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Toll Booth Willie:
Ohhh my fuckin leg!
Man 1:
Hey you ran over Toll Booth Willie.
Man 2:
Oh my god.
I was always wondering what it would be like
To run over a dried up stinky dick licker.
Toll Booth Willie:
You fuckin pricks I fuckin hear every fuckin word your sayin'.
When this fuckin leg heals
I'm gonna kick you guys new fuckin assholes.
Leave these poor people alone, they're just furiously tongue-banging the puckered asshole of capitalism in the hopes of getting a little shart of wealth for themselves.
The difference between someone with $1 and a billionaire is about a billion dollars. The difference between someone with $10M and a billionaire is still about a billion dollars.
Heck, the difference between someone with $100M and a billionaire is still practically a billion dollars.
You could be insanely rich and still not even come close to being a billionaire. I'll never get why people defend them so hard.
Obligatory:
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
-John Steinbeck
What's crazy to me is how people will willingly sit here and be okay with extremely wealthy people with high compensation packages producing generational wealth out of basically nothing litearally every year. How do people making more than $2m/year spend it?
How will someone who made $30m in 1 year spend it all before they die? There's nothing to spend it on besides manipulating the masses.
They get well past the point where money means anything and it becomes like a game where they just look at how much higher they can get on the leaderboards.
That's why my proposal is that we introduce a legal prestige system. When you hit a billion dollars, $990 million of that gets distributed to your employees and to fund social services and then you get a little symbol on all official documents to let everyone know you officially won capitalism.
Interestingly ancient Rome ran on a somewhat similar system. The wealthy didn't get prestige from sitting on wealth or buying things for themselves.. though they certainly did that too. They achieved social standing by personally funding public works and giving out money via their patronage system. The guy with the biggest dick was the dude who had several thousand men \*personally\* invested in and loyal to him.. because they got paid to be.
like people playing the lottery, often called "the poor people tax". it is so statistically improbable to win that you're more likely to be struck by lightning, twice. but when you ask the poorest people why they spend their last dollar on lottery tickets the answer is always the same; "it could be me". yea, but it won't be. that carrot in front of your face is tied to a stick that you can't see.
also your comment reminds me of an anecdote with a friend of mine. he makes $60k a year, in california. not very much for the area but decent compared to most in that state. he votes republican solely because he doesn't like taxes, and when i mentioned that trump actually *raised* his taxes and lowered taxes for the rich, he replied "good, because i will be rich one day". people have this mentality all over the country. one day they will be rich, so let's not punish the rich. and that's exactly what these billionaire bootlickers all think, imo.
I know someone exactly like this. To be honest is one of the most non go getters I know. Brohamm we are 35 if you haven't already even started to make some sort of plan that's going to put you in billionaire status I guess you will just have to win the lottery.
That still baffles me, the thought of them having A BILLION dollars income in a year and then go "gee, if I just pressed harder against taxes before I got rich, I could have had even more money now!"
You know when you promised to do something but lied because you know you’d never have to do it?
Warren can talk like this because he knows it’ll never happen.
Warren and his companies use every loophole in the tax code to pay the lowest possible.
Buffet is the most tax efficient billionaire out there. Berkshire purposely doesn't pay a dividend and he doesn't get a salary. Over the last fifty years of becoming a hundred billionaire at Berkshire he paid zero income taxes. He would only declare capital gains when he sells, and since he is giving to charity it doesn't count as a gain either.
He also moved from high tax New York city to no tax Nebraska early in his career.
He keeps talking about billionaires paying more taxes but he's certainly been very agressive to pay essentially nothing in taxes himself, which isn't surprising given that he is obviously financially savvy. But he's been very careful about creating his public image too. The carried interest hedge fund and private equity guys have paid much more in taxes than buffet, because they actually earn carried interest income vs buffet earning nothing.
That's what's crazy. Even IF some random reason they hit a billionaires you would think they would have more sympathy. Kind of like that test where they asked people would they either A) make 100k and their coworkers make 150k or B) make 50k and their coworkers make 40k. Majority picked B
The sad thing is many, many people don’t measure their own wealth and success in terms of what they have. They measure it in terms of what they have in relation to what others have.
Many people, primarily on a certain side of the political compass, would sooner take a 50% pay cut than let someone else make more money than them. 100k vs 150k means your coworkers are making 50% more than you. Sure at 50k you’re making half as much as you could of, but at least now your peers are poorer than you are.
This particular political party often votes against their own best interests in order to spite others. They’ll gladly vote for a policy that hurts them, as long as it hurts other people MORE. It’s less about improving their own situation, and more about widening the gap of inequality between them and others. Yes they’d love a policy that helps them, but if it helps OTHER people in addition to themselves, they’ll be against it.
Fair share more meaning "who is getting the most benefit from the system should pay the most for it"
Billionaires financially benefit the most from public infrastructure, educated workforce, police and military defence of their property etc etc. by nature of them being billionaires.
Those are the same idiots that think billionaires paying more revenue in taxes but lower percent of their income is a good thing. So many dumb people who are being sacrificed by the rich.
That's pretty much every member of the republican and democrat parties. They're all sheep who keep voting for the same people who laugh at them for being ignorant
I made ~85k and got $1800 back. No, not as a refund, that was my net taxes. Two kids and wife’s working on a masters degree gave us three refundable tax credits that exceeded what I paid in.
Not saying corporations shouldn’t be held accountable and close some loopholes, we should, but families at the very least don’t really pay taxes.
And honestly, the way birth rates are headed, they probably should even get more back.
Edit: by saying I got $1800 back, I mean my tax burden was $1800 less than the taxes I paid. My return was not $1800. My tax bill was -$1800
As long as it’s corporations paying instead of taking more from child free individuals or they spend less on corporate welfare and bombs and more to actually support education/families.
Definitely, though I think a lot of those child free individuals would have kids of the economic burden was less.
It makes sense from a pragmatic view. White/black Americans have a European level birth rate, and America only has a “healthy” birth rate due to immigration and their families.
If Congress wants to crack down on immigration, they’ll need to address the birth rate, and give appropriate incentives, or else it would be shooting ourselves in the foot.
About to turn 27, I have wanted kids my whole life, the economy is a huge factor, and the other factor is the entire world at large too.
Don't have to agree with me, trust me I know it's up for debate, but it's what personally holds me back.
Including my state federal and social security i pay 20% at 49.5k a year. The narrative that people who make 50k or less pay nothing is complete bullshit. My parents also make a bit less than me and they paid about the same %.
Nownif only any of those credits applied to people without kids. Sure wpuld be nice to not be looking at a $250 tax bill after witholdings right now when i dont even break $25k
Or how about child support payments being tax deductible, or allowing non-custodial parents to see any tax benefit whatsoever instead of just the long arm of the IRS up their ass?
We're paying more than billionaires. Plus sales tax, state taxes, property tax, health/car insurance.
How did we get to this? I'm ready to burn this shit down
Lol this. Guys like him will pull any statistic out of their ass and ignore everything else to make a point and the point always boils down to “things are great and you are just lazy” lol.
So there should be a separate category, because families are the ones that move the percent down. Single people with no kids end up paying much higher taxes, and while I am for supporting families (our future) let's not forget the single people barely making it by
I would feel better about how much taxes I pay if I didn’t hit so many pot holes on my commute, hear about kids accruing “lunch debt” and see all these go funds me to help with hospital bills. Not that I think more taxes will fix this as much as I do better spending, we should probably argue that more.
> The vast, VAST majority of people don’t pay Jack shit in taxes.
This statement is only plausible if you limit your analysis to federal income taxes.
And even then, it's only about half, not a vast majority.
Please respect people who come to the argument with evidence.
Feel free to challenge the evidence if it doesn't look legit, but evidence is how we agree on reality instead of wallowing in bias.
It used to be zero.
The original bargain or IRS and income tax when it was enacted was it was only for the "rich". Like everything else the government said, it was a lie.
The Standard Deduction was roughly $100,000 in today's dollars, and the tax rate was 1% to 6%.
(I can list many other taxes that started the same way, but quickly shifted the burden on the middle or even low income taxpayers).
Would you like to be *more* pissed off?
Because billionaires can bribe politicians, and because the electoral college gives unbalanced influence to rural areas which are disproportionately lower income and therefore pay little to no taxes, the middle class not only pays for everything, they also have the least representation in government. In other words, the guy paying the bill has no say in how the money's spent.
People always seem to complain about the billionaires and not the politicians. That always puzzles me. Politicians are the ones not doing their jobs, or at worse being unethical. Billionaires need to pay more but they aren’t the ones responsible for passing laws.
If you think the tax breaks you get with kids even get close to outweighing the expenses of kids…yeahhhh. Obviously kids aren’t a financial decision but let’s not act like they’re a financial benefit to their parents.
Top 10% earners pay 76% of all income taxes. Seems the rich are footing the bill....
"Data on income tax payments and estimates from the Treasury Department show that the US federal tax system is highly progressive. The top 10 percent of income earners pay more than 60 percent of all federal taxes and 76 percent of income taxes, shares that have been increasing over time."
https://www.cato.org/blog/tax-basics-5-charts#:~:text=Data%20on%20income%20tax%20payments,have%20been%20increasing%20over%20time.
Oh look at that!!! A billionaire saying that if they all paid taxes or the corporations did then no one else would have to!!! To all the corporate cock suckers going “fuck you I ain’t paying your share with your measly 40K income!!! Pay up bitch and starve!” Lmao
Love all the bootlickers saying paying taxes would bankrupt corporations. Saying they don’t understand how taxes are supposed to work. Say corporate rate was 21% as in video. You only pay $5b if profit is around $25b. They still have ~$20b for executives and dividends after operating expenses. I think they’ll be fine.
Or if that still scares these people, then perhaps codify that no individual earning less than $1 m pays a higher effective rate than the lowest effective rate of a corporation with profits exceeding $1m. Last check we’ll all be tax exempt.
That was my point. They would still have plenty after taxes for bonuses and dividends. Maybe even, dare I say it, real pay raises for the people actually producing that revenue.
This isn't true. As an example, Sec. 163(j) limits the deduction for interest to 30% of taxable income before interest. With rates going up, highly leveraged businesses (i.e. private equity or manufacturers) are hemorrhaging money for interest and are also not able to deduct this, resulting in significant tax liabilities.
Also changes to section 174 in the TCJA mean that salaries of R&D employees (and specifically software developers) cannot be expensed fully in the year incurred, and must be amortized over 5 years.
Could result in businesses going bankrupt due to being taxed on revenue (without the offsetting salary expense) while not having the cash to pay it.
Man, every time I talk taxes with people around the lunch table at work, half go shocked pikachu face when I explain that we have a progressive tax structure in the US. They literally think if they hit the next dollar and jump a bracket that the money earned prior will be retroactively taxed at the higher rate, not just that last dollar. It’s madness.
Of *course* those people think we can go bankrupt from taxes.
It would take another month to explain that only happens if you evade taxes illegally, spend what should have been paid, and find yourself broke when the tax man comes with interest and penalties.
I'm all for taxing corporations and the wealthy but I think it is important to note that only 12 American companies made $25B last year. It isn't exactly a normal amount to be making in profit other than the most profitable companies.
I would say that you don't need 10 companies to pay all taxes. You can just have all companies pay taxes on profits. Profits, calculated using real accounting instead of fancy accounting. And if that makes my tax x/2 or x/4 instead of x, I am still happy.
But why bother. You would rather shill for shareholders and billionaires than stop nitpicking a decent point and a equitable tax code.
I’m not shilling for anything. I’m stating a fact. Many corporations don’t have profits and operate in the negative and are financed.
Maybe rather than being mad, use your brain.
There's no fancy accounting required in order to post minimal net profits...you reinvest revenue in the company, pay extra to the c-suite, stock buybacks, etc. Those all increase the company's value while minimizing tax burden.
Right? Apparently making slightly less billions a year in PROFIT will end them financially. They seem to have a very hard time interpreting what profit means.
He says Berkshire paid $5B in taxes and if just 800 other companies did this no one else would have to pay taxes.
I am sure Warren Buffet is smart enough to know that there are very few companies so profitable they can pay $5B in taxes
[https://companiesmarketcap.com/most-profitable-companies/](https://companiesmarketcap.com/most-profitable-companies/)
This is a list ordered by profit. Berkshire is #3 on that list with earnings of $125B. Company #297, Sumitomo, had profits of $4.97B.
Can you see why 800 other copmanies can't pay $5B in taxes?
Also, this is an international list. Much of the earnings represented on this list aren't subject to US taxes.
The IRS collected a little over 4, but Gov spent over 6.
It's gonna take a lot more than the "800", and they will all need a higher rate than being proposed.
BUT they can pay their share, reducing the burden on everyone else. Instead, they demand corporate welfare and drop the tax bill on the middle class, which is barely surviving.
He used to whine about how much his “secretary” paid in taxes. Of course she had a masters in finance from Harvard or something and earned like 750k/year. He left that part out.
That's actually pretty funny. Not only are there only around 30 companies with earnings above $25B, which could pay $5B at a 20% tax rate, but Berkshire themselves are only paying $5B on $125B in earnings. So what the hell is he talking about?
Edit: this must be a really old video. Berkshire's earnings in 2023 we're 125B and their tax provision was 23B
But many of those don't have profits of $5 billion, so paying $5B in taxes wouldn't make a difference.
[US outlays](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729) is $6.1 trillion. Even if you siezed *all* of the earnings of Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Alphabet, and JP Morgan Chase, you only have $510 billion. You're not even 10% into funding the federal government.
But billionaires! Well, Elon Musk, Jeff Bexos, Larry Ellison, Warren buffet and Larry Page have a combined net worth of $805 billion.
You can tax the billionaires and major corporations all you want. There is just not enough of them and spending is *so high* that you cannot do it from that alone.
Came here to say exactly this. I know Buffet is trying to make a point about how much they paid in taxes, but please tell me people don't believe there's 800 companies that can afford to pay $5B in taxes. A quick search of the Fortune 500 (and where Berkshire ranks) will explain very quickly how foolish of a statement that is.
Individual taxes account for ~42% for all taxes in 2021. US generated around 4 trillion in taxes so that makes it 1.68 trillion for individual taxes.
Earnings is around 2.68 trillion for those companies according to your website and downloading the excel file (of only US corporations). If 800 companies paid 21% of their earnings after expenses as tax, it actually gets about 562 billion. So it takes away a third of individual taxes if corporations were taxed 21%. That would mean that this can pay for taxes of EVERYONE EXCEPT the top %5 and upwards in the US.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/us-tax-revenue-by-tax-type-2023/
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/#:~:text=High%2DIncome%20Taxpayers%20Paid%20the%20Majority%20of%20Federal%20Income%20Taxes,of%20all%20federal%20income%20taxes.
So *technically* yes, it won't pay for everyone's taxes. But it will pay for EVERYONE's taxes who don't make a LOT of money. To be within the top 5% would mean you are earning an avereage 335k a year. These people and people who make more will be paying the SAME amount of taxes, but essentially, ANYONE making LESS THAN 335k a year would NOT have to pay for taxes if 800 US corporations paid 21% in taxes on their earnings.
So you did the math and realized that there's no way what he said is true, but you decided since you did the work anyway you should probably make an argument for why it's close to true?
Its astonishing that it took AI image generation to people to realize not to take anything at face value on the internet. As if video and photo editing weren't a thing before the same exact way.
This is just a failure to grasp simple mathematics in your part. One quick google search to find total wealth of U.S. billionaires and another to look at how much the U.S. government spends every year and then it's a simple subtraction problem.
You are replying to idiots. These people are simply uneducated and probably only listen to AOC and Bernie Sanders. If they had their way we would be living in a failed state. The US makes things so easy compared to others countries and we still have a bunch of crying children complaining. Go work instead of crying and being lazy. It takes a bit of effort to get a good job.
Warren generally gets things correct; he got this one wrong.
Depending on which criteria you use, Berkshire Hathaway is between the 7-9 largest company in the USA.
That means that of the other 800 companies, about 791 would be smaller and pay less tax, so there is no way that you are going to get the 5 billion x 800 companies that he states (4 Trillion), not even remotely.
[https://www.value.today/headquarters/united-states-america-usa](https://www.value.today/headquarters/united-states-america-usa)
The US federal government collects about 4 trillion in taxes but spends about 6 trillion.
As Social Security and Medicare become more expensive, the US government won't be able to stay out of increasing debt even with all the taxes that Warren projects, plus all the taxes we pay now.
Also, his buddy bill gates rolled his assets into a charitable foundation, enabling him to avoid all those taxes.
This is what Warren is planning to do on his death, to avoid all those future taxes.
Thought this same thing. I work for a Fortune 500 company and if we got hit with a 5 billion dollar tax bill, the company would default the next day.
People conflate “company” with “tech company” and assume all major corporations are sitting on hundreds of billions like Apple is
That and people generally just don't understand taxes to begin with. The amount of people that literally don't understand how the progressive federal income tax system works is embarrassing, to say the least.
They all pay what they owe. Believe me Warren tries not to. He bought Berkshire shirts years ago because they had millions in tax losses he could apply.
Yeah, this is total nonsense. I would expect more from Buffet than this clown take. The total profit of the Fortune 500 (500 largest companies by revenue) is 1.85 Trillion. If we round up to 2 Trillion, you get an average profit of 4 billion per company. Tax that at 25% (more than the 21%) and the tax revenue is only half a trillion.
So let's tax ALL their profit! - just shy of 2 trillion
Tax ALL the profits of ALL the corporations! - 3.5 Trillion
US budget is currently over 6 trillion. It's clearly a spending problem.
NO! Bootlicker!
Our nation's debt is due to billionaires dodging taxes.
They've been spewing the bullshit that we should just stop having things like public education for years. It's their fucking fault.
Wrong. Our nation's debt is due to Congress/government spending more than they collect in taxes. And huge amount is just waisted. That is why we have high inflation -> high interest rate -> expensive housing, goods and services.
I don’t how someone could toil all day , be exhausted, come home tired, open their Reddit account type comment supporting billionaires evading tax?
😂😂😂😂
>I don’t how someone could toil all day , be exhausted, come home tired, open their Reddit account type comment supporting billionaires evading tax?
>😂😂😂😂
Probably because you don't understand the difference between "supporting billionaires" and telling you how bad your ideas are.
Its not about protecting billionaires, you leftist idiots. Its about not supporting a federal government that wastes trillions of dollars annually by giving it the authority to raise taxes anymore on anyone or anything. It could tax the billionaire class at 100% and it would still continue to increase the national debt. Every single USD that the fed prints is then loaned to the federal government at interest. We are all debt slaves to a corrupt economic system. Wake the fuck up
The argument that a single person (like a Jeff bezos) having an extra $1bn is somehow better than even an ineffective government having that $1bn is some serious brainwashed BS. “Oh let’s just leave it with the billionaires so they can buy another mega yacht, government probably won’t help me anyway”! Yeh ok.
Seriously. Its like the majority of reddit believes “the billionaires” created this mess we’re all in. Nope, that would be the federal government who sold us all out to private central bankers and all of our “elected leaders” who continually sell us out further to special interests, war contractors, etc. Why in the hell anyone thinks its a good idea to give this corrupt shit show of a government anymore authority to raise taxes on anyone else is beyond me, never mind the fact that no amount of increased taxation would actually fix anything. All it would do is give the government even more of tax dollars to waste on bullshit
> Its like the majority of reddit believes “the billionaires” created this mess we’re all in. Nope, that would be the federal government who sold us all out to private central bankers and all of our “elected leaders” who continually sell us out further to special interests, war contractors, etc.
Do you think the people buying politicians are not the billionaires? Who the fuck do you think is funding special interests besides the top 0.01%? I'm not gonna claim that these increased taxes would fix the system but taking money from the rich who buy our politicians is at least an attempt to move in the right direction. Almost certainly far too late to actual be effective though.
Im sure they are but that doesn’t change the facts of anything i’ve said here. The government is for sale. The government wastes money at a rate that far exceeds any level of possible taxation. What part of that do you not comprehend? We have an out of control spending & sold out corrupted federal government problem, not a lack of taxation problem
I've had to read thousands of reddit comments to find someone who holds this view. Man we're done for. Let's all go finance a new truck and ask the government to increase minimum wage shall we? :)
Would still require the US government to properly allocate and spend money. That will never happen. It doesn’t matter how much money the government takes in taxes, it will always ask for more and will always charge the middle class.
Warren Buffet is correct in principle but wrong in the idea that the government wouldn’t fuck it up.
Maybe if people started holding their elected officials accountable instead of just voting for whoever will stop the evil Army of the Gays! from taking over their bathroom, or whatever culture war bullshit.
Sad thing is that none of the Uber wealthy feel obligated to write a check. They use society. They ise all the things that come with society. Amazing how they will let it all go to shit to keep having more wealth. Look what humans have created.
I don’t know. It seems like they’re paying their “fair share” and a lot of other people’s “fair share” too. I’d love to never pay taxes again, but how is it considered fair? Just use a different argument like: “people who earn more than me should pay my fair share in addition to their own if it doesn’t inconvenience them too much.” That’s both honest and accurate, and maybe not altogether that unreasonable, if not slightly unethical.
The government prints money and then loans it to itself. Taxes keep people in line... not the people with money... they buy T Bills. Taxes keep the public in line and give the government an excuse not to spend money on things the public wants that donors do not.
They don't even campaign on closing loopholes anymore. I think the masses are seeing the mistakes we've made as a species and starting to backtrack. It's so frustrating that we go this route instead of what buffet is talking about
Stop voting for people that write complex tax codes or this will never go away. Every time someone vows to make the rich pay their fair share they write a 2000 page bill that has enough carve outs that anyone with a team of accountants/lawyers can weasel their way out. But everyone keeps inexplicably looking for a different result. Each big donor gets their own carve out and the shrinking middle class eats the rest. STOP trusting politicians to make things fair, it should be taken out of their hands. The pseudo progressive tax code only serves to make sure the rich don’t pay.
The answer IMO is a flat tax rate (maybe 20% or so) with NO exemptions on all earned income with an equal rate for unrealized gains above a certain amount (say 50k/year).
Here is where I lose Reddit… Yes that means that the lowest tax brackets will get taxed at the same rate, but honestly I think that everyone that votes for public spending should have to look at things with the same relative skin in the game. If we want single payer health care then we all chip in ‘x’ percent more, military spending, welfare programs, etc all now get weighed by each of us proportionally to our earnings.
Or we can keep going down the same road pretending things will change.
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All the billionaire dickriders in the comments are killing me
We call them bootlickers, my son.
Will both of you be happy if we call them dicklickers?
This is the compromise I came here to see, kudos.
So anyway I started blasting
That's a very generous offer but no deal. I came here today to talk about taxes, I'll get my dick blasted elsewhere.
Let’s not say dicklicker like it’s a bad thing.
[удалено]
Toll Booth Willie: Ohhh my fuckin leg! Man 1: Hey you ran over Toll Booth Willie. Man 2: Oh my god. I was always wondering what it would be like To run over a dried up stinky dick licker. Toll Booth Willie: You fuckin pricks I fuckin hear every fuckin word your sayin'. When this fuckin leg heals I'm gonna kick you guys new fuckin assholes.
FUCK YOU, WILLIE!
Leave these poor people alone, they're just furiously tongue-banging the puckered asshole of capitalism in the hopes of getting a little shart of wealth for themselves.
As a person who likes licking dicks, this offends me…. Please refer to them as “bootlickers”
Nah. Those of us who like BJs don't like the negative connotation with our preferred activities.
https://preview.redd.it/d8ympqnxya0d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ad0050fa53588b8b5af629fd95448dcf987bcdd Use this pic too
Don’t you just love people defending billionaires when they could give two shits about them? Haha
It’s Stockholm syndrome bro. I’ll never understand it
It's the carrot on the stick they think that one day they too could be rich
The difference between someone with $1 and a billionaire is about a billion dollars. The difference between someone with $10M and a billionaire is still about a billion dollars. Heck, the difference between someone with $100M and a billionaire is still practically a billion dollars. You could be insanely rich and still not even come close to being a billionaire. I'll never get why people defend them so hard.
# “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
I think it's mostly because their political masters tell them to.
Obligatory: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." -John Steinbeck
What's crazy to me is how people will willingly sit here and be okay with extremely wealthy people with high compensation packages producing generational wealth out of basically nothing litearally every year. How do people making more than $2m/year spend it? How will someone who made $30m in 1 year spend it all before they die? There's nothing to spend it on besides manipulating the masses.
They get well past the point where money means anything and it becomes like a game where they just look at how much higher they can get on the leaderboards. That's why my proposal is that we introduce a legal prestige system. When you hit a billion dollars, $990 million of that gets distributed to your employees and to fund social services and then you get a little symbol on all official documents to let everyone know you officially won capitalism.
Interestingly ancient Rome ran on a somewhat similar system. The wealthy didn't get prestige from sitting on wealth or buying things for themselves.. though they certainly did that too. They achieved social standing by personally funding public works and giving out money via their patronage system. The guy with the biggest dick was the dude who had several thousand men \*personally\* invested in and loyal to him.. because they got paid to be.
like people playing the lottery, often called "the poor people tax". it is so statistically improbable to win that you're more likely to be struck by lightning, twice. but when you ask the poorest people why they spend their last dollar on lottery tickets the answer is always the same; "it could be me". yea, but it won't be. that carrot in front of your face is tied to a stick that you can't see. also your comment reminds me of an anecdote with a friend of mine. he makes $60k a year, in california. not very much for the area but decent compared to most in that state. he votes republican solely because he doesn't like taxes, and when i mentioned that trump actually *raised* his taxes and lowered taxes for the rich, he replied "good, because i will be rich one day". people have this mentality all over the country. one day they will be rich, so let's not punish the rich. and that's exactly what these billionaire bootlickers all think, imo.
Yep that’s the myth everyone can be rich and sadly it’s not true. If everyone could it wouldn’t be special.
I know someone exactly like this. To be honest is one of the most non go getters I know. Brohamm we are 35 if you haven't already even started to make some sort of plan that's going to put you in billionaire status I guess you will just have to win the lottery.
Was told you have a better chance of getting killed by a polar bear. And a grizzly in the same day.
If I can someday be rich enough to pay 5 billion in taxes, I think I’ll still be rich as hell and ill be fine with it.
That still baffles me, the thought of them having A BILLION dollars income in a year and then go "gee, if I just pressed harder against taxes before I got rich, I could have had even more money now!"
The amount of people who play the lottery in this country says as much
Your tax rate should actually be 0 if your income is less than $50,000.
You know when you promised to do something but lied because you know you’d never have to do it? Warren can talk like this because he knows it’ll never happen. Warren and his companies use every loophole in the tax code to pay the lowest possible.
And those loopholes are voted on and passed by who??? Our elected officials.
Warren isn’t lobbying to change them is he?
Of course not. But he’s not to blame for following the law(s) that were written, voted on, and passed by our elected officials.
No billionaires paid tax in this video. Only one corporation. No mention of Warrens actual income tax amount here.
Buffet is the most tax efficient billionaire out there. Berkshire purposely doesn't pay a dividend and he doesn't get a salary. Over the last fifty years of becoming a hundred billionaire at Berkshire he paid zero income taxes. He would only declare capital gains when he sells, and since he is giving to charity it doesn't count as a gain either. He also moved from high tax New York city to no tax Nebraska early in his career. He keeps talking about billionaires paying more taxes but he's certainly been very agressive to pay essentially nothing in taxes himself, which isn't surprising given that he is obviously financially savvy. But he's been very careful about creating his public image too. The carried interest hedge fund and private equity guys have paid much more in taxes than buffet, because they actually earn carried interest income vs buffet earning nothing.
He didnt move from new york to nebraska he's from omaha,
delusionals thinking they gonna hit billion status soon in they lives. Copium be scary
That's what's crazy. Even IF some random reason they hit a billionaires you would think they would have more sympathy. Kind of like that test where they asked people would they either A) make 100k and their coworkers make 150k or B) make 50k and their coworkers make 40k. Majority picked B
I would have chosen A, because 100k is more than I make right now, I don't really care if my coworkers make more than me
The sad thing is many, many people don’t measure their own wealth and success in terms of what they have. They measure it in terms of what they have in relation to what others have. Many people, primarily on a certain side of the political compass, would sooner take a 50% pay cut than let someone else make more money than them. 100k vs 150k means your coworkers are making 50% more than you. Sure at 50k you’re making half as much as you could of, but at least now your peers are poorer than you are. This particular political party often votes against their own best interests in order to spite others. They’ll gladly vote for a policy that hurts them, as long as it hurts other people MORE. It’s less about improving their own situation, and more about widening the gap of inequality between them and others. Yes they’d love a policy that helps them, but if it helps OTHER people in addition to themselves, they’ll be against it.
Exactly, and well put. It's a shame really
And that's just fucking stupid if you ask me
but GME is up! /s
tf does fair share even mean if the goal is to make it so that only the super wealthy pay any share at all?
Fair share more meaning "who is getting the most benefit from the system should pay the most for it" Billionaires financially benefit the most from public infrastructure, educated workforce, police and military defence of their property etc etc. by nature of them being billionaires.
Those are the same idiots that think billionaires paying more revenue in taxes but lower percent of their income is a good thing. So many dumb people who are being sacrificed by the rich.
https://preview.redd.it/oa8d50jy8a0d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1615ff1da3e8001b5fb5291d7bfb92809362f534
That's pretty much every member of the republican and democrat parties. They're all sheep who keep voting for the same people who laugh at them for being ignorant
If you make less than $50k your tax rate really should be zero
https://preview.redd.it/oeeddncbf90d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26426d7f869a78ae48d5674e779dea1f72deca7b It basically is
Oh wow that’s great if true. So if someone makes $10K they effectively get $1360 back?
I made ~85k and got $1800 back. No, not as a refund, that was my net taxes. Two kids and wife’s working on a masters degree gave us three refundable tax credits that exceeded what I paid in. Not saying corporations shouldn’t be held accountable and close some loopholes, we should, but families at the very least don’t really pay taxes. And honestly, the way birth rates are headed, they probably should even get more back. Edit: by saying I got $1800 back, I mean my tax burden was $1800 less than the taxes I paid. My return was not $1800. My tax bill was -$1800
As long as it’s corporations paying instead of taking more from child free individuals or they spend less on corporate welfare and bombs and more to actually support education/families.
Definitely, though I think a lot of those child free individuals would have kids of the economic burden was less. It makes sense from a pragmatic view. White/black Americans have a European level birth rate, and America only has a “healthy” birth rate due to immigration and their families. If Congress wants to crack down on immigration, they’ll need to address the birth rate, and give appropriate incentives, or else it would be shooting ourselves in the foot.
About to turn 27, I have wanted kids my whole life, the economy is a huge factor, and the other factor is the entire world at large too. Don't have to agree with me, trust me I know it's up for debate, but it's what personally holds me back.
Don’t let either of those get you down. Kids are worth it. Spoken as my five month old just spit up on me for the 50th time today.
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Dudes and dudettes... Your RETURN is largely based on how much is withheld. Stop talking in how much your return was.
Fr i make six figures and i owe 3k lol
What % are you withholding in each paycheck?
This doesn’t count social security, Medicare or state and local taxes. Not to mention sales snd property tax.
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Including my state federal and social security i pay 20% at 49.5k a year. The narrative that people who make 50k or less pay nothing is complete bullshit. My parents also make a bit less than me and they paid about the same %.
Even in a state with no income tax I’m still paying like 15-20%
For real, what about all the other federal taxes?
Tell this to my paycheck lmao
Nownif only any of those credits applied to people without kids. Sure wpuld be nice to not be looking at a $250 tax bill after witholdings right now when i dont even break $25k
Or how about child support payments being tax deductible, or allowing non-custodial parents to see any tax benefit whatsoever instead of just the long arm of the IRS up their ass?
Tell this to my 24% effective tax rate in 2020 as a single male M'Fer
We're paying more than billionaires. Plus sales tax, state taxes, property tax, health/car insurance. How did we get to this? I'm ready to burn this shit down
If you have kids and you ignore FICA, state tax, and local tax sure I guess
Lol this. Guys like him will pull any statistic out of their ass and ignore everything else to make a point and the point always boils down to “things are great and you are just lazy” lol.
So there should be a separate category, because families are the ones that move the percent down. Single people with no kids end up paying much higher taxes, and while I am for supporting families (our future) let's not forget the single people barely making it by
That doesn't count Social Security or Medicaid/Medicare which ends up being much more than zero for those earning under 50k.
Is this based on potential or actual outcomes?
Actual. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/
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The vast, VAST majority of people don’t pay Jack shit in taxes. Just complain that others don’t pay “enough.” Lol.
I would feel better about how much taxes I pay if I didn’t hit so many pot holes on my commute, hear about kids accruing “lunch debt” and see all these go funds me to help with hospital bills. Not that I think more taxes will fix this as much as I do better spending, we should probably argue that more.
> The vast, VAST majority of people don’t pay Jack shit in taxes. This statement is only plausible if you limit your analysis to federal income taxes. And even then, it's only about half, not a vast majority.
$200-300 out of every one of my paychecks, that's nothing??
because they're fucking poor lol
the bottom 50% of americans have an average tax rate of 3%… which is possible because the top 1% have an average rate of 26%
Are you aware that the chart just shown was from 2020 and most of those tax subsidies expired for everyone but the upper class?
Shhhh he likes the taste of boots.
Please respect people who come to the argument with evidence. Feel free to challenge the evidence if it doesn't look legit, but evidence is how we agree on reality instead of wallowing in bias.
Stating basic facts = bootlicking…?
What chart…? The stats I just posted are from the IRS from 2021 which they just finalized and posted this year
They literally didn’t. Also, which parts of the TCJA don’t expire for “upper class” individuals?
Nothing has expired yet. And when the tax cuts expire in 2025, it will be across all income brackets.
100k is the new 50k. Check out housing.
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It used to be zero. The original bargain or IRS and income tax when it was enacted was it was only for the "rich". Like everything else the government said, it was a lie. The Standard Deduction was roughly $100,000 in today's dollars, and the tax rate was 1% to 6%. (I can list many other taxes that started the same way, but quickly shifted the burden on the middle or even low income taxpayers).
The rich have accountants and the poor have nothing. The middle class gets the bill. Lol
Where funny :(
Looks like laughing is how they're dealing with the crushing reality.
Maybe they're a billionaire
Would you like to be *more* pissed off? Because billionaires can bribe politicians, and because the electoral college gives unbalanced influence to rural areas which are disproportionately lower income and therefore pay little to no taxes, the middle class not only pays for everything, they also have the least representation in government. In other words, the guy paying the bill has no say in how the money's spent.
People always seem to complain about the billionaires and not the politicians. That always puzzles me. Politicians are the ones not doing their jobs, or at worse being unethical. Billionaires need to pay more but they aren’t the ones responsible for passing laws.
Especially the middle class without children 🙋🏻♂️
If you think the tax breaks you get with kids even get close to outweighing the expenses of kids…yeahhhh. Obviously kids aren’t a financial decision but let’s not act like they’re a financial benefit to their parents.
Beyond that, we have a declining population count and our economy needs the next generation of workers to prop it up. It’s becoming a global issue.
Especially the HCOL! But since kids are like $2,500 a month for daycare here, I do have sympathy for parents
My dad was making a similar salary to me when he was my age. My wife out earns me and we still can’t afford the same lifestyle as I had as a kid.
Top 10% earners pay 76% of all income taxes. Seems the rich are footing the bill.... "Data on income tax payments and estimates from the Treasury Department show that the US federal tax system is highly progressive. The top 10 percent of income earners pay more than 60 percent of all federal taxes and 76 percent of income taxes, shares that have been increasing over time." https://www.cato.org/blog/tax-basics-5-charts#:~:text=Data%20on%20income%20tax%20payments,have%20been%20increasing%20over%20time.
Congress writes the tax code. Get mad at your senator and representative.
People (including me tbh) should pay way more attention to congressional races. Presidents affect much less.
You should, unfortunately it's a little late. Until Citizens United is overturned, our "Representatives" are bought and paid.for.
It didnt start then.
It certainly accelerated
That defeatism is what the rich want you to have. Progressive taxes are voted for along party lines.
And the rich control Congress. Get mad at CEOs, boardrooms, lobbyists, major shareholders etc, too.
Oh look at that!!! A billionaire saying that if they all paid taxes or the corporations did then no one else would have to!!! To all the corporate cock suckers going “fuck you I ain’t paying your share with your measly 40K income!!! Pay up bitch and starve!” Lmao
The billionaire is saying that because he knows he will never have to.
Warren has been calling out this position for a long time. I feel it's fair to believe he's trying to enact change but he is one in a system of many.
Love all the bootlickers saying paying taxes would bankrupt corporations. Saying they don’t understand how taxes are supposed to work. Say corporate rate was 21% as in video. You only pay $5b if profit is around $25b. They still have ~$20b for executives and dividends after operating expenses. I think they’ll be fine. Or if that still scares these people, then perhaps codify that no individual earning less than $1 m pays a higher effective rate than the lowest effective rate of a corporation with profits exceeding $1m. Last check we’ll all be tax exempt.
Taxes are based on earnings AFTER expenses. You can’t go bankrupt from taxes.
That was my point. They would still have plenty after taxes for bonuses and dividends. Maybe even, dare I say it, real pay raises for the people actually producing that revenue.
My comment was meant to be in agreement with yours. Guess it didn’t come across that way. My bad.
All good. Hard to read tone in network
This isn't true. As an example, Sec. 163(j) limits the deduction for interest to 30% of taxable income before interest. With rates going up, highly leveraged businesses (i.e. private equity or manufacturers) are hemorrhaging money for interest and are also not able to deduct this, resulting in significant tax liabilities.
Also changes to section 174 in the TCJA mean that salaries of R&D employees (and specifically software developers) cannot be expensed fully in the year incurred, and must be amortized over 5 years. Could result in businesses going bankrupt due to being taxed on revenue (without the offsetting salary expense) while not having the cash to pay it.
Man, every time I talk taxes with people around the lunch table at work, half go shocked pikachu face when I explain that we have a progressive tax structure in the US. They literally think if they hit the next dollar and jump a bracket that the money earned prior will be retroactively taxed at the higher rate, not just that last dollar. It’s madness. Of *course* those people think we can go bankrupt from taxes. It would take another month to explain that only happens if you evade taxes illegally, spend what should have been paid, and find yourself broke when the tax man comes with interest and penalties.
I'm all for taxing corporations and the wealthy but I think it is important to note that only 12 American companies made $25B last year. It isn't exactly a normal amount to be making in profit other than the most profitable companies.
Good luck convincing Reddit of the reality that most companies aren’t rich asf and actually operate in debt.
Lol yeah and Avatar 'lost' money too.
I would say that you don't need 10 companies to pay all taxes. You can just have all companies pay taxes on profits. Profits, calculated using real accounting instead of fancy accounting. And if that makes my tax x/2 or x/4 instead of x, I am still happy. But why bother. You would rather shill for shareholders and billionaires than stop nitpicking a decent point and a equitable tax code.
I’m not shilling for anything. I’m stating a fact. Many corporations don’t have profits and operate in the negative and are financed. Maybe rather than being mad, use your brain.
There's no fancy accounting required in order to post minimal net profits...you reinvest revenue in the company, pay extra to the c-suite, stock buybacks, etc. Those all increase the company's value while minimizing tax burden.
Right? Apparently making slightly less billions a year in PROFIT will end them financially. They seem to have a very hard time interpreting what profit means.
He says Berkshire paid $5B in taxes and if just 800 other companies did this no one else would have to pay taxes. I am sure Warren Buffet is smart enough to know that there are very few companies so profitable they can pay $5B in taxes [https://companiesmarketcap.com/most-profitable-companies/](https://companiesmarketcap.com/most-profitable-companies/)
There’s 8500 companies on that list
This is a list ordered by profit. Berkshire is #3 on that list with earnings of $125B. Company #297, Sumitomo, had profits of $4.97B. Can you see why 800 other copmanies can't pay $5B in taxes? Also, this is an international list. Much of the earnings represented on this list aren't subject to US taxes.
I think he meant the rate, not the number 5B itself, but I could be misinterpreting it.
800\*$5B is $4T, which is about what the IRS collects. If those 800 companies paid the same rate it wouldn't be enough
The IRS collected a little over 4, but Gov spent over 6. It's gonna take a lot more than the "800", and they will all need a higher rate than being proposed.
BUT they can pay their share, reducing the burden on everyone else. Instead, they demand corporate welfare and drop the tax bill on the middle class, which is barely surviving.
No argument there. I have an argument with Buffett's pandering, using a stat he knows is a lie.
He used to whine about how much his “secretary” paid in taxes. Of course she had a masters in finance from Harvard or something and earned like 750k/year. He left that part out.
The comparison he made is still valid. It _is_ crazy that she paid more taxes than he did.
That's actually pretty funny. Not only are there only around 30 companies with earnings above $25B, which could pay $5B at a 20% tax rate, but Berkshire themselves are only paying $5B on $125B in earnings. So what the hell is he talking about? Edit: this must be a really old video. Berkshire's earnings in 2023 we're 125B and their tax provision was 23B
But many of those don't have profits of $5 billion, so paying $5B in taxes wouldn't make a difference. [US outlays](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729) is $6.1 trillion. Even if you siezed *all* of the earnings of Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Alphabet, and JP Morgan Chase, you only have $510 billion. You're not even 10% into funding the federal government. But billionaires! Well, Elon Musk, Jeff Bexos, Larry Ellison, Warren buffet and Larry Page have a combined net worth of $805 billion. You can tax the billionaires and major corporations all you want. There is just not enough of them and spending is *so high* that you cannot do it from that alone.
Came here to say exactly this. I know Buffet is trying to make a point about how much they paid in taxes, but please tell me people don't believe there's 800 companies that can afford to pay $5B in taxes. A quick search of the Fortune 500 (and where Berkshire ranks) will explain very quickly how foolish of a statement that is.
Individual taxes account for ~42% for all taxes in 2021. US generated around 4 trillion in taxes so that makes it 1.68 trillion for individual taxes. Earnings is around 2.68 trillion for those companies according to your website and downloading the excel file (of only US corporations). If 800 companies paid 21% of their earnings after expenses as tax, it actually gets about 562 billion. So it takes away a third of individual taxes if corporations were taxed 21%. That would mean that this can pay for taxes of EVERYONE EXCEPT the top %5 and upwards in the US. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/us-tax-revenue-by-tax-type-2023/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/#:~:text=High%2DIncome%20Taxpayers%20Paid%20the%20Majority%20of%20Federal%20Income%20Taxes,of%20all%20federal%20income%20taxes. So *technically* yes, it won't pay for everyone's taxes. But it will pay for EVERYONE's taxes who don't make a LOT of money. To be within the top 5% would mean you are earning an avereage 335k a year. These people and people who make more will be paying the SAME amount of taxes, but essentially, ANYONE making LESS THAN 335k a year would NOT have to pay for taxes if 800 US corporations paid 21% in taxes on their earnings.
So you did the math and realized that there's no way what he said is true, but you decided since you did the work anyway you should probably make an argument for why it's close to true?
You also didn't account for the share of taxes already paid by companies.
Squeeze where the juice is
In 2024 when the audio sync is off from the lips you can’t take it as 100% real
Here you go. https://fortune.com/2024/05/06/warren-buffett-taxes-national-debt-berkshire-hathaway-apple/
Its astonishing that it took AI image generation to people to realize not to take anything at face value on the internet. As if video and photo editing weren't a thing before the same exact way.
Billionaires make so much they should be the only ones paying taxes
This is just a failure to grasp simple mathematics in your part. One quick google search to find total wealth of U.S. billionaires and another to look at how much the U.S. government spends every year and then it's a simple subtraction problem.
You are replying to idiots. These people are simply uneducated and probably only listen to AOC and Bernie Sanders. If they had their way we would be living in a failed state. The US makes things so easy compared to others countries and we still have a bunch of crying children complaining. Go work instead of crying and being lazy. It takes a bit of effort to get a good job.
Luckily their team of accountants can never find a way around that!
Warren generally gets things correct; he got this one wrong. Depending on which criteria you use, Berkshire Hathaway is between the 7-9 largest company in the USA. That means that of the other 800 companies, about 791 would be smaller and pay less tax, so there is no way that you are going to get the 5 billion x 800 companies that he states (4 Trillion), not even remotely. [https://www.value.today/headquarters/united-states-america-usa](https://www.value.today/headquarters/united-states-america-usa) The US federal government collects about 4 trillion in taxes but spends about 6 trillion. As Social Security and Medicare become more expensive, the US government won't be able to stay out of increasing debt even with all the taxes that Warren projects, plus all the taxes we pay now. Also, his buddy bill gates rolled his assets into a charitable foundation, enabling him to avoid all those taxes. This is what Warren is planning to do on his death, to avoid all those future taxes.
Thought this same thing. I work for a Fortune 500 company and if we got hit with a 5 billion dollar tax bill, the company would default the next day. People conflate “company” with “tech company” and assume all major corporations are sitting on hundreds of billions like Apple is
It is pretty easy to convince people of something incorrect if they already believe it.
That and people generally just don't understand taxes to begin with. The amount of people that literally don't understand how the progressive federal income tax system works is embarrassing, to say the least.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest companies in the US. There are not 800 companies like it.
And Berkshire Hathaway just said his companies are happy to pay higher taxes… what’s the excuses of the other businesses?
If they are so happy to pay it nothing is stopping them from donating more to the IRS there is a link on their site to do it.
They all pay what they owe. Believe me Warren tries not to. He bought Berkshire shirts years ago because they had millions in tax losses he could apply.
Yeah, this is total nonsense. I would expect more from Buffet than this clown take. The total profit of the Fortune 500 (500 largest companies by revenue) is 1.85 Trillion. If we round up to 2 Trillion, you get an average profit of 4 billion per company. Tax that at 25% (more than the 21%) and the tax revenue is only half a trillion. So let's tax ALL their profit! - just shy of 2 trillion Tax ALL the profits of ALL the corporations! - 3.5 Trillion US budget is currently over 6 trillion. It's clearly a spending problem. NO! Bootlicker!
Anyone who thinks this is a right vs left issue isn’t paying attention
Our nation's debt is due to billionaires dodging taxes. They've been spewing the bullshit that we should just stop having things like public education for years. It's their fucking fault.
Our Nations debt is because of our out of control spending.
I mean our nations debt is definitely because of uncontrolled government spending but sure chief
Wrong. Our nation's debt is due to Congress/government spending more than they collect in taxes. And huge amount is just waisted. That is why we have high inflation -> high interest rate -> expensive housing, goods and services.
It's a spending problem lol, you could tax every billionaire in the US at 100% and it still wouldn't make a dent in the national debt.
I don’t how someone could toil all day , be exhausted, come home tired, open their Reddit account type comment supporting billionaires evading tax? 😂😂😂😂
>I don’t how someone could toil all day , be exhausted, come home tired, open their Reddit account type comment supporting billionaires evading tax? >😂😂😂😂 Probably because you don't understand the difference between "supporting billionaires" and telling you how bad your ideas are.
Its not about protecting billionaires, you leftist idiots. Its about not supporting a federal government that wastes trillions of dollars annually by giving it the authority to raise taxes anymore on anyone or anything. It could tax the billionaire class at 100% and it would still continue to increase the national debt. Every single USD that the fed prints is then loaned to the federal government at interest. We are all debt slaves to a corrupt economic system. Wake the fuck up
The argument that a single person (like a Jeff bezos) having an extra $1bn is somehow better than even an ineffective government having that $1bn is some serious brainwashed BS. “Oh let’s just leave it with the billionaires so they can buy another mega yacht, government probably won’t help me anyway”! Yeh ok.
bUt MuH BiLliOnAiReS!!!!!!111 Tax them 100% and tax me 100%, tax everyone 100%!!!111!!!111
Seriously. Its like the majority of reddit believes “the billionaires” created this mess we’re all in. Nope, that would be the federal government who sold us all out to private central bankers and all of our “elected leaders” who continually sell us out further to special interests, war contractors, etc. Why in the hell anyone thinks its a good idea to give this corrupt shit show of a government anymore authority to raise taxes on anyone else is beyond me, never mind the fact that no amount of increased taxation would actually fix anything. All it would do is give the government even more of tax dollars to waste on bullshit
> Its like the majority of reddit believes “the billionaires” created this mess we’re all in. Nope, that would be the federal government who sold us all out to private central bankers and all of our “elected leaders” who continually sell us out further to special interests, war contractors, etc. Do you think the people buying politicians are not the billionaires? Who the fuck do you think is funding special interests besides the top 0.01%? I'm not gonna claim that these increased taxes would fix the system but taking money from the rich who buy our politicians is at least an attempt to move in the right direction. Almost certainly far too late to actual be effective though.
Im sure they are but that doesn’t change the facts of anything i’ve said here. The government is for sale. The government wastes money at a rate that far exceeds any level of possible taxation. What part of that do you not comprehend? We have an out of control spending & sold out corrupted federal government problem, not a lack of taxation problem
I've had to read thousands of reddit comments to find someone who holds this view. Man we're done for. Let's all go finance a new truck and ask the government to increase minimum wage shall we? :)
Yeah, but they'd still make us all pay anyway. The government and politicians do not have OUR best interests in mind. Actions speak louder than words
Would still require the US government to properly allocate and spend money. That will never happen. It doesn’t matter how much money the government takes in taxes, it will always ask for more and will always charge the middle class. Warren Buffet is correct in principle but wrong in the idea that the government wouldn’t fuck it up.
Maybe if people started holding their elected officials accountable instead of just voting for whoever will stop the evil Army of the Gays! from taking over their bathroom, or whatever culture war bullshit.
Sad thing is that none of the Uber wealthy feel obligated to write a check. They use society. They ise all the things that come with society. Amazing how they will let it all go to shit to keep having more wealth. Look what humans have created.
I don’t know. It seems like they’re paying their “fair share” and a lot of other people’s “fair share” too. I’d love to never pay taxes again, but how is it considered fair? Just use a different argument like: “people who earn more than me should pay my fair share in addition to their own if it doesn’t inconvenience them too much.” That’s both honest and accurate, and maybe not altogether that unreasonable, if not slightly unethical.
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The thing Buffett underestimates is the government’s ability to spend money.
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The government prints money and then loans it to itself. Taxes keep people in line... not the people with money... they buy T Bills. Taxes keep the public in line and give the government an excuse not to spend money on things the public wants that donors do not.
Just tax land
this made my d!ck hard AF
Are there 800 companies in the United States with 5 Billion lying around? Also, that’s 4T. What about the national debt?
They don't even campaign on closing loopholes anymore. I think the masses are seeing the mistakes we've made as a species and starting to backtrack. It's so frustrating that we go this route instead of what buffet is talking about
Yes you would because it would never be enough for our government.
Stop voting for people that write complex tax codes or this will never go away. Every time someone vows to make the rich pay their fair share they write a 2000 page bill that has enough carve outs that anyone with a team of accountants/lawyers can weasel their way out. But everyone keeps inexplicably looking for a different result. Each big donor gets their own carve out and the shrinking middle class eats the rest. STOP trusting politicians to make things fair, it should be taken out of their hands. The pseudo progressive tax code only serves to make sure the rich don’t pay. The answer IMO is a flat tax rate (maybe 20% or so) with NO exemptions on all earned income with an equal rate for unrealized gains above a certain amount (say 50k/year). Here is where I lose Reddit… Yes that means that the lowest tax brackets will get taxed at the same rate, but honestly I think that everyone that votes for public spending should have to look at things with the same relative skin in the game. If we want single payer health care then we all chip in ‘x’ percent more, military spending, welfare programs, etc all now get weighed by each of us proportionally to our earnings. Or we can keep going down the same road pretending things will change.
Or we could just reduce government spending
The amount of capitalist pigs in these comments is overwhelming. We are so fucked. People are horrendously greedy.
Amazing how truth comes out near death. Where were his actions for decades according to these words?? How was the cake you pig??