Yeah, and he is entitled to his view but his perspective is also a bit colored due to the fact that he is one of the richest guys. He also does not sufficiently address the structural issues that most effect poor people.

Where the high tax rates do the most damage, is in the "middle area" - people who have money, but not billions and investors and startups that are dealing with money in the millions range.

If you are trying to raise money for capital improvements and/or a startup and need cash in the 100k-40mil range.. the rate of taxation and thus potential return on investment weights heavily on the risk/reward calculations of potential investors. Does anything think the tech revolution of the 90's would have happened at 70's level regulation and tax rates? Reagan set the stage. Just like economic prosperity doesnt happen until a generation after literacy rates in a country hit a certain level, it also takes time for the effect of lower rates to make a difference.

Plus Buffet mostly stands alone in his view, he has become an ideologue of sorts. Also, the question " why should other people have a right to such a huge percentage of your money" does need to be asked. Its the mentality that other people have the right to your property simply because they "want it" that is most dangerous... irrespective of its immediate financial harm. Once you start down that path, it doesnt stay with the "rich" soon the mob get jealous of anyone who have more that they do, and the middle class starts getting systematically attacked. Go read up on the progress of Bolshevism. The ultra rich may have been the first to be attacked, but it certainly did not end with them.

The biggest single Thing that he glossed over however, was spending. He mentioned it, but glossed over it.. though he did admit taxing the rich wasn't close to the entire answer.

The biggest structural problem with overtaxing the rich, is it simply leads to yet more govt spending. However it is spending itself that is a regressive tax. Taxing the rich could not begin to cover our deficits. Printing trillions of dollars is the biggest tax on the poor, and combined with the payroll taxes serves as an enormous energy-drain. Even if in a good economy, taxing the rich high in of itself would not necessarily totally kill the economy, it would still slow it down. Yet the structural problems with spending still would mean the poor saw little benefit from that.

It is kind of ironic, because we hate China - and for good reasons - but their artificial pegging of their currency to the dollar is the only thing that has kept all aspects of inflation down in the USA. We can still buy cheap nicknacks.. though notice that food, fuel, and essential services (health, education) have skyrocketed over the past 10 years. If you find something that hasnt skyrocketed in the past decade, it probably comes from China. Make sure to keep this in mind before advocating additional govt spending on anything.

In a fair concession to the "left" , it was Bushes useless wars and poor managing of such that was responsible for a good deal of , but certainly not all, of the insane spending increases. Obama however, accelerated the spending and printing of money.. and we are at a monetary saturation point where small immediate economic relief due to stimulus money is quickly offset by the additional structural damage such "extra" currency does to the financial markets and inflation.

Also, due to our trade deficits.. our economy has become like a sieve. Printed money doesnt stay in our borders, it quickly flows out to other countries. Conversely, the only thing that keeps us from being Greece in fact at this point is the fact that the USD is the worlds reserve currency. In other words, a lot of the negative effects of us printing money are actually felt elsewhere. They are felt here as well, but at least we share the pain with the rest of the world when we do it.

But nonetheless.. until our society admits that we have to cut our annual govt spending about in half - no matter how much we "want" to have all these programs and bureaucracies , we wont get anywhere. Taxing the rich, printing money to give to poor people, increasing Wall Street regulations... none of that will ever help anything. It is the proverbial " rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic "

Just the act of stopping the spending alone would be enough to revive the economy. It would be a much better stimulus than any trillion-dollar pork barrel program.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)