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Another rich guy trying to persuade average folk that all our problems would be solved if people like him were taxed more. Never mind that the Buffet-rule (minimum 35%) would net $31 Billion over the next 11 years versus $7 Trillion in estimated deficits. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74232.html)

Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the median American, but we don't buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

I can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can't buy any new clothes or cars or enjoy any meals out.

But you can invest... Your money isn't stuffed under your mattress, is it??

That's why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.

Are they really investments or are they just political favors that over-cost and under-deliver? (See the Department of Education, TARP, Medicare, war, etc.)

View on HN

Though I support the idea that wealthy people should pay high taxes, perhaps even higher taxes than they do now, I think it's also worth noting that the US already gets 70% of all its taxes from the top 10%[1].

As long as we're keeping capitalism, I don't buy the argument that simply being rich is wrong. I'm also fairly skeptical of set limits on income, as setting those limits is very hard. What goes into it? How much money per year is the limit of a "Just" income? I don't think those questions have a definitive answer.

I think repealing the bush tax cuts is a good idea. I think we should keep the estate tax. I think the "buffet rule" isn't bad, but it's no solution. I just wonder when people will say it's enough. Rich people pay less tax today than they did a decade ago - but they're making massively more money as well. If we add all those taxes, and there's still a massive income imbalance, what then?

I think it's in everyone's interest to live in an equal society, for reasons that I don't want to get into right here. However, I'm dubious that can be achieved through targeting one social class or another. It seems like the American right is targeting the poor, while the left is targeting the wealthy. Everyone feels like a victim and just wants to keep what they have now. What a crappy situation.

Edit: I missed some words.

[1] http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html#table6

>Though I support the idea that wealthy people should pay high taxes, perhaps even higher taxes than they do now, I think it's also worth noting that the US already gets 70% of all its taxes from the top 10%[1].

You do realize that if you make about $80K/year, you are already in the top 10% right? With that perspective, I feel that 70% of taxed income is absurdly low, the fact that 30% of all US tax dollars come from people making less than $80K/year is completely absurd to me.

Edit: According to your table, the number is actually: $112,124 I still think my point stands.

Your point doesn't stand. Read the rest of the data. Namely, notice that according to this data, the median AGI of the United States is $32,396/year.

So half the population is making less than $32k/year. Yes, the top 10% and the top half of the population are taking on almost all of the income-tax burden.... because they (we, in my case) have almost all the income.

There's nothing fair about demanding tax money from people who are just plain poor. You tax the rich, because rich people have money.

Now, we could talk about distributing the tax burden "fairly" across the rich and the middle class, but that assumes we have large, broad middle class. Which we don't: making a "middle-class salary" like, say, $66,193/year already puts you on the border of the top 25% of the country.

And then notice that to get from the top 25% to the top 10%, you have to make almost twice as much money. Top 10% to top 5% isn't that large of an increase, but top 5% to top 1% requires more than doubling your income.

So, to be clear:

To go from median to top 25%, you need to roughly double your income. To go from 75th percentile to 90th percentile, you need to almost double your income. To go from 95th percentile to 99th percentile, you need to more-than-double your income. We're operating a tax system designed for a bell-curve income distribution when what we actually have is a power-law income distribution.

FYI, when you look at individual median income instead of household, it's worse:

individual median income: $26,680/yr, single: $18,881/yr, married: $32,033/yr, divorced: $28,668/yr, widowed: $18,485/yr

Half the population is making less than $26,680.

"We're operating a tax system designed for a bell-curve income distribution when what we actually have is a power-law income distribution."

Well said. I'd upvote more than once if I could.

I think it's also worth noting that the US already gets 70% of all its taxes from the top 10%

Why is that worth noting? That only further demonstrates the income inequality in the United States. Furthermore, wealth is far more important to take into account than income in any discussion of taxation or inequality.

Also, I have yet to hear anyone make an argument that sounds anything like "simply being rich is wrong."

"That only further demonstrates the income inequality in the United States. "

So is this the basic issue, then? That there's income inequality?

Because that's always going to be the case. Even in the most socialist nations, or even communist nations.

There is always a strong disparity of income and power. Always. And there always will be.

The problem is not the disparity, but how wide it is. Inequality in the US is currently so wide, it's absurd. It's widening in Europe as well, but not as fast and not as radically as in the US in the last 30 years. This is not healthy, it's polarizing society and eroding the social contract. The only way to effectively balance this trend is through higher taxation.

First of all, doesn't anyone see the correlation between increased government power (revenue/spending) and an increase in the income inequality gap? Look at a graph showing govt spending as a percentage of gdp vs the inequality gap.

Secondly, assuming that the "inequality gap" is necessarily a bad thing, which I don't think anyone has shown...

Why do you assume that higher taxation will decrease the income inequality gap?

If anything, higher taxation means more money (ie power) in the hands of the government. More power in the hands of the government just leads to more crony capitalism that concentrates even more money and power into fewer hands. Worse, those companies that then have access to all that money and power are the worst sorts of companies that don't even need to provide good products and services to consumers. Instead they get more bang for the buck by sucking tax dollars out of the system.

- Secondly, assuming that the "inequality gap" is necessarily a bad thing, which I don't think anyone has shown

Actually they have.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/osu-iil050812...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw

In face increasing Gini coefficient for 0.01 increases mortality in state for 122% after 12 years. Yes, it is a bad thing in almost all recorded metrics.

- First of all, doesn't anyone see the correlation between increased government power (revenue/spending)

Nope. I think revenue spending isn't really good metric of government power and so far no one has proved that. You are free to test your hypothesis though. I'd wager that there is quite a bit of income inequality if your gov. revenue is low but they spend a lot of money.

> Actually they have.

I found the youtube to be more compelling than the OSU study. The OSU study contradicted lots of other studies that found nothing conclusive for nearly the same hypothesis. The author of the study managed to fit a curve that he was apparently looking for by allowing for enormous flexibility on the time axis. That's like finding pictures in clouds. You can see what you want to see if you look at something from enough angles. To be meaningful, you would need to apply those findings to lots of other data sets to see if you're just seeing what you want to see or if there's a real likelihood of a pattern. Science isn't finding one occurrence of something that you were looking for. Science is predicting where and how you'll find something and then having others find you're right over and over.

On the Youtube lecture: The statistics seem to show correlation, but causation? Is the inequality the cause of a lack of trust? Or is it the other way around? Furthermore, I saw lots of other correlations in the data they showed. Graph homogeneity of the population's ethnical background vs trust. Look at the states and countries that scored high trust. At a glance, they seemed to be the highly ethnically/religiously/culturally unified ones.

> Nope. I think revenue spending isn't really good metric of government power

Okay, what would you suggest... Watts?

> I'd wager that there is quite a bit of income inequality if your gov. revenue is low but they spend a lot of money.

Wait, your conjecture agrees with me. Spending is high and inequality is high. The gov. revenue is almost a non-factor in terms of government power. For the part of the curve where the currency hasn't been completely devalued because of over-borrowing and printing money, the amount the government spends is all that your really need to describe government power. Lack of revenue to back it up is just a ginormous credit card bill that no one seems to remember is out there.

That is not to say that the level of inequality is not greater than it was before or is elsewhere. The extent of inequality has grown in the states (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequalit...) and compares unfavorably with other countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ...).

With a first look at that chart, what it seems to truly reflect is the size of the middle class in each nation.

Wouldn't a better solution be to increase the size of the middle class rather than decrease the size of the upper class?

Also, among the western european nations and the US, I suspect a strong correlation between immigration rates and the data on the chart.

Problem is, a strong middle class usually rests on the strong provision and spread of certain goods. Some of these are private goods, like owning one's own house, but many of them are public goods: liveable environment, public transit, public schools, public universities, public health and health-care, etc.

So is this the basic issue, then? That there's income inequality?

No, not at all. Who have you ever heard make such a claim?

The issue is the size of the inequality, its growth, and the fact that historical periods with less inequality and a stronger middle class seem to correlate with strong overall growth and prosperity.

I don't understand why the size of inequality matters. If I make $20,000 and Rich guy makes $2,000,000, how does me making $20,000 and him making $200,000,000 million make any difference?

Because the money he spends raises the price of goods etc. Therefore your 20,000 becomes less money. This is easy too see in expensive cities. The same middle-class person would have to demand more money to live at the same standards as he/she would have elsewhere, simply because richness have driven up the prices.

How?

So inflation is the primary concern?

It makes no difference to you. It makes a great difference to the politician trying to get control of $198,000,000.

The blather about a strong middle class is misdirection. If the U.S. governing.g elite cared about the middle class, they would abolish the armies of bunny rabbit inspectors, No Child Left Behind functionaries, and so forth. The American middle class is being choked to death by regulators, not billionaires.

Because economic power and political power are strongly correlated, and always have been. It's the difference between the typical rich person having 100x more political power and influence in government than the average citizen, and the same wealthy individual having 10,000x more.

Massive gaping holes in income distribution are inherently anti-democratic. That might offend a person's capitalist sensibilities but it doesn't make it any less true.

Here is a Ted talk that prevents data about inequality: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

There's another take on it here: http://www.quora.com/Economic-Inequality/How-is-income-inequ.... In, that link says that the degree of inequality matters in the us because in the us, the poor are desperately poor, and the rich are fantastically rich. In other words, if the poor had a pretty good standard of living and the rich were absurdly healthy, maybe that would be ok, but that's not the situation we have.

Let me put it this way. It sounds like you don't want the entire government budget to rest on taxing one class and one class alone, the upper-class. That's a pretty virtuous and equitable thought to have, very fair to people who probably have much more than you.

Problem is, if income/wealth inequality is too severe, those guys are the only ones with money to contribute. So on some level, you need a certain level of income/wealth equality just to have multiple classes/brackets with enough excess income to contribute to the national welfare.

When the poor people are fat, it is safe to assume the middle class has money to contribute to running the country.

They're fat because they can't afford decent food and have to eat crap.

Assumptions don't get you anywhere.

They get fat by not having enough money for food?! Seriously?!

Do you think they spend so much on lottery tickets because the rich so unfairly keep them out of derivative trading?

Decent food. There are two main effects at work:

If all you can afford is ramen/bread/fast food, your body makes you overeat to get enough other nutrients (eg. vitamin C, B).

The second is that your insulin goes crazy with all those simple carbs and sugars (carbs are cheap, unlike protein, fish and vegetables, and get metabolised to glucose) so you get massive blood sugar swings. The low side of those makes you eat more and get fatter.

Lottery tickets are a strawman. Or, to quote a science fiction novel that I can't quite remember: "a tax on hope."

Complex carbohydrates are cheap. Fat is cheap. Eating simple carbohydrates is not an economic choice.

Vitamins pills and vegetables are reasonably cheap. And anyway if deficiencies caused obesity, the rate would drop off dramatically over some threshold income.

Lotteries matter because that's where poor Americans spend about 10% of their income. Taxing the rich to destruction will not fix that.

They're not as cheap though, are they? Here are a couple of articles on poverty, obesity and cheap calories that you might find interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/14/obesity-...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/not-having-enoug...

10% of a poor person's income turns out to be about $25/week according to this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123448/Poorest-peop.... Hardly earth shattering or likely to lift them out of poverty if they somehow manage to save it.

Yes, in fact good food can be extremely cheap. Beans, eggs, and butter are dirt cheap. Canned vegetables are affordable if you buy for nutrition (i.e., not empty food like green beans).

Re. lottery spending, they are losing $12 a week! That is $600 a year! That could buy premium multivitamins, an extra several eggs a day, rather a lot of cheese, with money left over for the occassional meal out.

The problem of most poor Americans is not resources, it is the deployment of them.

It's just as cheap to eat properly as it is to eat unhealthily. The difference is you need to actually put some effort in, rather than order a large Big Mac Meal.

Do you think they spend so much on lottery tickets because the rich so unfairly keep them out of derivative trading?

Hmm... the blatant gambling nature of both of those makes it a good analogy.

It's worth noting when talking about how the wealthy should pay their "fair share." That discussion should at least consider what percent of all taxes they pay.

Also, I have some friends who grew up very poor and who believe pretty strongly that it's wrong to own an excessive amount of money while others go hungry. Though I think they make good points, that's not my view.

Well said. To go a bit further, limits on income are likely to encourage people not to try truly hard or truly risky ventures. Paul Graham addresses this at http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

"limits on income are likely to encourage people not to try truly hard or truly risky ventures."

When people say things like this it reminds me of religious fundamentalists who claim that a world without belief in God would be some sort of anarchist murder-on-the-streets hellscape because people wouldn't have a reason to act morally or ethically anymore.

Not only is it incredibly pessimistic to believe either of these things, but you don't have to look far to see tons and tons of real-world examples that prove that the statement is completely ridiculous.

There's an important difference between wealth and income that PG does not go into.

Sure, I'll buy the idea that taxing income discourages work (though its impact is far more muted than some people would like to suggest).

However, I've not yet seen any argument that taxing wealth itself discourages work or wealth creation. If anything, taxing wealth keeps people from sitting on their assets and doing mere "wealth preservation".

If I were a Ramen-profitable startup entrepreneur, I'd much rather be taxed at 2% of my net wealth than at 30% (or even 15%) of my capital gains. Indeed, if I were anyone who planned on leveraging my capital to actively create wealth (c.f. Elon Musk) I should much prefer wealth taxes over capital gains taxes.

If we live in a meritocracy then anyone with a lot of wealth should be able to relatively easily average >6% ROI year-over-year.

Yeah, because high tax rates always discourage entrepreneurship </sarcasm>

Norway - with one of the highest tax rates & comprehensive welfare states on the planet - has higher rates of entrepreneurship than the USA does. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/01/20/norway-entr...

If you look at international entrepreneur rates, its pretty clear that there is no relationship between income tax rates and start-up activity (that's not to say that specific tax policies don't make a difference). http://www.internationalentrepreneurship.com/total-entrepren...

For every argument about high tax discouraging risky ventures, there is a counter-argument that high safety nets reduce the risk of start ups.

Speaking of Norway, a recent TC article paints a different picture: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/23/is-norway-leaving-its-tech-...

Very few people have money as their prime motive.

You say 70% of all taxes, but your link only discusses income taxes. That is horribly misleading.

> I think it's also worth noting that the US already gets 70% of all its taxes from the top 10%

Yes, but they also own 70% of all the wealth[1], according to 2007 numbers (the percentage is almost certainly a little higher today), so that's perfectly proportional. If you own 70% of the wealth, you should pay 70% of the taxes.

http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-in...

Actually, since almost every country in the world thinks progressive income taxes are the right thing to do, then this is an argument supporting higher taxes on the wealthy.

"(See the Department of Education, TARP, Medicare, war, etc.)"

TARP money has been paid back almost in full, depending on who you talk to. The DoE budget is like an eyedropper full in the wake of an ocean, compared to the DoD and elderly entitlements. And, if you want $FAVORITE_CANDIDATE to touch Medicare and Social Security, you go right ahead. I'm quite positive they will smile and move on, knowing where their constituent bread is buttered come election time. Believe me when I say that the elderly are the most important lobby in the US, and they don't even have to spend a dime to influence almost every branch of government.

Targeting medicare and social security is silly anyway. They are funded via a separate tax (FICA/SECA) that only applies to the first 200K/250K of income.

And the only reason why SS/Medicare are running out of money is because the government frequently borrows against social security surpluses. You may remember, back in 2000, one of Al Gore's campaign promises was to put social security into a "lock box" with the hopes of stopping this (IMO it likely would not have buy-in from congress but it's still a good idea).

SS is funded by separate tax, but if there's a shortcoming, it is filled from the general budget, and if there's a surplus, it goes into general spending - so this distinction is an accounting fiction, both are incomes of the same government and as long as government fulfills its obligations nobody cares how the money got there. When SS starts running negative cash flow, the govt would have to refill that. Right now the promise of the govt is to refill that up to 2.7 trln - which is the size of SS Trust Fund - but nobody doubts for a second that the govt will in fact refill any sum necessary or will change SS rules (raise taxes and/or cut benefits, which are not legally guaranteed by anything) if necessary. So "lock box" here has very little meaning except taking part of the money out of circulation for no reason - it would definitely not stop the govt from borrowing money.

> as long as government fulfills its obligations nobody cares how the money got there

I care. If they increase our debt or just start printing extra money, they have fulfilled their obligation to SS while screwing the rest of our economy pretty hard.

> has very little meaning except taking part of the money out of circulation for no reason

Very little meaning except having the government follow rules of financial discipline that any financial advisor would advise individuals and businesses to follow. If you want to save after-tax money for retirement, separate it out from the rest of your disposable income. Keep separate accounts, separate records, etc. Otherwise, you'll blur the line between your different monetary purposes and it's doubtful you'll mean your savings goals.

It's about discipline and clarity to the American public. Sure, a dollar would be a dollar if the government were responsible enough to follow sound money management principles... but when have they ever done that?

For financial discipline it does not matter, government will borrow anyway because it can, and it will print money anyway because it can. Because borrowing and spending is politically easier than not spending. US government does not have any savings - taxpayers are its savings account. And as long as substantial amount of people think that raising taxes is a way to solve the problem of runaway government spending - this savings account will be used and abused endlessly. There's no reason for politically risky cuts if you could just borrow and tax. The sad fact is US government is addicted to deficit. And no addict was ever cured by giving them access to more of the source of their addiction.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_satiation_therapy

> If they just start printing money

too late. Inflation and QE already happened.

It's easy to pay TARP back in full when you can borrow at the Fed at 0% and lend at 5%. Favor. Education performance has stagnated ever since the DoEducation was created. Who benefited? Not me or my kids!

And the fact that we have third-rail (untouchable) programs in this country is NOT a strong argument in favor of more "investments".

"Education performance has stagnated ever since the DoEducation was created. Who benefited? Not me or my kids!"

Education performance lagging in the US is not the fault of it being federated. The shining education systems by competency in Math, Science, and Reading comprehension (S. Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zeland, and Ireland) all have federated education systems. FWIW, though, I love the idea of the Finnish 7-16 compulsory school then switching to academic (university) track or vocational (tech school/apprenticeship) track. That is something we can and should do here in the states.

> Education performance lagging in the US is not the fault of it being federated

It's not the fault of being federated, but obviously federating it here the way we did was a catastrophic waste of money and effort.

Maybe we should completely scrap the current waste of money and gradually put something else in place that works? I certainly don't trust the current power structure to do anything but continue to waste our federal education dollars.

Countries with smaller population, smaller geographical area, or more homogenous culture are at some point more comparable to individual states in the US than the United States as a whole. "Federated" isn't very meaningful relative to other metrics when making international comparisons.

For the sake of presenting the alternative perspective advocating the abolishment of involuntary schooling, I would recommend reading the following piece by Cevin Soling: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/02/27/w...

See here: http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/main/summary TARP spent: 414bn TARP returned: 346bn So "almost" here is a bit of a stretch. But if we look at bigger picture, of all bailouts, it's 602bn spent and 387bn returned so far. That's 214bn still out there.

You invest whenever you buy something from a company. Perhaps it is better to have many millions of people making small investments in the form of purchases and therefor "voting" on what is better.

Rather than having a few large investors who may likely invest in stuff they never or rarely use which could have a habit of creating a bubble.

That's 100% correct. Investing by consuming products of companies scales a lot better than invest-betting on startups and financial instruments.

"Never mind that the Buffet-rule (minimum 35%) would net $31 Billion over the next 11 years versus $7 Trillion in estimated deficits."

Yes. Tony Robbins did a great deconstruction of this in a video, "Is taxing the rich enough? Will that solve our problems?": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jboTeS9Okak

(Regardless of what you think of Tony Robbins personally, this is an excellent video. I love how he breaks down exactly how much money it would take to really solve our financial issues.)

Taxing the rich isn't about solving the budget problems, it's about solving the fairness problem. It doesn't matter that it isn't enough to make a fiscal difference, people want to feel the laws are fair and the rich are paying at least as much of a percentage of their income as the middle class. That's what the Buffet rule tries to address, equality.

Can you solve this fairness issue:

"the US already gets 70% of all its taxes from the top 10%"

The rich are getting richer not because they pay too little in taxes, they're getting richer because they rig capitalism with the help of their buddies in D.C.. Level the playing field of commerce, and you'll start to see some redistribution of wealth.

There's nothing wrong with the rich getting richer as long as they're paying an equivalent share of their income to taxes and not getting special treatment. Crony capitalism is a different problem entirely.

And there's nothing unfair about the top 10% paying 70% of the taxes, in fact that statistic doesn't include the relevant data to even see if it's fair. It's not their share of total taxes that is relevant, it's what percentage of their income vs the percentage ordinary people pay that matters.

For example, if that 70% only represents 20% of their income, then 70% isn't enough, they aren't paying a fair share.

This is a special case of that.

You're assuming that "capitalism" doesn't naturally lead to the rich getting richer. There is absolutely no evidence on which to base the idea that capitalism doesn't naturally lead to massive wealth inequality.

Wealth creation as well...

Something is wrong with the math there. To net $31 billion over 11 years, you merely have to tax a million people an extra $2818 per year. $234/month. Surely there are a million people in the U.S. (that's about the top 0.4%) rich enough to not even notice that. You could go much higher before they even feel a pinch.

To put the $7 trillion in perspective, over 11 years, that's about $2500/year in extra tax per American citizen. Now, most citizens definitely can't afford that, it's true. But looking at it in per capita per year amounts makes the numbers look a lot more tenable to me.

When someone quotes values "over the next 11 years" I can't help but wonder about their objectivity.

Actually, the facts back him up. Look at this article analysing the deficit (specifically, the graph near the top): http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3490

This shows tax cuts as the largest cause in our deficit. I won't argue that getting rid of tax cuts will get rid of the deficit, but every tax season, the money lost from these cuts doesn't go towards reducing dept. Worse, the amount lost from cuts grows each season.

"Are they really investments or are they just political favors that over-cost and under-deliver? (See the Department of Education, TARP, Medicare, war, etc.)"

The graph shows that TARP doesn't impact the budget much.

The tax cuts weren't just for the wealthy though. You're basically just doing the Buffet-rule by only removing Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Not going to help much.

I realize that, but the tax cuts disproportionately benefit the rich, still (http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/03/news/economy/income_inequali...). Low income houses would still pay low taxes, just not no taxes.

Plus, the idea that ending the Bush tax cuts and giving a break to the poor are mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy. The power exists to do both.

I never implied the rich didn't disproportionately benefit or you couldn't end the Bush tax cuts and help the poor at the same time. However, the net effect of that new tax structure wouldn't help the economy much, and therefore wouldn't help tax revenue.

You're right. I had misread your post.

I have to disagree. 31 billion may not wipe out the deficit, but it is a good start. The alternative minimum tax is another good start. I think there will be no single thing that eliminates our deficit, and have yet to hear negatives to the "rich" paying a bit more, especially if many of them are for it.

> especially if many of them are for it.

I do not think that is the case, generally speaking.

We already have AMT. Which was introduced with exactly this purpose. Read its history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_minimum_tax#Histor...

It grew in an unmanageable mess of complicated rules that nobody understands and that has very little relation to its original purpose. Since it worked so nice the first time, we absolutely have to do it again.

> and have yet to hear negatives to the "rich" paying a bit more, especially if many of them are for it.

By "many of them" you mean half-dozen wannabe politicians? You are confusing the opinion of tiny vocal minority with the opinion of silent majority which doesn't do talks on TV. The reasons not to do it are plenty - grabbing more money from productive people to feed insatiable appetites of runaway government spending projects is not a sustainable model. Since most of the politicians are afraid to talk about any serious spending cuts and measures to bring deficits under control, it will not end up in anything but the same deficits with more government spending. Government can spend arbitrary sums of money, so we'd just end up in the same place very soon.

The main thing Buffet was trying to do was to raise the capital gains tax rate, which is only 15% right now. It would save quite a bit if it was raised back to 25%.

Investment: noun. Political payoff made with other people's money.

> But you can invest... Your money isn't stuffed under your mattress, is it??

But much of that investment heads out of the US to foreign companies or foreign expansion of US companies.

If he feels strongly about it, he is also perfectly at liberty to pay extra taxes voluntarily and lead by example.

But you can invest... Your money isn't stuffed under your mattress, is it??

Investment generates profits. It doesn't add to aggregate demand, but subtracts from it.

Why should the government "invest" then?

Because government "investments" are not for-profit investments in excludable (private/club) goods. They're non-profit "investments" in protecting commons goods and providing public goods.

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