je panc~

January 22, 2012

Buffett’s sin is that he spoke a truth that [right-wingers] want to keep covered up: Taxing capital gains at 15 percent means that people who make their money from investments pay taxes at a much lower marginal rate than those who earn more than $34,500 a year from their labor…

Advocates of higher taxes on the wealthy do not want to “punish” the successful. Buffett and Doug Edwards, a millionaire who asked Obama at a recent town hall event in California to raise his taxes, are saying that none of us succeeds solely because of personal effort. We are all lucky to have been born in — or, for immigrants, admitted to — a country where the rule of law is strong, where property is safe, where a vast infrastructure has been built over generations, where our colleges and universities are the envy of the world, and where government protects our liberties.

Wealthy people, by definition, have done better within this system than other people have. They ought to be willing to join Buffett and Edwards in arguing that for this reason alone, it is common sense, not class jealousy, to ask the most fortunate to pay taxes at higher tax rates than other people do.

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Why [right-wingers] hate Warren Buffett (via ryking)

Bolds and Italics are my own.

Buffets isn’t just a “good guy”; he’s intelligent. He isn’t simply endorsing higher taxes because he’s compassionate; he’s fair.

The success of the upper class is of course partly because of the abilities of the upper class. However the Upper class rests on the shoulders of the middle and lower class. This isn’t about redistribution of wealth. Everyone in America works hard and wants to earn their way. Everyone in America believes in the capitalist system. What this is about is fairness. A fair deal in social mobility: literally just the mere chance to succeed. A fair burden of taxes that pay for things we all use: roads, fire departments, police, the army, social security. A fair society with laws that treat us on our morality and not on our pay scale.

This is not called socialism. This is called freedom.

(via quotingthecrisis)

4:18pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZbuIWwFCMQoU

(Notes: 65)