Things are rarely as simple as they appear to be on first glance.
One should always take advertizing and promotion with a grain of salt.
Isn't Buffett still disengeniously fighting his tax assessments from previous years to try to pay less while hypocritically bemoaning his low tax rate.
If he paid that up then he could talk more credibly.
As it is it's just PR Showboating to further his image as a "good" plutocrat.
The American public is lazy about follow up questions and can't do math.
I see it in interviews all the time where someone answers with a blather non answer or a non sequiter but the reporter does not press and say "but you still haven't answered the question" until a satisfactory one is provided.
Michael Kinsley on Crossfire was an exception who usually didn't let the pat non answer stand.
Reporters are generally too polite to press beyond the first response and politicos get annoyed if they are pressed to say something sustantative because they might gaffe and say the honest truth (which the public does not want to hear) like we have a serious problem brought on by the Moral Hazard of overpromising money we don't have for benefits that haven't been fully paid for as we grow fat(40% of Americans are overweight) and diabetic from our sloth and lack of discipline while some of our aging infrastructure crumbles and highway gas taxes decline so sacrifices will have to be made.
After all the reporter and politico need each other for the show and their careers so the reporters kid glove treat them like guests instead of interogating them like law enforcement would.
They should be attacked in a manner similar to the way the candidates attack themselves.
The Repubs have their despicableness in self loathing "moralists" trying to control people's sexuality,genitals and reproductive organs and restricting women and birth control despite overwhelming evidence of positive results good for society but this attitude of throwing money at social issues half baked unrealistic overspending and winking at pension fraud and other abuses,double dipping thuggery corruption and gangsterism in unions is the main flaw on the liabilities side of the Democrat balance sheet.
These union types are just as greedy and corrupt if not more so as the people they paint as not paying a fair share(40% is not enough to be fair by their standards) but don't generally have the same scale of opportunity as Wall St or Corporate America.
They also don't create anything.
If Buffet was pressed on his omission of his 35% corporate tax rate for Berkshire Hatheway profits before he gets to invest the after tax proceeds in dividends, that would be a much more honest approach.
Since the rich guy is always someone who makes more money than you
journalists and reporters who top out at 250k will carry the story uncritically as presented.
After all who's going to challenge and criticize the second richest to Bill Gates smart square mostly untainted 40 billion dollar successful investor guy who wants to pay more taxes.
Since politicians all wind up redistributing and handing out someone's earned taxed money along with what they borrow a more hardnosed cynical approach that brings up the Moral Hazard aspect of what they propose and doesn't let them off the hook after the first non answer would be a lot more appropriate seeing as what's at stake.
The reality is that the rich pay 40%+ in taxes overall but less on some investments because capital gains are worth more to the greater society than wages which just get burned up on cost of living with no return beyond the respending factor of the items purchased for the cost of living providing benefit to the economy ie supermarket shelter rent or mortgage payment car or bus and so on.
People come and go but what remains is the value of the society concern for which is greater than concern for any one individual.
On a side note
It's almost refreshing to see the Greeks being finally punished for their work little produce little borrow alot retire at 50 with hefty pension for life Alfred E Neuman what me worry attitude.
Looks like they have finally run out of other people's money.
It's payback and suffer the consequences for the last 40 years from the self interested invisible hand of the market.
A Greek crash horrible as it may seem to be in the short term would be a good sobering lesson for leftist governments on the limits of the cradle to grave free everything run by the villagers welfare state.
The world would recover quickly enough and the countries who have liesurely spent themselves into near poverty could be dumped to fend for themselves and wouldn't be a further continuous drag on the economies in the rest of the productive world.
Who would invest in Greece?
The rich of Greece were smart to shield their money from being squandered on such childish redistributive fantasies and policies.
Only countries rich in oil or some other valuable legal resource can afford the leftist Eden way where somebody or some other treasure like resources pays the bill.
