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Buffett Rule


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On Tuesday afternoon President Obama took a break from fundraising in Florida to make his pitch for the 'Buffett Rule', a proposal that would see the country's wealthiest pay at least 30% of their income in taxes.

The legislation is named after America's second richest person, maverick investor Warren Buffett, who has long complained that he and his fellow billionaires and millionaires are paying a far lower tax rate than the average middle-class family.

"Right now, the share of our national income flowing to the top 1% has climbed to levels last seen in the 1920s," Obama told a cheering chorus of Florida Atlantic University students in Boca Raton, Fla. "And yet those same people are also paying taxes at one of the lowest rates in 50 years. You might have heard this, but Warren Buffett is paying a lower tax rate than his secretary."

[Related: Obama's Buffett Rule]

"That’s wrong," he said. "It isn’t fair. And it’s time for us to choose which direction we want to go in as a country. Do we want to keep giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans like me, or Warren Buffett, or Bill Gates – people who don’t need them and never asked for them? Or do we want to keep investing in things that will grow our economy and keep us secure? That’s the choice."

As you might imagine, the Buffett Rule has had a mixed reception among the Forbes 400, many of whom are just fine with an average tax rate of 18%, thank you very much. Last week, media mogul Barry Diller called Buffett's tax dictum "irrelevant" during a radio interview.

Then there are the Koch brothers, the ultimate free-market, flat-tax champions; Charles Koch came out against Buffett last year, saying his investments do more good for society than more taxes would.

Forbes columnist and investment guru Ken Fisher strongly opposes the plan, as he explained last year in a magazine interview. "My advice to Mr. Buffett is to stick to what he does best," said the billionaire. "If you took a vote of the Forbes 400 I am pretty sure they'd say no to raising taxes on cap gains."

[Related: Gadgets for the 1%]

Well, there are a handful of billionaires who are on board with the Buffett Rule, and have come out publicly to say so. One of the most outspoken advocates of raising taxes on the rich: Buffett's friend and the only American with more money in the bank, Bill Gates.

In fact, Gates' father was the public face of Washington State's ballot initiative 1098, which would have slapped a 5% tax on income over $400,000 per couple and a 9% levy on income over $1 million. It ultimately failed, but Gates remains a proponent of higher taxes for the rich, telling the BBC in January that it's "just justice" for him and his fellow billionaires to pay a greater percentage to the state.

Gates and Buffett are joined by a roster of Forbes billionaires in support of the proposal, including

private equity giants, an arts donor and a sports team owner.

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CNBC Analyst Loses It Over Obama’s Buffett Rule: ‘Absolutely Not!’

Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:23am

Rick Santelli, the CNBC analyst who was the impetus for the Tea Party movement, absolutely lost it Wednesday while talking about Obama’s Buffett rule, which would raise taxes on the top income earners. Santelli’s argument? The whole thing is a bait-and-switch, and it wouldn’t even do anything to put a dent in the debt. Or as Santelli says, “Debt!”

“Let’s play a little game,” Santelli said while using a whiteboard to illustrate his points, later adding: “Take a million dollars away from these people [the rich]! Just take a whole million from them, okay! … You see what I’m getting at? Gee, let’s take a billion away from those filiers, what does that do? It cleans out one month [of the debt]!”

“You see what the problem is,” he went on. “We could bash people, we could drag the people who used to be called successful … down.”

He added: “Does the commander-in-chief have a solution? Absolutely not!”

Then he reached defcon 1*:

People don’t really want to hear solutions. They want to change the dialogue, bait and switch, so we get more worried about what people pay, what’s fair! You know what, how are my kid’s opportunities affected by how many millionaires there are? I don’t see that their opportunities are affected! You know what I see that’s going to affect their opportunities? 15.6 Trillion!

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Rick tells it like it is.... the issue with US deficits is not a revenue problem.... it's a spending problem... period.

WW.
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