Warren Buffett

Which brings me to the mess we’re in. The only people to blame are the politicians and the Shylocks of Wall Street. The former now want the rich to bail them out. Taxing the rich is an easy sell. Yet taking taxes from us by force is morally abhorrent. These bums feasted all these years, lied, showboated and enriched themselves, and then they expect frugal people who worked for their wealth to pay for their follies. It is well-known that as taxes rise, people see themselves not as willing contributors but as exploited. The more the tax, the more that wealth-creators are forced to pay for things they disapprove of—foreign wars being a prime example. Providing benefits for others by taxing within reason is fine and dandy, but punishing those who generate jobs and riches is like forcing the great Placido Domingo to stop singing and to shout like that arch-phony Bono. High taxes never did nothin’ for nobody except stifle economic growth and individual liberty.

If Liliane Bettencourt signs a petition which urges the French government to tax her more—as she recently did—that’s her business. She needed some good publicity for a change. But she shouldn’t include others who did not have the bad taste to give a billion away to a much younger companion. A 50% tax on those making 150,000 pounds per year is a joke. If I had to pay such a ratio on my yearly income I would move to Switzerland—where I actually am domiciled and where I pay a steep but fair amount. Buffett is just being a busybody trying to score morality points on the rest of the dull and rather ugly fellow billionaires. We all know that if one took all of Buffett’s money away it would last about one week taking care of those on welfare in New York state alone. Buffett should shut up and put his money up for budding entrepreneurs to start up businesses. That would not get him any publicity, but it would create jobs and generate tax income for years to come. The rest is moral grandstanding, which impresses the hoi polloi but not the poor little Greek boy.