President Obama named his tax initiative after Warren Buffet, the famous multi-billionaire, and the picturesque “old, stodgy white dude.” The tax initiative will try to make the rich get slightly poorer, instead of escalating the growth of their money pile.
But really, how rich are America’s wealthiest citizens?
According to the New York Times, the wealth distribution is much more skewed than Americans think. 20% of Americans own 84% of the wealth (approximately).
From a calculation based on this year’s Forbes 400, the top ten wealthiest people in America own 311.4 billion dollars, combined (Warren Buffet is number two, after Bill Gates). The statistics only tell part of the story, however.
What do the wealthiest in America think of Obama’s tax plan? According to the Global News, Buffet is “fine” with the President naming his tax plan after him. The Christian Science Monitor even goes as far as saying that Buffett and Obama are “best pals.”
Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor reports that the two have been working closely together. Warren Buffett seems to have similar opinions to Obama, as he stated in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”
Warren Buffett is not the only one protesting tax breaks for the rich: “It’s time for millionaires, like me and the ones in Congress, to step up to the plate and start paying their fair share,” said Guy Saperstein, a wealthy lawyer and member of the group Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, according to Reuters.
In this ABC video, Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA, says that “paying taxes is patriotic.”
It certainly seems as if individual millionaires and billionaires have no problem with coughing up more tax money to even the playing field, but according to House Speaker John Boehner, Obama’s statements qualify as “class warfare” and dismisses the plan, stating that “it does not make sense to tax the people who invest in the economy.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the super-wealthy do not really invest in the economy in the same way that Boehner refers to. A Prince and Associates Study shows that the extremely wealthy are more likely to put their money into start-ups and hedge funds, as opposed to mutual funds, which would reach out to the masses.
On the contrary, a recent Forbes column argues that increasing taxes for the rich would decrease the amount of money wealthy people put into savings. These savings, according to Alex Brill and Chad Hill, are investments that help the economy in the long run.
Here’s what the Twitterverse is saying about Warren Buffett and the tax plan:
Sunshineejc says it all: from recent comments it does seem as if the rich want to be taxed. ….Go figure. The tax debate has been volleyed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, between the wealthy and the middle class, since the Reagan Administration.