Wall Street Journal's response to Warren Buffett's Monday NY Times op ed

As I said it would, Buffet's article which I posted about here  Warren Buffett says the tax code is too nice to super-rich people has gotten lots of attention - the President referenced the column within a few hours.

This Journal editorial does an excellent job of poking holes in Buffett's article. I poked one hole myself in my posting, pointing out that Buffett's suggestion that the "mega rich" (earning over $10,000,000 a year) should be paying income tax at the higher, 1992 rate. That only raises an additional $7 billion, while this year's budget deficit is $1.6 trillion.

Here'sthe WSJ piece -

Since the media are treating Mr. Buffett as a tax oracle, let's take a closer look at some of the billionaire's intellectual tax dodges.

After listing and explaining-

1. The double tax oversight
2. The middle-class bait and switch
3. the charity loophole

the editorial ends -

Mr. Buffett is one of the great stock-pickers of his time, and we don't begrudge him a single dollar of his wealth. We only wish that, having already made himself rich, he weren't so intent on making it harder for others to become rich too. If he's worried about being undertaxed, we'd suggest he simply write a big check to Uncle Sam and go back to his day job of picking investments.

Comments

[maria]

Superb!