Quote:
Originally Posted by JayJamJah
You're right that Buffett does feel it's his duty to give back, but he is in favor of a flat tax, he was upset (really he was) that he was only taxed 18% (because of capital gains which as you correctly noted are taxed at a considerably lower rate) of his income. Buffett believes in philanthropy and does have a disdain for the widening gap between the elite rich and the middle class. But his solution is an equitable tax system and accountability from the wealthy to the soceity that allowed them to attain such wealth.
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concerning my post
First, we need to raise the minimum wage in all 50 states to $10 per/hr. This ensures a decent living wage, if you're working full time. Most of that wage increase will be coming from a CEO. It will be a big adjustment for them, but I won't lose any sleep over it.
The average CEO makes something like 300x as much as their average worker. Now, meanwhile does he work 300x harder? No, in fact he/she works less hard than the average factory worker. They can just hire an economist and a secretary to basically run the company for him, so he can cut out at 2p.m. to hit the links.
Now, shouldn't a CEO be rewarded for working his way up the corporate ladder? Maybe they did, maybe his position was inherited down from their father. I wish they would be making 10x - 20x as much as the average worker. This would still be easily enough of an income to live well beyond their means, and would enable the minimum wage increase.
If these happened, we'd be getting closer to fairness, not there yet, but a big step. Then you could have the flat tax. Another idea would be to eliminate the income tax, and set a flat sales tax of about 30% on all purchases. Then businesses would just be taxed at a higher rate. Set the tax so businesses aren't hurt too much or rewarded too much. Then, those that spend a lot are penalized up to a point where if they couldn't afford to spend much more, they would just have to stop spending.
That sounds like a blow to the economy, but it would hopefully cause a lot of unnecessary products to quit being made, and have a shift towards the emphasis of making more and better commodities. More people working in agriculture, opening up water treatment facilities. Finding better drilling techniques and cheap, more effective alternative energy.