair to middle class people. But middle class people benefit in exactly the same way - if you pay $250k for a house and a year later because of a housing boom it is now worth $350k, you don't pay taxes on that $100,000 you "made".
If the whole world decides a random rock in your back yard is worth $10M, you shouldn't need to give the government $3M while the rock just sits there.
> So I regret to inform you that Mr. Buffett is actually the most dangerous kind of billionaire we have. The worst billionaires are the Good Billionaires. The sort who make it seem like the problem is the distortion of the system when, in fact, the problem is the system.
It's also obvious by what they don't say. The author very breezily mentions that Buffett has donated some money, but no amounts or anything.
side note: India Times, please get rid of the silly copy and paste override. It is just plain obnoxious
Why not?
General taxation is done on two principles -- ability to pay and the principle of fairness. Those who have more pay more.
If you have a rock worth $10M in your back yard you can certainly pay. You'd have to get a loan or sell the rock to do so, but you have more ability to pay than anybody who isn't a millionaire.
And by not selling for $10M, you're demonstrating that the rock is worth more than $10M to you. So the government is doing you a favor by only taxing on the $10M rather than on the actual value to yourself.
Think about this - I have un unrealized appreciation in an asset, and I am a normal person, the only way I'd be able to pay the taxes on my $10m rock would be by selling the rock. Wealth taxes can force a sale to cover the taxes. Practically, this is not something we want. In fact, most cities have laws designed to help people NOT be forced to sell. If every long time owner of an apartment in Oakland had to pay taxes on their real-estate appreciation, the majority would be forced to sell. Net: Wealth taxes are strongly regressive, and pro gentrification.
Actually, in most states in the USA, you do. When your home's value increases, your property tax in nominal dollars increase.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/homeowners-are-facing-the-...
> In order to come up with your tax bill, your tax office multiplies the tax rate by the assessed value. So, if your property is assessed at $300,000 and your local government sets your tax rate at 2.5%, your annual tax bill will be $7,500.
Just to note, you don't pay taxes on the speculative "profit", but you do pay property tax as some percentage of it's "value" upon reassessment by a blackbox.
>>If the whole world decides a random rock in your back yard is worth $10M, you shouldn't need to give the government $3M while the rock just sits there.
I totally agree. Unfortunately, that's exactly what governments do with cars and boats. No one should be forced to pay a tithe for owning property or risk being thrown in jail for refusing.
JD Rockefeller once was worth 2% of the US GDP.
The “sky-is-falling, everything is getting worse” narrative gets eyeballs but isn’t true.
Do you see similar things happening now?
Anyone can open a social media site. Anyone can use it. Anyone can leave it.
Being where everyone wants to be isn’t a monopoly when innumerable other venues are no harder to visit.
If you expand "natural" resource to include something pertinent to network effects (e.g. human attention is a resource) then I see that as the beginning of an argument in the opposite direction.
In that case I must be a very special case or they are absolutely clueless or something.
I see nothing but idiotic ideas coming out from Googles knowledge of my data:
- absurdly irrelevant and even insulting ads. I can easily count on one hand the useful ones I have got (one for a local shop and one for Jetbrains products I think).
- Google Now suggesting in the middle of the night that I should text the boss two levels above me or call a random girl I once helped with a computer(!)
The government intervention just artificially sped up a process that was already happening.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
WB is probably vertically integrated into at least ten verticals if you look at it like this.
Billionaires are not going to get a lot of sympathy, but it’s repugnant to characterize entire groups of people with the same brush.
The problem with this kind of rhetoric is that it overplays your hand, and therefore ends up detracting from your core points. Most of us want wealth inequality lessened. Demonizing one group over another is not going to get us there.
No, it's not. This isn't about whatever imagined prejudice or discrimination you're talking about. As the synopsis makes clear, the piece is marking an argument about the how "There is no way to be a billionaire in America without taking advantage of a system predicated on cruelty." Warran Buffett is being attacked because he has been able to manipulate the American system of capital, which the piece suggests is fundamentally unjust, to his extreme advantage, while millions of Americans are pushed further and further to the margins.
You can disagree with that premise, but don't pretend that this is discrimination.
The whole reason the article focusses on Buffet is to explore exactly your worry that there might be any such thing as a mixed group of varying innocence being painted with a single brush unfairly.
Pick the best possible example and judge, does the best known example of a billionaire validate the idea of billionaires? And at least this analysis decides no it does not. You may argue that this analysis is in error but I'm addressing your question about the right to do the analysis at all.
Billionaires are artificial constructs. The entire class can be judged and un-created with no moral problem at all. One's billionair-ism isn't like one's atheism or albinism. We can decide any time we want that no such thing as a billionaire should be possible, and make it so.
"Myth of the good arms dealer" seems fair. "Myth of the good mob boss" seems fair. The article makes the case that there's no way to accumulate $1,000,000,000 without taking advantage of people in inexcusable ways, so I'm not sure I see your criticism as valid.
Modern capitalism has done more to feed, house, and clothe people, provide for advanced medical care, educate people, and enable people to pursue their own happiness, than any other economic system we have come up with so far. The rise in prosperity of China and India over the past several decades as they adopt more capitalist economies has been astounding, as a couple prominent examples.
Capitalist excesses also abound, and there are many places that could benefit from more government intervention, and the USA is likely near the top of that list.
But that doesn't change the fact that the system that creates billionaires also has led to unprecedented prosperity and human flourishing.