Warren Buffett on class warfare:
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.
Buffett’s point is an obvious one, and one that the Democrats, were they really concerned for their alleged constituency, would have been making for the past thirty years. Who knows, maybe Buffett will give the Democrats some cover to start fighting back; maybe those kids in New York will help force the issue into the national conversation, and maybe Obama will take it up as the only way for him to survive politically. For whatever reason, it seems that the floodgates have opened a bit, and maybe the fact that the rich have systematically plundered the rest of us will finally become an issue.
Speaking of those kids in New York, they’ve answered the ginned up criticism that they haven’t articulated their grievances ( funny how no one has demanded coherence from the tea baggers ). Check out their Declaration here.
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