I don’t think I’ll ever be raising my hand, volunteering to pay more in taxes but that’s exactly what the second richest man in the country has done. His name is Warren Buffett, and he is a proponent of the new rule that Obama is vying to get passed into law called the “Buffett Rule,” which would require the country’s wealthiest folks to pay at least 30% of their income in taxes. The idea comes from the fact that currently, the middle-class tax rate is 20% while America’s 400 wealthiest tax payers only pay 18% of their income. If you stopped at that part and said, “Hey, that’s not fair,” well then you’ve summarized the bottom line of the Buffett Rule. Clare O’Connor of Forbes reported,
“On Tuesday afternoon President Obama took a break from fundraising in Florida to make his pitch for the ‘Buffett Rule’, a proposal that would see the country’s wealthiest pay at least 30% of their income in taxes.
The legislation is named after America’s second richest person, maverick investor Warren Buffett, who has long complained that he and his fellow billionaires and millionaires are paying a far lower tax rate than the average middle-class family.
“Right now, the share of our national income flowing to the top 1% has climbed to levels last seen in the 1920s,” Obama told a cheering chorus of Florida Atlantic University students in Boca Raton, Fla. “And yet those same people are also paying taxes at one of the lowest rates in 50 years. You might have heard this, but Warren Buffett is paying a lower tax rate than his secretary.”
“That’s wrong,” he said. “It isn’t fair. And it’s time for us to choose which direction we want to go in as a country. Do we want to keep giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans like me, or Warren Buffett, or Bill Gates – people who don’t need them and never asked for them? Or do we want to keep investing in things that will grow our economy and keep us secure? That’s the choice.”
To read more on the details surrounding the Buffett Rule, what it would mean, and who is supporting it click here.
I personally think it’s super cool that people like Buffett and his billionaire friend, Bill Gates, would step up and support a bill like this. I’m pretty sure we can all agree that the US economy can use the income, and it would be awesome if the people who actually had the money to spare funded it. Wishful thinking? Not if the Buffett Rule passes!
