Comments on: Victimized billionaires

By: zotdoc

zotdoc — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:22:28 +0000

I make a great living,in the top 5% of the US. I’m not a billionaire and at 62, it looks like I will have to keep on working for many years, as I don’t have enough to retire, unless i want to live a very meager lifestyle. I agree that billionaires possibly should pay more, but I know that that is not going to happen. Instead the empty rhetoric about billionaires will be translated down to people making 250,000, er 200,000,er 150,000, oh hell 75000 and they will be the ones to bear the brunt of the tax burden. We should have a low flat tax with absolutely no loopholes or exceptions from the top income to the bottom income levels, a level playing field and no room for the pols to complicate the issues to buy their next election. We should also have term limits.

By: TFF

TFF — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 15:16:17 +0000

Dafydd, it is narcissism. They see their earnings as evidence that they are contributing more to society than anybody else, and thus they shouldn’t be asked to do any more. Let those lazy slobs earning $30k or $40k take responsibility for their lives and pay their fair share, right? After all, even 5% of $1M is many times what the average citizen is expected to pay. That 15% tax rate on carried interest is clearly unjustly high.

By: Dafydd

Dafydd — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:41:33 +0000

I think the more interesting question is…

How is it that Romneys 0.01 percenters accuse half of America of being tax dodging victims, when they talk like this?

Is it projection??

By: EPB

EPB — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:14:36 +0000

Boson — On the money (so to speak).

I know a hedge fund guy, hardly an in-line GOP voter, whose anti-Obama vitriol has gone ’round the bend. He hasn’t articluated the carried interest protection as the source of his angst, but — The numbers don’t lie.

By: boson

boson — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:09:02 +0000

Everyone here with the exception of AdamJ23, including Felix and the writer of the new yorker piece, is missing the point. This is about one issue and one issue alone: the carried interest loophole. For many of these guys, that loophole is worth tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in tax savings *per year*. I had lunch with one of the figures in the New Yorker pieceabout a year and a half ago, and when he spoke candidly, that was the very root of all the Obama hatred. It is the most ludicrous, indefensible, and counter-gaap giveaway to people who least need giveaways, but don’t expect a person to understand something that his or her livelihood is predicated on not understanding.

By: waltz1

waltz1 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 03:50:54 +0000

I’m a rather meek person.

But give me 15 minutes with any of these folks, and I’ll have them begging for Marx and Lennin.

By: MLite

MLite — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:11:49 +0000

Just to clarify MrRFox, you mean Jewish right?

By: MLite

MLite — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 19:55:26 +0000

@MrRFox: Just to clarify, you mean Jewish right?

By: TFF

TFF — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:21:35 +0000

Hedge fund = crowded trade.

Some people can make a lot of money, or many people can make a little money, but you simply cannot have an environment in which many people make a lot of money. There aren’t enough profits to go around.

By: dlake

dlake — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:19:14 +0000

I do not feel sorry for these hyper senstive spoiled little Lord Fauntleroys.
They have spent such a long time being fetted as ‘masters of the universe’ they think they are invincible and we are all just peons who’s job is to bow and scrape before them.
Hardly.
If these arrogant whiners were at all atuned to the country they would not be walking around with noses in the air but, hiding in shame knowing they are the most despised people in the country.
Obama was simply stating a fact and they cannot handle the truth. They are fat cats and of little use to us or the country and if they cannot handle reality then they should just move out of the country and leave it. We would be relieved and very happy to see the last of these vipers.

By: raymondscum

raymondscum — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:58:45 +0000

By their standards, did Romney “ever work a day in his life?” He was a senior partner in a firm he didn’t found, right? Just like, let’s see, Barack Obama…

By: masaccio

masaccio — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:47:54 +0000

The funniest part of the hedge fund whining is their failure as real businesses. They are great at sucking money out of their suckers, but not so great at paying the suckers. http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-h edge-funds-are-getting-murdered-this-yea r-2012-8

By: Chris08

Chris08 — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:22:45 +0000

The sense you get from reading the New Yorker profile is that he thinks the peasants don’t bow down low enough to their betters. Just a nod of the head from the President is not enough. He needs to bend over, as they do or used to do in Japan, from the waist so that his forehead almost touches the ground and then he might be deferential enough.

By: Eericsonjr

Eericsonjr — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:50:32 +0000

When they say “build anything” they mean “buy” or “pay to have built.” When they say “worked” they mean “bossed.” It is a subtle distinction.

By: williambanazi7

williambanazi7 — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:49:08 +0000

There are appropriate analogies to fascism. They involve things like drones and the NDAA. Not Schwartzman’s twisted billionaire tax holocaust,