That's a great thing that he did. It's his money and he chose to do that.
But aside from his point, he did decide to give it to a private charity instead of the federal government, via taxes or otherwise.
So it's almost as if he's saying through his money that "giving back to society" does not equal "paying more in taxes". It's 37 billion that's not going to be federal revenue. Who's to argue with a fiscal genius?
But aside from his point, he did decide to give it to a private charity instead of the federal government, via taxes or otherwise.
So it's almost as if he's saying through his money that "giving back to society" does not equal "paying more in taxes". It's 37 billion that's not going to be federal revenue. Who's to argue with a fiscal genius?
Never mind -- if you want to misrepresent it to mean that, go right ahead. His point (and he's been clear about this all along) is that the government SHOULD be doing all that, but doesn't have the balls to collect enough from the ultra-rich (aka him and the others in his income bracket) in order to do it. So he's forced to give it to a private foundation, because the government is run for the most part by people who seem to think it's his duty to put it all into offshore accounts.
I also think if you asked him who would better disperse that money, Bill Gates' foundation, or the federal government, he'd reply with the Bill gates foundation. He chose the better place.
The man can say what he wants. His actions show otherwise.
The reason he's not giving it to the government is $37 billion is a drop in the bucket to the government. It would be gone in a few days of interest payments.
I also think if you asked him who would better disperse that money, Bill Gates' foundation, or the federal government, he'd reply with the Bill gates foundation.
Precisely because the Gates Foundation, unlike the federal government, is not committed to the ideal that he should keep the money! The idea is, he'd like the government to (a) collect more revenue from people like him, and (b) use it to promulgate the structure that enabled him to make it, so that others can, too. Instead he sees that (b) the government is run by people who want the rich (including themselves) to have all the money and squeeze out the middle class, too, and therefore (a) he gives it to a foundation that might actually do with it what the government should be doing.
This isn't a "government is ALWAYS wrong," thing; it's a "government is currently run by greedy bastards" thing.
Who's to argue with a fiscal genius?
Who indeed? We are, of course, discussing the guy who just came out and blatantly stated that the rich should pay more in taxes, are we not?
:P
I'd argue with him. Not saying I'd win...
I also think if you asked him who would better disperse that money, Bill Gates' foundation, or the federal government, he'd reply with the Bill gates foundation.Precisely because the Gates Foundation, unlike the federal government, is not committed to the ideal that he should keep the money! The idea is, he'd like the government to (a) collect more revenue from people like him, and (b) use it to promulgate the structure that enabled him to make it, so that others can, too. Instead he sees that (b) the government is run by people who want the rich (including themselves) to have all the money and squeeze out the middle class, too, and therefore (a) he gives it to a foundation that might actually do with it what the government should be doing.
This isn't a "government is ALWAYS wrong," thing; it's a "government is currently run by greedy bastards" thing.
Ahh I see what you're saying, sorry.
Buffett is saying that he wishes the government was an enity he could have give that money to, but as it stands now he doesn't feel he can entrust it to them, because of greed. That in a perfect world, the governmnet would be that entity that could handle it properly.I can agree with that sentiment.
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There's also the fact that if he DID give the government that 37 billion, the IRS would eventually, if not immediately, audit his tax statements, and give it back. So he can't give that money to the government, because the system cannot process that.
$37,000,0000,0000That's not a real number.
Yes it is, the punctuation is merely in the wrong place. 3700000000000 is a real number.
It's a left wing socialist conspiracy I tell you.
Naturally. It usually is. ;-)
It's a left wing socialist conspiracy I tell you.
That's a great idea. I hope they stick to it.
It's a left wing socialist conspiracy I tell you.
What? Does Starbucks' chief think that Corporations have any real power in American Politics.
This will never work.
Anyone who donates large amounts to a campaign has real power in American politics, not just corporations. Corporations are just one of a myriad of special interests in this country.
However, they are probably the only special interest that's actually capable of creating jobs.
Anyone who donates large amounts to a campaign has real power in American politics, not just corporations. Corporations are just one of a myriad of special interests in this country.
However, they are probably the only special interest that's actually capable of creating jobs.
No, they aren't. Not really, not anymore.
Corporate profits have never been higher...and their number of jobs have never been lower. Even now they're experimenting with ways of making people work for free.
Never forget that creation of jobs is not the purpose of a corporation. Profit is. Paying wages cuts your profits. And they'll do every damn thing they can to stop it.
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Just a quick thought on 'smaller government':
As of 2009 there were just at 1.9 million federal employees.
Of this 1.6 million were military.
The population of the USA was 307.007 million people.
This means:
There was .5% of the USA population protecting 99.5% of the USA population in the form of military service.
There was 300,000 people in federal service that were not military. This means .1% of the population ran the the federal government civilian services.
Not sure how you really expect to shrink that any more, or why you are surpised that things slip past them after all they have 300,000 people to take care of 307,007,000 people -- a walk in the park right?
To break this down even more:
VA Office: 280,000 to serve every military member or past military member still alive today. By the way there are 21.9 million veterans in the USA as of 2009 (again right at 1 person to serve each 100 veterans).
Justice department: 108,000 employees for 307,007,000 people in the USA.
Treasury: 88,000 employees for 307,007,00 people.
Agriculture: 81,000
Health and Human Services: 64,000
Homeland Security: 171,000
Interior: 67,000 (3.79 square miles of country)
Transportation: 55,000 (by the way there are 55 million miles of paved road in the USA)
Commerce: 39,000
Labor: 16,000
Energy: 15,000
Education: 4,000
Housing: 9,000
Social Security: 64,000
NASA: 18,000
EPA: 18,000
General Services: 12,000
Personnel Management: 5,000
Smithsonian: 4,000
Judicial: 33,000
Legislative: 30,000
This does not include the US postal service which has not been receiving federal funding.
As we can see most of the USA is serviced and helped by less than .01 percent of the population.
Please note that general management theory tells us you want anywhere from 5~20 employees per manager... That's anywhere from 5~20% of a work force... which the federal government is well below.
As we can see most of the USA is serviced and helped by less than .01 percent of the population.
The question is wether these 0.1% also use only 0.1% of the tax money.
About Europe:
Some ultra-right conservatives like to use "old Europe" as an example of states that suffer because of "too much welfare".
Take the example of Greece. Greece has about 4% of the debts of all other european states but on the same side it also only contributes 2.4% of the added value. Were Greece a state of the USA (or Germany or France), nothing would have happened at all.
If you would separate the USA (or germany or France) into it's member states and let each state manage it's taxes, fiscal policies and whatnot individually but let all share the Dollar, you would fast arrive at a point where some states would have much bigger problems than Greece.
The problem of Europe is not welfare, it is the vastly different performances of the individual states with nothing like the old individual currencies that smoothes these differences out.
Well if we check on the site provide we will see the average for all federal employees comes in at $74,403. With an absolute minimum of $22,000 and a maximum of $128,000.
So if we take that 1.9 million and multiply it by the $74,403 then we should get 141.366 billion dollars. The total budget for that year was $3.107 trillion (estimated). So we have right at 5% of the budget going to pay these people.
If I remember correctly (and I'm not going to say I do) the 'golden spot' for labor costs is between 10~20% of total overhead... with allowances made for specific industries.
To compare we gave 26 billion in foreign aid that year. Where that is going
The Military used 685.1 billion which does include costs such as family housing and military personnel (including totaling 157.3 together) -- More on military spending because breaking it down is a bit more difficult
Social Security payouts were $686 billion.
Interest payments were $189 billion. (sources)
If you would like I recommend the following Which lists the budgets for the 2009 year for the US goverment by department.
I am sorry it took me so long in posting back -- I thought I had already done so... apparently I was mistaken.
I'm also still looking for the amount of Federal dollars that went to private businesses too. Not saying that such spending is 'wrong' or anything -- but any money spent is money moving in the economy and where, who and how and how much of that money made its way into private hands is kind of interesting to me.
Type of Return -- Number of Returns --Gross Collections(Millions of $)
Individual income tax --144,103,375 -- 1,175,422
Corporation income tax -- 2,475,785 -- 225,482
Employment taxes -- 30,223,289 -- 858,164
Excise taxes -- 809,461 -- 46,632
Gift tax -- 245,262 -- 3,094
Estate tax -- 47,320 -- 21,583
Non-discretionary spending (spending that had to be done, such as social security, debt obligations and the like) supposedly totaled 53% of the budget.
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If you would separate the USA (or germany or France) into it's member states and let each state manage it's taxes, fiscal policies and whatnot individually but let all share the Dollar, you would fast arrive at a point where some states would have much bigger problems than Greece.If the people were immobile, sure. But, the people aren't immobile. Interstate trade being regulated by the federal government, labor-starved states could pull labor away from underperforming states. Underperforming states could make the changes they need to make without the federal government getting in the way.
Unlike Greece vs. the other European countries, US states don't have thousands of years of cultural and language barriers segregating them.
There was an interesting article in the Economist about this. I don't think a bit of labour mobility would cut it as some states receive colossal transfers from the federal government - unless some areas just became depopulated.
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Never forget that creation of jobs is not the purpose of a corporation. Profit is. Paying wages cuts your profits. And they'll do every damn thing they can to stop it.
Well, the best way to grow profits is to grow the business. That almost always involves employing more people - you do more of what you were doing before, which requires more resources, including labour. So suggesting that businesses can grow in the long term without more employment seems wrong. There is a limit to which you can cut wages before it becomes impossible to run the company. You seem to be assuming there is only so much economic activity out there, that limit has been reached, and the only thing left to do is cut costs (lump of labour fallacy). That is might be true in the short term, but in the longer term a company will deploy resources (including labour) if it expect to make a return in excess of the marginal cost. In a low growth environment in which we find ourselves, that maybe won't be likely. But if economic growth picks up, so will employment.
I don't think it skews it but I think you have misunderstood why I compared it to the total population:
Supposedly the government serves the people. I'm looking at the government as a service industry. Currently it has 1 employee for every 1,000 customers it has. That's not a good match up to have for a company.
Please note this isn't considering that each of those employees are in different actual sectors of the business too -- for example lets consider social security. There are 64,000 people working taking care of everything on the Federal Government's end of social security for 307 million citizens (customers). That's one person working Federal Social Security for every 4,796.875 people.
You will never be able to offer up a private company that can manage that.
Now to provide a "public versus private" comparison between the two sides of an industry lets consider private health care versus public.
The milliman report on the subject found that medicare administrative costs were about 5% currently (as opposed to the the claimed 2%) while the private industry has administrative costs of 8.9% before such things as profits, premium taxes, and commissions and 16.7% after such considerations. They also suggest that if medicare was to have a larger share of the 'market' and had deductibles in line with what the private industry currently has administrative costs would run 6~8% instead. Medicare is factored per person whereas private insurance is factored per family where possible as that reduces their administrative costs more.
Now please note that Milliman is used by the insurance companies to provide these reports. They are as neutral as we are going to get in such matters. Lets be clear -- Milliman's whole business is providing objective reports.
Please note that the cost of medicare has risen 8.8% per beneficiary per year compared to the private insurance's 9.9% ( source ).
We spend 16.7% of GDP on health care costs. Our health care sucks -- I mean honestly flat out sucks. In all measures of service provided in health care the USA falls behind compared to all other 'modern developed countries' -- which spend about half as much as us( source ).
It is also dragging our corporations down. Health care stays on the books for US companies -- it's an expense that their overseas counterparts don't have to list or track and don't spend as much on. If we were to drop health care from our companies' bottom lines they would be much more agile, able and capable of competing globally.
In fact neo-classical economic theory would agree that having a government ran health care system would be better for the economy as a whole as it would reduce entry and exit costs for the market and lighten the administrative costs of companies too.
Never forget that creation of jobs is not the purpose of a corporation. Profit is. Paying wages cuts your profits. And they'll do every damn thing they can to stop it.Well, the best way to grow profits is to grow the business.
The year 2009 called -- it disagrees with you (private health care shrank in customers and employees and still pulled out record profits). As does 2010, and 2011. Profits have been soaring... employment? Not so much.
Currently it has 1 employee for every 1,000 customers it has. That's not a good match up to have for a company.Again, the government does not have 1 employee for every 1,000 customers it serves. The Federal government has 1 employee for every 1,000 customers it serves. And that's a HUGE number. How many people do you think Frito-Lay keeps full-time employed for every person who buys Frito-Lay products? What about Budweiser? What about Time Warner? Paramount Pictures? And keep in mind, as I pointed out earlier, that these government workers don't represent those sections of the government typically labor intensive (education, law enforcement, medical care, etc.) which are typically state or local government managed.
Again you compare manufacturing to service industry -- nice try though. Also I don't see why you have a problem understanding that I'm specifically covering the federal government's employee ratio.
Now if you really want to cover service and specific costs we can... but as Milliman pointed out with the insurance industry... private will lose again.
Show me a private corporation like Frito-Lay that's going to fight a war.
And I will of course (again) point out that if you would like to actually provide some numbers and research on state and local governments I would love to see it.
Currently you've not provided or proven anything.
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The year 2009 called -- it disagrees with you (private health care shrank in customers and employees and still pulled out record profits). As does 2010, and 2011. Profits have been soaring... employment? Not so much.
Of course it does - my post takes that into account. But, like I also say, there is a limit to cost-cutting. You cannot grow a business indefinitely by cutting costs. And you have chosen a single, highly-regulated industry at that for your example, which operates on a cost-plus basis and lacks genuine competition.
I removed some posts. Fewer personal attacks, please.