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flexiblemike -> RE: Buffets Secretary Is a 1%er (1/26/2012 10:45:52 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tj444
quote:
ORIGINAL: flexiblemike
lolwut? What is this argument even about? How to successfully be a right wing troll?
What does Buffett's secretary being in the top 1% have to do with anything whatsoever? Even if she is, that has nothing to do with Buffett's comments in his NYT op-ed that launched the current hubbub about the "Buffett rule" ("Stop Coddling the Super-Rich", 8/14/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html ) where he wrote that "[his] friends and [he] have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress." The original quote:
quote:
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
Nowhere has Buffett, to my knowledge, said anything about his secretary until very recently. In this interview from 2007, he mentions his receptionist and a cleaning lady, but not his secretary: http://youtu.be/Cu5B-2LoC4s
I think that Buffett's secretary got picked on by the media and then made into a figurehead for the so-called "Buffett rule", probably because the image of a big important businessman with a female secretary is an easy to recognize cliche. Buffett and his secretary are in fact on record as having been surprised by the sudden interest in her. See this ABC interview: http://youtu.be/zB1FXvYvcaI
So please, don't turn Debbie Bosanek into more of a red herring than she already is. Buffett's comments are clear enough: he feels that he and other ultrarich Americans are not taxed enough, he thinks that capital gains should be increased and/or there should be a national progressive consumption tax, and he doesn't believe that taxing the ultrarich will hurt the economy by lowering their appetite to work. You can disagree with that if you like, but this fetishization of Buffett's secretary--on both the right and the left--is utterly pointless. If indeed you are on the right, then why falling for the left's tactic of focusing attention on one particular person? For all you know, she is not representative of the larger situation.
Why do I bother writing, though? Rational arguments about politics online are as common as three-horned unicorns.
P.S.: Buffett's secretary makes $60K/yr. Source: not some crackpot operation like Drudge Report, but an actual, internationally renowned news publication with professional editors and fact-checkers, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/how-rich-is-warren-buffetts-secretary/252056/
So if she is in reality making only $60,000 and paying 17% of that in income tax (or whatever the rate is), then Buffet has grossly misrepresented the situation.. maybe he has a touch of alzhiemers.. [8|]
Like I have said before, I dont like him and I dont trust what he says.. He hasnt released his tax returns either has he? (Yes, I know he released a few numbers on it.. I just want to see it in print for myself).. And if i was his secretary, i would be upset about the publicity she is now getting.. (but thats just me)
Fantastic. Thank you for bolding and rhapsodizing on the exact point that I was trying to say was most irrelevant and tangential to the topic at hand.
What do your emotional feelings about Warren Buffett have anything to do with his personal opinion that he is not paying enough in tax or that tax on the ultrarich should be raised? How can one "grossly misrepresent" a situation that consists of Buffett saying that he doesn't pay enough to the government? Why not disagree with him on the merit of his arguments instead of harping on this rather cooked up issue of his secretary? (An issue that has been cooked up by liberals, might I add? I really don't understand why conservatives are talking about this so much, thus playing into the Democrats' hands. The more media coverage is generated about this secretary, the more the issue has a human face, and the more emotional leverage the Obama administration has.)
What is this obsession with releasing tax records? Why should he do so? How does this affect the thrust of his argument in any way whatsoever? The whole point about his office staff having a higher tax rate than himself was obviously a rhetorical point from the beginning meant to illustrate what he views as the unfairness of the national tax burden. Who cares whether Buffett's secretary earns $1 or $1 million? It really has nothing to do with the man's points.
Where are you getting that she is paying 17% in tax? The 17% figure is how much Buffett claims to be paying, not Bosanek. Not that it should matter at all.
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