Sunday, October 2, 2011

Tell Us Something We Don't Know


Via Greg Sargent's The Plum Line In The War Criminal Post:
People obsessing over Warren Buffett’s comments on CNBC today are focusing on the wrong Warren Buffett interview. These remarks from Buffett, on CNN this morning, are far more significant:
QUESTIONER: Are you happy seeing your suggestion, this new Buffett Rule, becoming more of a basis of a political battle that really has turned into class warfare?

BUFFETT: Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won. We’re the ones that have gotten our tax rates reduced dramatically.

If you look at the 400 highest taxpayers in the United States in 1992, the first year for figures, they averaged about $40 million of [income] per person.

In the most recent year, they were $227 million per person — five for one. During that period, their taxes went down from 29 percent to 21 percent of income. So, if there’s class warfare, the rich class has won.



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