WASHINGTON, DC— In this week’s address, President Obama calls on Congress to pass the Buffett Rule, a principle of fairness that ensures that millionaires and billionaires do not pay less in taxes as a share of their income than middle class families pay. The President believes our system must ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share, while protecting 98 percent of Americans from seeing their taxes go up at all. That is why the President proposed the Buffett Rule, which will help make our system reflect our values so that all Americans get a fair shot, play by the same rules, and pay their fair share.
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NATIONAL SALES TAX… that way everyone pays at least some tax. Currently almost half of Americans pay no tax at all. Close the loopholes and abolish the IRS. Flat tax on income.
This whole debate is nothing more than class warfare and envy. The have nots versus those who have. This is one war that has been going on for a long time and there will be no winner. Besides, who gets to decide what is or isn’t fair?? Obama?? Liberals? Democrats? Republicans? I hope not.
But why stop with class warfare? Why not have gender warfare? Generational warfare? Racial warfare? If Buffet feels that he isn’t paying enough in taxes, then by all means send more in! This is nothing more than liberalism do good feel good policy.
You really get around a lot don’t you Peter. What brought you here?
The problem is greed! All those companys that went overseas were making a profit here just not enough for the wall street investors. They pressure companys for more profits at any cost. You would think that a ten percent profit while keeping american familys working would be enough but they don’t care about anything but money!
Sure, we can close all the loopholes. You can not longer take off the insurance you need to have for your work. No more getting paid for the use of your business miles. No more deductions for interest payments. No deductions for Medical, casualty, business equipment like your laptop, cell phone, or gizmo. No more business magazines. No allowance for traveling to see that client in New York. Transportation workers no longer would deduct per diem. Forget depreciation of your farm or construction equipmment. And that energy efficient deduction for the insulation or siding? Bye bye.
Yep, close all the loopholes.
Basically, closing those loopholes would far more hurt those making $60,000 than it would a person making $600,000.
Fine, but you are going to pay just like they do, and they have a lot more money. So in the long run, it will hurt you more.
Peter, you speak as if that is a new thing. That is hardly the case. People who pay mortgages will, have Student loans, travel for their own business or to gain more business, corporations who must continue to train their employees (a lot of times when mandated by the Government), and those who are looking for work, all complained, loudly.
Next time you have to go to Seattle or Virginia for training on your own dime, let me know how that works out eh?
You aren’t a lone wolf Pete, I agree with a lot of your philosophy, but we do have to be honest. Many if not all politicians who talk about making the rich pay their fare share will not have the guts to really make it happen. They can do all kinds of feel good talk and present special bills but they still leave all kinds of loop holes that any rich guy with half a brain can take advantage of and getting around. I would love to see somebody crack down on the loopholes and how about a crackdown on employers outsourcing for cheep foreign labor while we are at it. It’s a novel idea, but it’s all talk with our politicians today, they aren’t making the real changes necessary.
You, the American Consumer are responsible for the foreign labour. You forced American companies to find some way of remaining profitable when trying to compete with the labor rates of China, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia.
It’s been happening for over 5 decades now.
So place tariffs or something on foreign goods so that they can’t use cheap labor to underprice the american goods. They could do something if they wanted to. That is one place where laws would be usefull. Believe me, there are ways it can be done, just listen to any politician speak before he or she is elected, they have all kinds of solutions. Then, once they get in office they change their tone and don’t try to make any of their real solutions happen.
Mike, I completely agree with you. Absolutely there are things that can be done, and if the SOB’s don’t like it…they can pick up their traitor asses and move themselves and their families out of the United States. Do we think that during wartime WW2 that if companies began outsourcing their products and labor overseas at the expense of National Security, that we wouldn’t have rounded up the executives and either imprisoned them or shot them? Okay IBM happened, but if it happened on a large scale, the Army would have stepped in and began arresting people for treason. A little bit of import export is a good thing…it adds spice to life…but at the scale it is being done now…the country isn’t even American anymore. It’s Chinese.
Let me make this very clear. It was not the business owners who made the choices, it was the American Consumer. It was their decision to kill their neighbor’s jobs and sink their community.
Tariffs were not doable back then. What would have worked was a differential retail tax. One that would adjust up so that the labour component would be equal with that of the U.S.
Peter, the ant colony is a poor analogy. First off, in order for a business to operate, there needs to be capital, both initial and on a continuing basis. Those investors are the risk taker. The people who put labor and machines together, and produce what people want, are the risk takers. Once you make it disadvantageous to invest, they will find other shelters. What then? Starting a new business will be close to impossible. It will be just like what Hugo Chavez is doing, removing any incentive to do business in Venezuela by confiscating profit. Look at that place today. Finding a 5 pound bag of sugar takes the better part of a day, if you can find any at all.
No person in their right mind would take a risk, just to see his or her hard work reduced by 20-39%. I would sooner invest in Switzerland, or other country where there is more economic freedom. I am talking everything from making things, to research and development, to financing.
Oh, and forget about your 401k which you hoped to retire on, it would be double taxed (once when you earned income, then when you realize your gain – but you feel that is fair). Why would anyone bother if there was no decent payout? I can assure you no business would bother making contributions if there was no advantage either. So you not only attack the Job Creators, but the workers as well. So much for the American Dream.
Talk about sending everything else overseas, it would produce an economic disaster. All we will be left with is space ship homes, free land, and a bunch of potheads. Right!
GE is just about done producing a new jet engine. No “ma and pa” – ‘main street’ operation could even come close to financing that. Guess who does? Wall Street.
There aint a lot of garages in town that can produce, evaluate, and test something that complex either. Sure you can make a drawing, but without practical live works, it aint gonna happen.
The next wonder drug will not be conceptualized in your bathroom, kitchen, or living room. The heck with testing it. And where you gonna get the seed money? Grandpa’s First National Bank of Podunk? They aint got that kind of assets. Guess who does?
The development of the laser printer, done by a team in a well finananced lab with millions at their disposal. You aint gonna get that kind of cash, neither will I. And unless you have friends with Battlle Memorial, your pretty dead in the water.
Without Wall Street, you have nada, zip.
Well Peter, you and your crackpot cures equal to snake oil sure have not cured the diseases you mentioned.
Someone tried hawking on me today the premise that eating one vegetable will cure diabetes. Pure hucksterism with no medical basis what so ever. But I bet ol’ Peter believes it.
To get you back on topic. Wall Street is needed to finance any thing bigger and more complex than a bread box. Fifty years ago it might have true that a local bank could have done so, but today with liability and torts, you need someone with deep pockets and acumen. Well, that is normally the case if you plan on being successful.
Peter…if the wealthy are not the “job creaters” then just where and from whom do jobs come from? Granted a lot of businesses fail, however; even those employ workers and pay them until they fail…that’s true trickle down.
Buffett, by the way, is no hero on this tax the rich scheme of Obama…he owes hundreds of millions to the fed and has been fighting it since 2002. And that “poor” secretary of his gets $200,000 plus in “trickle down”.
Flat tax and no exemptions…that’d be interesting for a business which might gross $1 million but more than half of that is its “cost” of goods, etc. I agree a flat tax would be ideal and go something like what Andy Rooney once advocated, i.e. gross, less cost and pay the tax on the balance. Hopefully one of the “gross” amounts under the new tax law would be to include such “fringes” as paid health care by the employer
in the gross.
Great statement, and I totally agree with you. The idea that wealth “trickles down” is a bunch of garbage. Great ideas, with great work ethic creates wealth and stability.
Actually, the “trickle down” theory was insightful for the times it was created in. Studies show that the only class that is never affected by a recession and hard times is the rich. When no one else has the money to spend, they do and they have it in large quantities. The idea was to stimulate their spending so that it would create jobs and stimulate spending. SO therefore it “would trickle down. It did work and was what helped put the US in good standing finacially for many years.
Read a lot of Peter’s responses here on NIT. He is obviously an educated and smart person. It is a shame that people attack him and won’t debate him on the facts, which he clearly knows.
Peter-I don’t necessarily disagree with what you are saying here. Probably because I am one of those who doesn’t have a lot of money. I might feel different if I had a lot of money that I had worked hard for and taken extra risk to attain. A flat tax sounds fair but what tax rate do you want. From what I understand these people pay 15% tax on the money they made on investments and it seems that they have already paid tax on that money when they earned it. Now even you have to admit that 15% of several million dollars is a hell of a lot more than most of us will pay in our whole lives. So, are you going to penalise (spelling) people for doing well. It seems that you might just ruin the incentive and they will no longer invest or donate to charity which is another part of the issue. Just some questions that need answering before you drop the hammer and regret it later.
Peter-let it be said that I am a long way from being in Rick Santorums camp or agreeing with his veiw points on life. It is one of the big area’s of disagreement between me and the GOP. I do not believe that government has any business telling any man or wqoman what they can or can not do with their life. They speak with forked tongues about that issue. First they say no government interference and then they are against birth control or abortion. That B.S. about someone taking the unwanted babies is just that. B.S. A lot of them just end up on welfare starting all over again. People should mind their own business and stay out of other people’s life period.