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Hypocritical for Buffet to call for more taxes for the higher incomers. He takes his income from dividends rather than wages. Big difference in the tax rates.
Hypocritical for Buffet to call for more taxes for the higher incomers. He takes his income from dividends rather than wages. Big difference in the tax rates.
How is that hypocritical? Buffett doesn't set the tax rates.
How is that hypocritical? Buffett doesn't set the tax rates.
I think he's a hypocrit because he has the power to donate his money to the US Treasury instead of private charities. If he feels that the government puts money to better use than private charities, then he should set the example by making that huge donation.
He also comes out to say that there's a big gap between the incomes of a CEO and a secretary. He also has the power in this situation to influence the salaries of the lower paid employees at his companies, as well as the companies that he does business with. But he hasn't taken this action either. He seems to be all bark and no bite.
I'm about as big a Buffetthead as you'll ever meet.
This is probably going to be a long post, so please forgive.
I've read every single thing he's ever written (He's never written a book as he is fiercely secretive of the minutiae of his methods, but he has written articles, blurbs and the biggest of them all, the Berkshire shareholder letters) and seen every interview he's ever given.
WB isn't an enigma, really... It isn't that he is a hard man to understand. The overall structure of his investing methodology is pretty well known (a general hybrid of straight Grahamian and Fischer theory with more than a hefty dash of his own.). It's more like his philosophy of life is a bit out of the mainstream, thus the rabble doesn't always understand what he does. This is a guy who remained married to a woman who didn't even live with him for decades.
First, understand that while WB is one of histories greatest capitalists, he isn't a totally "heartless" one. He believes to his very core that the things he does can be done by anyone and if you feel jealous that he's so successful, well, it's your own fault for not taking a similar path. The thing you will notice about WB after studying him is that he is an absolute analytical machine. He isn't an emotive sort of guy. Everything is addressed in terms of ratios and firm metrics rather than "feelings" and "opinion".
He specifically made sure that his children wouldn't inherit his obscene wealth as he believed it would "spoil" them. This strikes people as being kinda odd.. After all, your kids are your kids and who wouldn't want the absolute best for them? We all only get one life. Why not make sure your children's is as "enriched" as possible?
After reading the Charlie Munger book (Poor Charlie's Almanack) and understanding the thinking that people like Munger and Buffett operate with, it became clear.
While these guys are all about the dollar (which is what any good investor should be), they realize the path to get lies in cultivation of ones self. A betterment of ones personality. The more things you understand on a fundamental level, the better decisions you will make and as such, will profit thusly. Everything from philosophy to manufacturing to management theory to how cornflakes are made... All of this goes into their intellectual hopper and is contrasted against various problems in order to exit on the other end with the best decision possible.
They believe this applies to everyone. You, me, their own children. That which you earn is profoundly better than that which you're given.
WB is at a stage where the "game" for him is pretty much over.
It's a game he completely crushed and by a pretty damn wide margin. No pure investor in history has come even close to what he has done. Here he sits, an old man with billions of dollars who still lives in the same relatively modest home he bought for $35,000 in the 1950's, surveying an immense amount of personal wealth, trying to figure out what to do with it.
The analyst in WB understands that simply continuing to compound it at 15% a year and adding to his own personal bottom line won't achieve a whole lot more than what he's already done, given that he'll probably be dead in a decade, give or take. He now wants to use that wealth to implement some of the ideas that he strongly believes in. He understands that there are many essential issues and ideas that need funding but can't get it. He's in a position to make it happen, so that's what he's doing by giving his money away.
This isn't a "tax shelter" although if that was his intent, you can be rest assured that he wouldn't have a seconds pause in telling the world that's why he was doing it. He's starkly honest like that. He's doing this because he believes the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has ideas that are essential for a better life and he wants to see them happen.
I think he's a hypocrit because he has the power to donate his money to the US Treasury instead of private charities. If he feels that the government puts money to better use than private charities, then he should set the example by making that huge donation.
Maybe I'm missing something, but where does Buffett say that he thinks the government puts money to better use than private charities?
Maybe I'm missing something, but where does Buffett say that he thinks the government puts money to better use than private charities?
He implies this in saying that rich people don't pay enough taxes. While the superrich like himself often don't pay much in taxes at all because they have little income, but pull in money through investments rather than traditional income. They also have enough to pay laywers to work on loopholes and influence politicians to create those loopholes.
But... if he feels that the rich should pay more in taxes, and he uses his own situation to illustrate this point, I have to call out the fact that he does have the power, over himself, to contribute a higher tax rate than is required by the federal government. The US Treasury will accept donations.
Any money he would have donated to the US Treasury would not have gone to private charity. So I have to question why he feels private charity is better than donating it to the government. I know the answer, but I'd like to see him put his money where his mouth is.
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