Stop Coddling the Super-Rich



By WARREN E. BUFFETT

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

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6 Comments
  1. hello Jane i wanted to ask you it those lanters in your friends 60th b-day party are the floating laterns that youcan order? im helping to decorate awedding and they would be so pretty in pink thank you jane please let me know

  2. Thank you Warren Buffett! It seems the only trend happening right now is taking from the poor and the middle class . . . . oh, and of course the senior citizens! I sure hope people open their eyes before election time! 

  3. Hello Jane,
    Reading about The floating castle a longtime dream of libertarian oligarchs — a place where they can live their lives in peace free from the teeming masses of starving losers and indebted parasites and their tax demands. http://shrvl.com/7s0Jr Sounds more like the play “Outward bound”

    with love and care

  4. Thanks for posting this NYT article, Jane. I think it is an important piece. Warren Buffett is great.

    Glad you were able to catch a flight back to LA before Hurricane Irene came through there. Enjoy your down time before the Toronto Film Festival.

  5. thank you for speaking truth! you are seriously too good to be true! 🙂

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