Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are vying for the affections of legendary investor Warren Buffett, as the economy eclipses Iraq as a key election issue.
Mr. Buffett has said he won’t endorse a candidate but that he is willing to throw his substantial fund-raising capabilities behind both Sens. Clinton and Obama.
“I told both of them that if they ran for president I’d support them, and here we are,” Mr. Buffett said after an event for Mrs. Clinton here yesterday.
The fund-raising “Conversation with Warren Buffett” drew over 1,500 people, including a mix of Silicon Valley executives such as John Doerr, a partner at venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; philanthropist and founder of the Esprit clothing line Susie Tompkins Buell; and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Tickets ranged from $100 to more than $2,300, drawing in around $1 million, according to the Clinton campaign.
Buffett is an enjoyable speaker, immensely successful investor. He might bring some sense of priority and frugality to a new administration.
I think he still has the bicycle he used as a kid to earn money – delivering newspapers – for his first investments.
Warren Buffett is a great investor. His politics, on the other hand, are not consistent with his investment acumen. He should know that there’s no more inefficient way to distribute money than passing it through the hands of government.
If the government worked for Buffett, he’d fire the lot of them in a heartbeat. But he’ll support the party of even bigger government (under George “my veto pen stopped working” and too many years of Republicans at the trough, Democrats are no longer the party of ‘big government’, just of ‘bigGER government), and supports higher taxes, etc. Big inconsistency.
I applaud him if he wants to use his substantial wealth for some perceived common good. But his take on politics? Not so good.
Warn people! I almost blew coffee all over my monitor with the line ” …bring some sense of priority and frugality”. I’ll need to remember that one come April 15th.
He used to be on my “Top 10 List of People I Would Like To Meet Someday.”
I guess my list is only 9 people long now after that stunt.
Taxing the rich. What a joke.
Well, as he understands the injustice of repealing the estate tax, as do Bill Gates’ father and George Soros, just to name two, he grasps the foreign-to-GOP-plutocrats idea that fucking over 299,000,000 people to make fewer than 100,000 outrageously rich people even richer is against everything America is supposed to be about.
That said, knowing how a country should be run is not synonymous with knowing how a private, for-profit enterprise should be run. That’s what made Perot totally unsuitable for Prez (aside from his being a loony).
So I see this not as an endorsement of pro-corporate hypocrite Hillary but a slap in the face to the slimy Republican handmaidens to the superrich greedheads, who have been looting the American economy, with an 8-year hiatus, since Ronald Ray-Guns took office.
Buffet and a few others, at least, understand that their lives are not going to be improved one iota by taking money from those who have less – which in their case means everyone else…
I thought Republicans were big money!?!
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Injustice?!?!?!
I am simply amazed at the number of people who truly believe the gov has the right to take my money.
Amazed and infuriated.
What the crap are they teaching in school now days? Oh, that’s right . . . the gov controls them, too.
Buffett is either nuts or doesn’t care about who he leaves his money to when he dies. The death tax is a ploy by Dems to put more $$$ in the coffers and keep the nation in a non-growth mode. Quite simply, the death tax is the 3rd tax on the money saved by a family…payroll, income, and then death.
The real solution to teach morals, ethics, and social responsibility.
Get your hand out of my pocket!
Nope. The estate tax works against the establishment of monied dynasties, of people unfair gaining tremendous economic, political and social power, not by working for it, but just by picking ones parents cleverly.
We already have far more than enough brainless, irresponsible morans with money and power that they don’t deserve and don’t know how to use. Like we need more asshole incompetents like Dubya inheriting power they’re unfit to wield. Third-generation recipients of inherited wealth are some of the most deranged, irresponsible, destructive, worthless pieces of human shit you would ever be unlucky enough to encounter. Worse than trailer trash, but with the money and paid professionals to hide their insanity, evil and crimes from public view.
If you actually think that a person who inherits $100,000,000 is twice as happy as someone who inherits $50,000,000, then you’re an idiot.
What do you mean his politics are out of line with his money? Most likely with his team of lawyers, his family will never pay the estate tax. Meanwhile he has life insurance companies and estate planning companies, both of which benefit from the estate tax.
Miken and Mikeburta – Buffett will never have to worry about the estate tax but not for the reason you state. He’s already said he intends to leave small but usefull sums to his kids and donate the rest. He doesn’t want them to have it “too easy” and be as worthless and out of touch as stated by 3 Headed Cat.
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> If you actually think that a person who
> inherits $100,000,000 is twice as happy as
> someone who inherits $50,000,000, then
> you’re an idiot.
It doesn’t matter. Stop worrying about other people and get your nose out of their business and as #7 said, “Get your hand out of my pocket.”
I bet you were one of those kids in school who got the crap beat out of them because you would rat out someone getting away with something you couldn’t, huh? Come on, admit it! I’m right, huh?
Supporting BS laws like this is nothing more than legalizing jealousy. Someone has more of something so you want some of it.
Tell you what, you prove to me that you keep a homeless man on your couch because he doesn’t have one and I’ll eat my words.
The estate tax doesn’t keep out monied dynasties. It effects normal, everyday families. There are plenty of cases every year where normal, middle class families have to sell off their childhood homes, or all their parents belongings after their deaths, just to pay the government. You see, that house, and all the belongings of the parents is considered taxable in the estate tax.
You see, someone with enough money can keep the house and belongings because they can afford to pay the tax bill, whereas lower middle-class families have to sell off belongings to pay Uncle Sam. Beyond that, Buffett’s family won’t have to pay a dime in estate tax, because he can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to avoid estate tax altogether. It’s not that hard to do.
Luckily for my family, my mother was in charge of estate planning for a bank up until her retirement. When her mother died, she already had the house and land shielded from the government. Or are you saying my mother is part of this supposed aristocracy? After all, she gained a 4 bedroom house and 2 acres of land in rural Kentucky out of the deal. How dare Granny want to pass that on to her children.
Beyond all of that, all of these inherited goods were already taxed by the government. The income which purchased the goods….taxed. The property…taxed. Now that the persons dead, the government is entitled to take half of it? So, in your mind, it is a citizens place to earn money for the government before all others?
I’m always amazed when Republicans fail to recognize “family money” as the very sort of thing they love to rail against in many of its other forms. It’s simply another form of entitlement, completely unearned by its beneficiary.
Oh yeah, another way Buffett got rich was buying off companies that had to pay an estate tax bill. You get good deals when people need to sell fast.
EAT THE RICH!
I’m always amazed when Republicans fail to recognize “family money” as the very sort of thing they love to rail against in many of its other forms. It’s simply another form of entitlement, completely unearned by its beneficiary.
The problem is, entitlements are taken from my tax dollars and given to people who haven’t earned it. “Family Money” is taken from a dead guy and given to whoever he wanted….my taxes aren’t involved.
Conservatives have no trouble with people giving away whatever they want, to whomever they want. Conservatives have trouble with the government taking working American’s money and handing it out to who the government thinks deserves it.
I’d guess that his kids will be the ones managing those foundations that he donated to charity.
YOu talk all you want about the estate tax leveling the playing field and what not, but the reality is that it takes businesses away from families and into the hands of corporations, which don’t pay estate tax since they don’t die.
#16 “Family Money” is taken from a dead guy and given to whoever he wanted….my taxes aren’t involved.
Ah, but your taxes are involved, just a bit more indirectly. If the largest of these “family money” entitlements are reduced, with some of that money going to the government instead, the tax rate necessary for ordinary citizens to support a given rate of government services is also reduced, and those pockets are yours and mine. And the dead guy probably had a pretty good life, and certainly managed to benefit from the form of government that he’s now supporting posthumously. I can confidently assert that he’s happy to pay the extra tax, and the burden is on someone else to prove me wrong 😉
#8 you wrote, “If you actually think that a person who inherits $100,000,000 is twice as happy as someone who inherits $50,000,000, then you’re an idiot.”
It is not about the super-rich, a wealth divide, or preventing empire building.
The government has already taxed the money, why should there be another tax? How many taxes should we pay on the same money?
Truly to say that it prevents empire building is unfounded, when has it done that?
Is it basic economics to have more money available in the system to promote spending and growth? Take 55% of my money and I have 55% less money to spend. Giving it to poorly managed/government funded organizations doesn’t encourage growth or sustainability. It promotes handouts.
Again, get your hand out of my pocket.
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You would ask that . . . just when I had to lay off my psychic to cover my tax debt.
Thanks, buddy :-/
#19 “…just when I had to lay off my psychic to cover my tax debt.”
Good one, and speaking of psychics, I guess I’m not a very good speller, because I went to call 1-900-PSYCHIC and all I got was a psychotic instead. Now he’s got my name and number and I have to move before he tracks me down. Next time I’ll use a dictionary 😉
Oops, my comment should have referred to #21 TomB, not #19.
Dang, I just noticed that when I switched to another computer to run a few tests, I inadvertently regressed to my old moniker. With apologies to anyone confused (besides myself)…
Gary Marks == Gary, the dangerous infidel
The government raises not a lot of money from the estate tax, much less than the amount spent trying to collect the money and keeping the government from collecting the money.
Estate tax isn’t Warren Buffett’s only position. I think he’s on board with higher income taxes and higher property taxes, for which Arnold threatened to make him do pushups.
>>Quite simply, the death tax is the 3rd tax on
>>the money saved by a family…payroll, income, and
>>then death.
You’re either an idiot or a liar. The estate tax garners money almost exclusively from people who inherit “unrealized capital gains”, on which no one has EVER paid taxes, much less paid them three times.
When you inherit stocks and bonds that Mommie and Daddy (or great-great-gramd Mommie and Daddie) bought, the cost basis for the stocks is what they were worth on the day x-Mommie and x-Daddy died. So those AT&T stocks bought in 1929 for fifty cents that are now worth (in inflation- and split-adjusted dollar) $82498672090234.00, NOBODY is paying capital gains (or any other kind) of tax on the profits.
And the captial gains tax affects so few people (how many people really inherit more than $3,000,000.00?), you have to wonder why this is even a topic for discussion.
Only the obscenely wealthy benefit from eradication of the tax, and they can afford it.
>>It is not about the super-rich, a wealth
>>divide, or preventing empire building.
Of course it it. Only the “super-rich” qualify for the estate tax in the first place. Juanita and Pablo, who inherit the bodega from Mami and Papi, are never going to have to worry about the estate tax. Bill Gates’ (who supports the estate tax) children….THEY will have to worry about it. And (as Bill points out) they can fucking afford it.
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What does it matter? I pity those who are kept up at night worrying that Gates’ kids having more money than they do.
They need to step up and ask the Homecoming Queen out themselves instead of envying the jock. She’ll probably say, “no,” but at least the guy tried. Sheesh.
Are we to reward those who are afraid of failure because of the luck of the draw? Does Las Vegas buy a new car for everybody who lost?
I agree with you that it’s free money for most of them but does that make it right for the gov to take it?
What’s wrong with family money? I think Paris Hiltion would make a much better President than any of the current Democratic candidates.
MM, just keep imagining that no one pays the estate tax or has to worry about it.
By the way when did they jump up to 3 million? That’s fantastic, thought they were still at one million. I wish they would jump up and lower the rate to the point where not many people would have to worry about it, say 10-20 million.