It is refreshing to see Mr. Buffet and Mr. Gates have some intellectual honesty and real compassion for people other than themselves. Too bad the prostitutes and dullards we have for politicians in all too many cases can't see the forest for the trees. Concentrated wealth is a cancer in our society. The lies told by the supporters of the inheritance tax repeal are stunning in their stupidity but the rubes believe them anyway. Meanwhile the American Aristocracy continues to pile up the dollars and buy our government. We need a yearly wealth tax on the parasites that are amassing more gold than King Midas.

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Even Warren knows that you must grease
The Wheels of the Machine with money.
Other wise it will stop.
The Concentration of Wealth is so great
That we are headed straight for
A
DEPRESSION.
This is what really scares him.
That his Schlock might go down.
That the corrupt system that spawned him will stop.
And he might have to go to work just like me and you.
The Rich Cor‘pirate’ system.
Of massive Conglomerates
Are merely appendages of the Super Rich.
Billionaires-R-Us!
Who Slash, Burn and Enslave the World
In the name of GREED.
Greed once again has reared its ugly head.

When you have all the money in the world
Anything can be done.
Rig the system.
Control all information.
Enslave the Poor.
The same old story.
Will it ever change?
Produce endless propaganda Stars
And
Stink Tank
Disinformation Agents
Who Spew?
Endless:
Repetitive, Hypnotic, Conditioned
BU__! SH__!
The Grand Delusion!
Paid-three-idiotic religious
Zio-Fascist
Propaganda!

There is only one answer.
Shut it down!
NOW!
Before it is too late?
Bring our Militia home from
Dead Eye Dick’s Oil War.

We need all the protection we can get right here!
From
The Dark Army.

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You rich guys like travel, right.
Imagine you're in your Gulfstream, Boeing, whatever, and suddenely, there's no air traffic controllers. Of course you'll have you own, but they'll be so disorganized, ya be crashing all day long.

You're in your Bugatti, Lambs, or a Maybach, going over a set of bridges that haven't been checked, worked on, and maybe a few more that the Minneapolis Bridge fall down on a daily basis, as it is in most poor nations.

An of course, the most important asset of all, your money. How safe you money would be if no FDIC or SEC existied, hell, you'll have Enron, Tyco, and little known S&L Loan Crisis under Regan happening every day.

This is only a few of a bunch of thing that can make you guys lose sleep every night!

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He's only telling like it is, cause he benefiting too, and he would know of the Great Depression, for his parents lived through it, and he lived a part of it himself.

As you see, no billionaire is going to take his challenge, and he's only laying a million on the table, scraps for him and the rest of the bunch!

He's saying to his pals, "Put your money where your mouth is!"

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I congratulate Buffett for calling a spade a spade and his strictures against anti-democratic concentrations of wealth and power and Dynastic wealth. His caustic comment on dynastic wealth remind one of Keynesian remarks on laissez faire:

" "Let us clear from the ground the metaphysical or general principles upon which, from time to time, laissez-faire has been founded. It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive "natural liberty" in their economic activities. There is no compact conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or on those who Acquire. The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide. It is not a correct deduction from the Principles of Economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest. Nor is it true that self-interest generally is enlightened; more often individuals acting separately to promote their own ends are ignorant or too weak to attain even these. Experience does not show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear-sighted than when they act separately."

That is the politics and economics of social justice.

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It is encouraging to see that there are people out there that feel as Buffet and the responders here feel. When I was a kid (I'm 52 now) it was a lot simpler, you went to school, worked hard and with a little luck you could become financially secure and your future was positive. Nowdays our population has become so large that the sheer numbers of workers vs. jobs available guarentee that some simply are not going to achieve financial security. It no longer means that if you have a college degree in something that you are going to find a good job and become financially secure. Look at how many people with college degrees, even MBA's and PHD's are working in low paying jobs such as McDonalds. Then you factor in the "cronie" aspect and it gets even worse. People who are fortunate enough to get good paying jobs and achieve thier financial dreams need to pay more taxes for the opportunity society gave them to achieve their dreams. In the 90's when everyone was making big money in the .com industry I made over 200k a year for a couple of years. I also paid almost 50k in taxes each of those years and I was HAPPY to do so. I figured I was given the opportunity to make that kind of money by society and I owed it to society to pay it back for giving me that opportunity. It all seems so very far to me? Personally I think the whole stock market crash at the end of the 90's was a hoax put forth by the wealthiest 5% of those who are running things here in this good ol US of A. They saw too many people getting too wealthy too fast which threatened thier wealth and subsequent power. So they had to bring it crashing down to retain thier financial superiority. After all , some of the business practices that brought down companies like Eron and Tyco have been going on for centuries and still go on today. The wealth of the wealthiest people (who are running the show here in the US) is built on oil and industry. When technology became such that it was making millionaires and billionares of ordinary people overnite the "old money" got scared. So they got together and 1. crashed the stock market so others could not make that kind of money anymore and 2. started a war in the middle east that sucked and is still sucking billions of dollars from everyone else and putting it in the banks of the oil corporations and others like Haliburton who profit big time when this nation is at war. I know it sounds like a pretty far out there conspiracy theory but if you think about it doesn't it make sense. What is the name of that organzation of the wealthiest group of people in this country? There was a brief article about GWB-Cheney and this group not to long ago? Anyway the bottom line is that we are a society of many many peoples and we are only going to keep growing. We as a society are going to have to figure out a way that we all can survive if any of us are going to. It won't make any difference how much wealth you have or don't have if we don't figure this one out. And the greedy non-compassionate "bean counters" that are driving the bus right now are not going to figure it out. That's for sure!!!

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If Buffet really wants to curtail wealth and power in america, then he should attack its source: the corporation.

Since corporations gained "personhood" (that is, equal rights to human citizens), it has used its institutional powers to organize itself into a profit-machine. More specifically, corporations earned the right to own property, free speech, petition government, and influence and donate to campaigns through its employees and lobbyists.

These extraordinary rights are only exacerbated by the fact that a corporation can outlive its employees and owners, so it amasses wealth beyond this generation to the next and the next and even the next. In other words, the corporation subverts the estate tax by passing wealth on through corporations.

Moreover, the corporation has no conscience. The corporation then is the evil instrument by which normally ethical and moral people can become amoral in their quest for profit. If the corporation were human, it would be a nihilistic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, greedy, anti-social person who'll do anything to make a profit.

Simply put, if Warren Buffet really cared about stopping the power and abuse of power of the extremely wealthy, then he would tell Congress to return corporation's power back to the days prior to corporate personhood. Then he should give all of his money to the poor and go live in a monastery.

peace

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By all means, let's make sure the U.S. State has lots of money, so they can build more bombs, invade more countries, and build more secret torture chambers, in our names.

Without high taxes, how will the government be able to keep arresting a million pot smokers every year? Who will fund the War on Drugs?

Without enough money, how will we be able to pay cops to raid porn stores and prevent demonstrators from gathering together in groups of two or more?

Without high taxes, how will we subsidize zillionaire farmers? Where will American corporations get the welfare they so desperately need?

Without high taxes, how can we pay for surveillance cameras on every corner, illegal wiretaps, internet surveillance, biometric ID cards and the other essential elements of the American police state, I mean, Homeland Security?

Yes, let's give the government all the money it asks for. Maybe it will spend some of it on those highly effective social programs we all love, like those wonderful public schools that are doing such a grand job of turning out bright, literate, knowledgeable young Americans.

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Let's face it, our guvmint has us exactly where they want us; fat, dumb, and happy-or, at least-numb.This is no accident and is a culimation of an effort that began decades ago, with the aim of establishing a new aristocracy here at home. How many of us even KNOW about the Estate Tax, let alone WHY the ultra-rich are against it? Go out and ask ten people at random (not your friends and relatives) who Karl Rove is and what he's done to destroy our democracy, or why some people don't believe the 911 commission's lies, or why the bushies should be in the Big House instead of the White House. Chances are you'll hear the same crap spewed by limbaugh, coulter, hannity, or the bushies, if anything at all. We've made ourselves a mountain to climb, simply by being intellectually lazy and incurious about what is shaping our lives and who's doing that shaping. We seem to be waiting for someone to come to our rescue before the next commercial, never dreaming that said rescue is OUR duty and responsibility and NOT SOMEONE ELSE'S.

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A federal budget surplus, he said, means too much money has been taken out of the hands of investors. That was Greenspan's rationale for not objecting to the GOP tax cuts.

Substitute "rich" for "investors" and we can see an American political dynamic as fundamental as voting.

So long as the money being taken from investors by taxes was used to provide public services, the dynamic was not invidious. It provided a balance--of sorts.

The GOP upped the anty by not only letting the rich keep their money, as was true in the Gilded Age, but by also now using the money taken in by taxes to provide services for the rich.

GOP has been the party of the rich for the last 100 years. Americans like to think of ourselves as rich. So the GOP gets the votes of the dupes as well as those whose interests they represent.

So long as we continue to elect the rich to political office because we admire riches, we shall see no change--even though things are way out of wack.

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If Warren feels guilty about the way he made his fortune, he should send the IRS a check - not advocate that the IRS steal more money from people like me who do NOT feel any guilt or obligation for the way I made my fortune.

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There is a lot of truth in Sojourners comment, above. So long as we admire riches, we will be faced with the same problems -- growing problems, that have too long plagued us.

But what if we elected a common man to office? I imagine myself in that role. Would I be tempted by power and money? Probably, to some degree. I have been tempted in the past.

So the problem goes beyond wealth to the matter of integrity. Unfortunately, integrity is a difficult quality to truly estimate. All we can do is to make an estimate based on past performance.

There are those candidates, such as Nader and Kucinich who, although not perfect, demonstrate a tangible record of altruism and integrity. So why do they never get the traction they need to become electable?

Because they don't know how to sell altruism and integrity. The Right and Religious Right has spent the last fifty years using PR and networking to sell the public and their shell game (and amassing millions upon millions of dollars) and they won, no contest. Doesn't matter that their agenda is contrary to the well-being of the masses that have been conned by them. They sold it to the masses while the left was asleep at the wheel.

While the left sat on its hands assuming that their (relative) altruism and integrity would be a no-brainer to the voters, the unlikely Reagan, , Ford, Bush and Rove have been selling the public on the term "tax and spend liberals." And guess what? They won again, no contest.

Anyone remember Nader's satire of Mastercard's "Priceless" ads from the 2000 campaign? He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to allowing them to be broadcastc. Very effective commercials but Nader wanted to run on the altruism and integrity ticket without having first sold it to the public. It seems to me that Kucinich is largely guilty of the same fault and even worse, he vows never to run as a Green or an Independent.

Everything is sales and PR. Job interview? Sales and PR. Looking for an attractive mate? Sales and PR.

We'll get a democrat in 2008 but unfortunately Hillary or Obama are a far cry from Nader or Kucinich. We need to resist resting on our "laurels" of altruism and integrity and do a lot more sales and and PR.

Hopefully it won't take us the fifty years that the Right has successfully invested and won. But then again it's already been close to tens years since Nader's 2000 run.

Here's to Sales and PR before it's too late! I hope it isn't all ready too late.

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Not the death tax, because we aren't taxing death. But wealth transference tax because we are taxing the transfer of wealth from one individual to another. Although I have liked the Paris Hilton inheritance tax too.

I wonder if the Senator from Arkansas that is for permanent estate tax repeal is taking her marching orders from Wal-Mart heirs?? They surely will benefit from a repeal.

One last thing, I am pretty sure there was an offer, an offer of significant money (just like for a soldier that served with Dubya in Alabama) to find a small business or family farm (maybe just farm) that was lost do to the estate tax. No one ever claimed that offer because it hasn't happened. No the small business or family farm gets sold because the younger generation (heirs) don't want to carry on with the same business/farm.

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I'm currently reading Paul Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal." I haven't finished it, but the first third is a revealing analysis of the history of US economics from the Gilded Age to the present.

I was very surprised at the readability of this book - I kind of expected it to be dry and difficult to wade through, but it's compelling.

I'm sure there are many diverse interpretations of the rise of economic equality from the 1920s through the 1960s and its reversal, but this one is very convincing. It makes quite a case for taxing the outrageously wealthy few in order to benefit the middle class majority and turns conventional economic wisdom upsidedown.

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Seriously folks, this income was taxed when it was income and the capital gains were taxed when the stocks were sold. Why should the government get to tax it again? Warren Buffet can suck a dick. I don't care how much he's given away, it's all monopoly money. He still lives a staggeringly extravagant lifestyle and tries to weasel out of it by telling congress to tax people who have 1/1000th of the wealth he does. Wow, what a swell guy. I don't care how much he's given to charity. When your govt. is spending billions on war, billions on a drug war, and billions on goofball pork, don't let them take anymore of yours or anyone elses money. I also love the 1/200 families figure. Great, so as long as you not that one family you're more than happy to screw someone's who's worked hard for their wealth. Nobody in their boring shit job wants to admit it, but there are plenty of people like you who grew up with nothing and built their forture THEMSELVES. They're just smarter than you. Don't hate them for it.

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No one makes his money all alone. Luck has a lot to do with success also. This I did it all myself mentality is a crock. No one has ever done anything all by himself, without benefit of government services such as public education, infrastructure, public libraries, mentors, and much more. We have to stop listening to this drivel to be able to stop the inequality train.

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Buffet seems get a pass from everyone because he is friendly rich guy. I dont think he is a bad person. But anwer these questions.

How much taxes does warren buffet pay today? He could easily make himself a highly paid employee at any of his companies so he could pay more income taxes but he doesnt.

How much taxes does he pay on his investments. Very little because they are designed and held in a way to avoid taxes.

How much taxes will he pay when he dies. Almost nothing. He is going to give most to Gates and set up billion dollar trusts for the kids.

People buy large life insurance policies in this country in the amount of their projected death tax payments so they can pass their worth on to the heirs. Do you know how much Buffet makes on those insurance policies?

Debate the issue either way but Buffet isnt the Oracle of death tax policy.

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