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What do conservatives have to say about Warren Buffet?

dc1971

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I actually listened to Rush Limbaugh today (yes, I will be okay). He's spent some time criticizing Warren Buffett and how he supports the need to raise taxes. Yes, Rush spent some time on this issue discussing how Mr. Buffett has let the "liberals" get to him, raising taxes would be bad for this country, bla bla bla....

Conservatives? Yoo-Hoo? I thought Warrent Buffett was your hero? If I'm not mistaken, Rush refers to him many times in his See I Told You So book (if you want to call it a book or more of a multi-page bitch session)! What gives?

Any conservatives here want to chime in? Explain? Does Rush happen to know more about economics and finance than Warren Buffett does?
 
As a conservative, I have two things to say about Warren Buffet:

First, I think he's wrong about the "Buffett Rule".

Second, I encourage him to amass as much wealth as hard work and good luck allow, and to spend it on whatever his heart desires.
 
theprestige said:
As a conservative, I have two things to say about Warren Buffet:

First, I think he's wrong about the "Buffett Rule".

Second, I encourage him to amass as much wealth as hard work and good luck allow, and to spend it on whatever his heart desires.
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Whilst you conveniently leave out the issue of taxes.

Should he pay more? I say yes. Especially since more taxes would help pay for the debt that was accumulated during the Bush administration. This is, of course, considering we were fighting two wars yet Bush had no plan of raising taxes.

Sure, Warren Buffett should be allowed to accumulate as much wealth as his heart desires.

What about the rest of our hearts?
 
dc1971 said:
Should he pay more? I say yes.
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If you just want rich people to pay more, then what does Buffet have to do with it, other than just being one of many rich people? If you're trying to use his statements to justify your position, wel, Buffet is free to pay more if he thinks he should. Nobody is stopping him, except him.
 
Ziggurat said:
If you just want rich people to pay more, then what does Buffet have to do with it, other than just being one of many rich people? If you're trying to use his statements to justify your position, wel, Buffet is free to pay more if he thinks he should. Nobody is stopping him, except him.
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But then, he would just be subsidizing worthless slime like the Koch roaches and the Walton larvae, and it would do little to aleviate the burden on working people like his secretary.
 
Ziggurat said:
If you just want rich people to pay more, then what does Buffet have to do with it, other than just being one of many rich people?
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Well, Buffett is also a rather noted and successful capitalist. One might even argue that he is something of an authority on capitalism. Further, it has been argued by many that raising taxes on the rich is wealth redistribution and socialism. I think that's silly, but whatever.

So, we have a disconnect here. Either noted and successful capitalist Warren Buffett isn't a capitalist or raising taxes on the rich isn't really all that socialist after all.
 
I think it is weird that people think paying taxes turns into socialism(which they seem to present as communism) past a certain dollar point or percentage less than %100.
 
theprestige said:
As a conservative, I have two things to say about Warren Buffet:

First, I think he's wrong about the "Buffett Rule".

Second, I encourage him to amass as much wealth as hard work and good luck allow, and to spend it on whatever his heart desires.
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Which will likely not be GSA junkets in Los Vegas, or Solar Power; govt too often just wastes tax dollars.
 
Upchurch said:
Well, Buffett is also a rather noted and successful capitalist. One might even argue that he is something of an authority on capitalism. Further, it has been argued by many that raising taxes on the rich is wealth redistribution and socialism. I think that's silly, but whatever.

So, we have a disconnect here. Either noted and successful capitalist Warren Buffett isn't a capitalist or raising taxes on the rich isn't really all that socialist after all.
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Appeal to authority, strawman, excluded middle, begging the question... did I miss any?
 
Ziggurat said:
If you just want rich people to pay more, then what does Buffet have to do with it, other than just being one of many rich people? If you're trying to use his statements to justify your position, wel, Buffet is free to pay more if he thinks he should. Nobody is stopping him, except him.
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Okay. Whatever.

That doesn't address why conservatives no longer have a boner for this guy.

It's always amazing to me how once a prominent conservative economist will support a democratic plan for raising taxes, conservative buffoons such as Rush will label them a "traitor". Then when asked, conservatives will try to change the subject.

...kinda like what you just did.
 
theprestige said:
Appeal to authority, strawman, excluded middle, begging the question... did I miss any?
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Appeal to authority is only a fallacy if it is an inappropriate authority. As I said, it could be argued that Buffett is an authority on capitalism.

How many examples of calling raising taxes on the rich "socialist" would you like?

And what middle am I excluding? That one of the most successful capitalists is only a somewhat a capitalism?
 
I'm not a conservative and I don't listen to Rush but Buffett is a hypocrite plain and simple. He uses every tax loophole in the book to pay the minimum amount of taxes possible but now suddenly he wants everyone who is rich to pay more (after he's made his billions of course). How about he doesn't take any deductions on his taxes? How about he pays himself more than his secretary so he can give more money back to the government (state, local, and federal)? How about he donate to the IRS if he amazingly cannot find another way to pay "his fare share"? How about he pay the back taxes his companies owe (I believe the sum is over 1 billion)? Rich hypocrite.
 
As a conservative:

- I think that Buffett's heart is in the right place. I don't agree with the "Buffett Rule" but I believe he is motivated by a sense of "fairness".

However

- The proposal is a distraction from the real problem, which is current and projected spending. Very few people would be affected by the Buffett Plan and the revenue generated would be relatively insignificant. In short, it is a political stunt instead of a serious effort to address our federal budget deficit. So my issue with Buffett is that he is allowing himself to be used as the face of a non-serious, diversionary political stunt.
 
mikedenk said:
The proposal is a distraction from the real problem, which is current and projected spending. Very few people would be affected by the Buffett Plan and the revenue generated would be relatively insignificant.
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I don't buy this argument for a moment. Republicans were threatening to shut down the government over the alleged budgetary effects of Planned Parenthood funding. This was over some $360 million per year.

If implemented, it would generate between $47 billion and $173 billion (depending on who does the estimating) over 10 years. (At the low end, that's an average of $4.7 billion per year!) The fact that that it wouldn't solve the long term debt problem all by itself doesn't mean this isn't real money.

Frankly, I think the problem is that some people are able to cast their income as capital gains simply because their fees are paid as a percentage of their clients' investments. I think the problem could also be solved by closing up that loophole and making sure that people who make their money the way Buffett does have that income treated as income. But I'm fine with the Buffett Rule. What could be wrong with making sure people who earn at least a million dollars pay at least 30%?
 
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Upchurch said:
Appeal to authority is only a fallacy if it is an inappropriate authority. As I said, it could be argued that Buffett is an authority on capitalism.

How many examples of calling raising taxes on the rich "socialist" would you like?

And what middle am I excluding? That one of the most successful capitalists is only a somewhat a capitalism?
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The only point where I agree with the Prestige on what you said is the stuff about wealth redistribution and socialism. Those aren't the arguments I usually hear against the Buffett Rule. (The "extreme man" is a form of "straw man". I don't think it's fair to cite whatever rhetoric the wildest Tea Partier uses as a good example of conservative argumentation.)

I hear the one Mikedenk just made (the revenues it would generate are too small to matter) and the typical stuff about holding back the "job creators" despite the fact that the relationship between job creation and tax rates doesn't show the correlation it would have to in the real world for that argument to be valid.
 
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