Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Op-ed for the NY Times
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Omaha

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.

Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

no title

Check out this atrocity committed by the British military in Iraq:


UK News Of The World Shows British Troops Beating Iraqi Youth - The most amazing videos are a click away

The Law of Attraction linked to the New World Order?

Here is a very rough draft of an essay I assembled. My influences are Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, New World Order conspiracy theories, Ron Paul's REVOLUTION, Antonio Gramsci and left wing activism. I put a lot of love into these ideas. If you like what you see, feel free to take some of it to create your own ideas. This essay is incomplete.

The best explanation of 9/11 comes with the law of attraction. Did innocent Yankees in the World Trade Centres attract the terrorist attack on 9/11? No. For their financial greed, America’s business elite attracted jealousy from Al Qaeda. The elite “co-created” 9/11 together with Al Qaeda. The world’s business elite are responsible for the killing of 3000 innocent Americans at the superpower’s economic financial heart. 9/11 is an example of a grave injustice. According to Canadian public intellectual Gwen Dyer, the Taliban since the 1980s increasingly became desperately resentful and jealous of the world's business elite. If it weren't for democracy, the world's business elite could impose a capitalist empire over the entire planet, similar to the way Kings of ancient Rome imposed their democratic empire all over Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, Al Qaeda wants to impose its own Islamic empire over the word. Unfortunately for Al Qaeda they are weak. So over time, they became extremely jealous. Al Qaeda was not jealous of the American middle class experience of freedom and prosperity. Al Qaeda were and are jealous of the power the world's elite have over the planet. In general, someone is mentally and spiritually unhealthy if greed, resentment and jealousy is their life experience. That kind of existence is called depression and it's not sustainable. That ugly combination has produced conflict and a “war on terror.” On the other hand, the experience of gratitude, hope and joy, the experience of the middle class, especially around the winter solstice, is healthy and produces peace and harmony.

Placing the blame on the business elite for being greedy or placing the blame on Al Qaeda for being jealous is really irrelevant for those who wish to create a peaceful world order. For believers in The Secret and the law of attraction who wish to achieve peace in the Middle East, focus on the teachings in The Moses Code.

Now, Al Qaeda is a select group of dangerously fanatical religious fundamentalists who believe in a radical ideology. The same is true about the world's ruthless business elite. The ruthless elite are a group dangerously fanatical about capitalist ideology. Will the middle class be crushed by the intense emotional battle between Al Qaeda and the elite?

Before I answer that question, first I answer: must the middle class be enlightened by The Secret teachings in order to succeed in ridding the world of war, anger, resentment, greed and jealousy? The middle class is already enlightened. We don't need to be told what the secret is, because we already know it. On the internet, according to Google, there is more, love, hope, happiness, joy and gratitude than there is fear, jealousy, greed, anger and resentment. We already think prosperous thoughts. We already know how to manifest our goals more or less successfully. This is true at least for the world's healthy middle class which has access the internet. If anything, the elite and Al Qaeda are about to be crushed by the middle class' overwhelmingly positive energy.

The world's middle class needs to continue its path along prosperity, freedom and humanism.

Since its inception, Homeland Security and the whole war on terror has only created more terrorism, according to leading professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England, Paul Rogers. According to Reuters, Paul Rogers “described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "disastrous mistake" which had helped establish a "most valued jihadist combat training zone" for al Qaeda supporters.” Paul Rogers claims, "Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs." Therefore the war against terrorism only perpetuates terrorism. The “war on terror" produces more terrorism. Byrne's success coaches teach this too. A better name for the ruthless elite's imperial ambitions is “war of terror”. The ruthless elite are losing the war of terror dismally because they don't have consent from the public. Donald Trump sums up the state of affairs in the US very concisely on CNN:



Assuming scarcity, jealousy creates greed and greed creates jealousy. Since 9/11 perhaps the elite have become more power hungry and greedy, while the same is true about Al Qaeda's jealousy.

The outrageous income of just the world’s top 691 billionaires in 2005 is spectacular. According to Lea Goldman and Luisa Kroll from Forbes magazine, “The collective net worth of the 691 billionaires we could find is $2.2 trillion, up $300 billion from the combined worth of the 587 people listed last year”( quoted from Goldman and Kroll's “The World's Richest People” in Forbes magazine, 3 October 2005). By comparison, the World Bank estimates that it would cost $600 Billion to feed and educate the world’s poor for 7 years. That is, according to page 47 of the World Banks' Millennium Development Goals, titled Agriculture and Achieving The Millennium Development Goals: Agriculture and Rural Development Department). By educating the world’s poor to read and write, the rich could simultaneously teach the world’s poor how to sustain themselves. Education is definitely a worthwhile cause. With this over abundance of wealth accumulated by the rich, the middle class in Ontario for example doesn’t need to sacrifice their warm showers nor their Christmas presents to eliminate world hunger. With this over abundance of wealth accumulated by the rich, the middle class in America for example doesn’t need to sacrifice their prosperity. The middle class is so spiritually healthy, so prosperous, we need not sacrifice our warm showers nor our Christmas presents to reduce world poverty. Heartless, the business elite are now trying to take away what the American people rely on for their prosperity: the economy. Greed is a vice. Prosperity is a virtue. It's now up to the Facebook/iPod/Google generation to dissolve this hateful war between the elite and Al Qaeda by asserting ourselves with love by sharing our prosperity and our happiness with all our neighbours and friends and especially our enemies. People who posses prosperity consciousness are protected by the universe’s spiritual energy forces, so the existing middle class in the West has nothing to fear.

END

Pretty neat eh? I came up with that argument in December 2007. It's incomplete, though. There is more. The following is extremely experimental which I may develop into a more coherent essay at a later date. If anyone reading this blog sees what they like from the following, feel free to borrow it and develop it yourself. You don't need to give me credit. Good luck:

Tangent:
(1) Speculate about Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism --> Spiritual foundation of the constitution using Graham Hancock and RObert Bauval's (2004) Talisman: Democracy is "the liberated great-grand-child of this Hermetic-Gnostic tradition."

(2) the important moral of the creation story in Genesis is that humans have free will, and therefore, the foundation of humanity's intelligence and language adventure is J S Millian negative liberty. Luckily, Millian liberalism is read into the US constituition.

(3) humans did for animals what god and the angels did for us: the angels granted humanity humanism. Millian utilitarianism and humanism is a spiritual doctrine, counter to the spiritual doctrine of Nazism. Nazism is a problem with the human soul. Nazism is a psychological and spiritual problem:

“Nazism can be explained only in terms of psychology, or rather in those of psychopathology. Hitler is looked upon as a madman or as a “neurotic,” and his followers as equally mad and mentally unbalanced…The sources of fascism are to be found in the human soul, not in economics.” (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1943: page 206)

Nazism is a spiritual problem. The spiritual is political. To Fromm, spontaneous creativity and artwork allowed in democracy provides safety. Creativity and democracy is a spiritual solution to the human condition.

Conclusion:

The US constitution is a spiritual document which haunts the greedy business elite night after night. The American public, since Bretton Woods, has developed a world view, a consciousness, which is exceptionally spiritually healthy. Their worldview is informed with revolutionary ideas of absolute political freedom and universal human and animal rights.

You know what song I listen to as I write this? Andy Hunter's “The Wonders of You” from The Matrix. Here is part of the song:



Now read my final conclusion:

The public’s worldview involves prosperity and an abundance of hope and love. Abundance out numbers scarcity on Google by a ratio of 4:1. Hope, love ,happiness and abundance is more powerful, so the spiritual consciousness of ordinary people will trump that of the consciousness of the business elite when the crisis happens before 2012. The public which assumes abundance is prepared to collide with the elite’s greedy ideology and agenda which assumes scarcity. The public, now a giant marauding bear with wings, is ready to squash Satan. [define Satan with JP2 quote from Walsch's What God Wants page 156] This is why I am so optimistic.

In an article titled, “Pentagon boosts 'media war' unit,” dated 31 October 2006, the BBC news reports that the war of ideas keeps Rumsfeld up at night.

The biggest sustained political demonstrations in world history will be spontaneous. It'll come out of nowhere, just like the amnesty protests by Hispanics in California in 2005 + 2006. Enlightened, all of us and especially young people will be conscious participants in a worldwide political demonstration and general strike made possible with the internet to defend the constitution. The answer to 1984 is 1776, as Alex Jones says in EndGame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement.

Thesis:

The public is enlightened, 9/11 was the test. Instead of riding the insecurities of nationalism into World War 3, the youth have chosen to ride the horse of spiritual energy forces: absolute freedom, justice and humanism, into the light.

I have a strong intuition that the illuminated elite at recent Bilderberg meetings and Trilateral Commission meetings are very divided. Half the elite want to greedily horde all the money for themselves, the other half want to enlighten humanity. The elite are in crisis mode and the world is ripe for revolution. RON PAUL REVOLUTION: Think "TeaParty07" and the fifth of November in 2007. Who is Ron Paul, how does he represent indigo children and the iPod Generation? Why is Ron Paul important? See my previos post. And here is me on Ron Paul's revolutionary economics. Oh and if interested, here is me on how creationism and intelligent design will be synthesized within the next 30 years by the indigo iPod generation.

MOVE OVER, 'cause here comes the Google generation:

END

This is, by the way, good to know:

As the credits role in The Secret, Esther Hicks says: “There is nothing you are supposed to do, only that which you want to do.” This quote can be ramified by a point made by Neale Donald Walsch on his blog. Walsch says that you are perfect just the way you are, “there is nothing you have to know, nothing you have to do, and nothing you have to be except exactly what you are knowing, doing, and being Right Now.” You don't have to do anything. Participation in the war of ideas or Anonymous protests are optional. Participate only if you choose.

Here is an aphorism that doesn't quite fit yet in the above essays:

The Universe manifests abundance at a mere thought, then why is there so much poverty, starvation and death? Does the law of attraction imply that all starving children in Africa have to do is “think prosperity”? The answer to that question is yes and no. First read Bob Proctor’s explanation for how rich people maintain their power:

It is not difficult…for children today, born into families of great wealth-like the Kennedy's or the Bronfman's-to think these prosperous thoughts and to have this prosperity consciousness, since that is the only type of thinking they were subjected to, right from birth. We say they have been conditioned in, or to, prosperity. However, the majority of people have not been born into that kind of an environment and so they were not surrounded by that type of thinking. (See Bob Procter's You Were Born Rich, p11)

Bob Proctor’s point about rich people maintaining prosperity consciousness is related to why starving children in Africa are stuck in what I call, “poverty consciousness.” Poor people maintain their adversity, not because they choose to, but because it’s probably excruciating difficult to think prosperity if you are always hungry. It’s not their fault they’re poor.

Here is another great aphorism that sorta belongs in the above essay, but doesn't fit very well:

Success guru Bob Proctor provides a concise social class analysis in The Secret. Bob Proctor asks, “Why do you think that one percent of the population earns around ninety six percent of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's no accident! It's designed that way.” Who is “they”? Bob Proctor is referring to the business elite of course, “They understand something. They understand the secret. And you are being introduced to the secret.” Whatever special knowledge the business elite have, we are being introduced to it. From this, what can I infer about world order? Maybe the law of attraction was discovered by John Davison Rockefeller and Henry Ford in the early 1900s; and, in 1913, conspiring with Woodrow Wilson, the elite committed a discrete coup d'état, creating a central American bank, the Federal Reserve system (Zeitgeist, 2007).

“Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws.” Baron Rothschild

I’m guessing that Baron Rothschild is illuminated. Rockefeller, Rothschild, Ford, Warburg, Aldrich and other American elites in the early 1900s, perhaps, asked the universe for consent using hermetic abilities similar to the law of attraction.

more tags: Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, nwo, capitalism, law of attraction, conspiracy theories, corruption, Demartini, social justice, bob proctor, anarchy, 9/11, world, us, the left, sustainable, taxes, the left, world, life, hitmen, globalization, future, emotions, empire, HOPE, ron paul, asdf, ronpaul2008, ronpaul

Chris Hedges' "America in the Time of Empire"

I first saw a quote from this article on Jodi Dean's blog. I liekd the whol article so much that I copied and pasted it entirely:

America in the Time of Empire

Posted on Nov 26, 2007

This column was originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible.

Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it.

The most damning indicators of national decline are upon us. We have watched an oligarchy rise to take economic and political power. The top 1 percent of the population has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, creating economic disparities unseen since the Depression. If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, we will see the presidency controlled by two families for the last 24 years.

Massive debt, much of it in the hands of the Chinese, keeps piling up as we fund absurd imperial projects and useless foreign wars. Democratic freedoms are diminished in the name of national security. And the erosion of basic services, from education to health care to public housing, has left tens of millions of citizens in despair. The displacement of genuine debate and civil and political discourse with the noise and glitter of public spectacle and entertainment has left us ignorant of the outside world, and blind to how it perceives us. We are fed trivia and celebrity gossip in place of news.

An increasing number of voices, especially within the military, are speaking to this stark deterioration. They describe a political class that no longer knows how to separate personal gain from the common good, a class driving the nation into the ground.

“There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of forces in Iraq, recently told the New York Times, adding that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

The American working class, once the most prosperous on Earth, has been politically disempowered, impoverished and abandoned. Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. State and federal assistance programs have been slashed. The corporations, those that orchestrated the flight of jobs and the abolishment of workers’ rights, control every federal agency in Washington, including the Department of Labor. They have dismantled the regulations that had made the country’s managed capitalism a success for ordinary men and women. The Democratic and Republican Parties now take corporate money and do the bidding of corporate interests.

Philadelphia is a textbook example. The city has seen a precipitous decline in manufacturing jobs, jobs that allowed households to live comfortably on one salary. The city had 35 percent of its workforce employed in the manufacturing sector in 1950, perhaps the zenith of the American empire. Thirty years later, this had fallen to 20 percent. Today it is 8.8 percent. Commensurate jobs, jobs that offer benefits, health care and most important enough money to provide hope for the future, no longer exist. The former manufacturing centers from Flint, Mich., to Youngstown, Ohio, are open sores, testaments to a growing internal collapse.

The United States has gone from being the world’s largest creditor to its largest debtor. As of September 2006, the country was, for the first time in a century, paying out more than it received in investments. Trillions of dollars go into defense while the nation’s infrastructure, from levees in New Orleans to highway bridges in Minnesota, collapses. We spend almost as much on military power as the rest of the world combined, while Social Security and Medicare entitlements are jeopardized because of huge deficits. Money is available for war, but not for the simple necessities of daily life.

Nothing makes these diseased priorities more starkly clear than what the White House did last week. On the same day, Tuesday, President Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill for education, job training and health programs, yet signed another bill giving the Pentagon about $471 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. All this in the shadow of a Joint Economic Committee report suggesting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been twice as expensive than previously imagined, almost $1.5 trillion.

The decision to measure the strength of the state in military terms is fatal. It leads to a growing cynicism among a disenchanted citizenry and a Hobbesian ethic of individual gain at the expense of everyone else. Few want to fight and die for a Halliburton or an Exxon. This is why we do not have a draft. It is why taxes have not been raised and we borrow to fund the war. It is why the state has organized, and spends billions to maintain, a mercenary army in Iraq. We leave the fighting and dying mostly to our poor and hired killers. No nationwide sacrifices are required. We will worry about it later.

It all amounts to a tacit complicity on the part of a passive population. This permits the oligarchy to squander capital and lives. It creates a world where we speak exclusively in the language of violence. It has plunged us into an endless cycle of war and conflict that is draining away the vitality, resources and promise of the nation.

It signals the twilight of our empire.

Link: Truthdig - Reports - America in the Time of Empire.