Buffett to GOP: Put up or shut up

They think (I'm guessing) that taking money out of the citizens hands & giving it to government is bad economics. I assume that they would argue that that would be at best a short term fix. A better approach would be to have the government spend less and have philanthropists foot the bill for a lot of the things the government now pays for, rather than have everything run through the government & have philanthropists pay its bills.

 

OK, a bit clearer. But again, if they disagree with him that they should be paying more taxes, why should they voluntarily pay more? If you're point is "ask a stupid question...", OK.

 

If they think that "taking money out of citizen's hands and giving it to the government" is bad economics, they should not use public steets to do business. They should hire private security and turn down police protection. Etc., etc.

That's using their own logic.

Of course, that's flawed, but no more flawed than the asinine "If you think you don't pay enough taxes, then pay more" illogic.

 

I think that's exactly the point. Their response was asinine. His response to them was in kind.

 

That's of course taking it to an absurd extreme. They would sign on to fire departments, street repair, police, probably even education (none of those are federal by the way), national defense etc., but not a host of things. Now we're on the details of where to make cuts which is not a debate I'm looking to have now, but again, I think you understand my point.

 

If EVERYONE paid taxes, nobody would need to pay MORE taxes.

FAIR TAX 2012!

 

Who doesn't pay taxes?

 

Drug dealers, Welfare recipients, under-the-table employees...should I continue?

 

While we're it, we should all just follow the laws we feel like following too. I think DUI laws are ridiculous so I'll break them. I didn't "sign up" for the oppressive DUI laws. I didn't sign up for Fifth Ave. being turned to a one-way street going south. So I'm just going to drive north on Fifth Ave. If they pull me over, I'll just tell them "I didn't sign up for this."

 

Huh? They aren't evading taxes, they're running for office advocating that they be lower and saying that if elected they will try to lower them through the legislative process.

 

If you want to be taken seriously, you should probably start the list with Exxon or GE.

Do you mean income taxes? Because welfare recipients and drug dealers and under-the-table employees all pay sales taxes already. And do you really think criminals are going to pay income taxes? Or that the best source of new income tax revenue is to be found in the poorest segment of the population?

 

So far, we have Obama as either Tebow or Olajuwon, Bachmann as Shawn Bradley, the GOP field as BYU's basketball team and Warren Buffett as Rex Ryan.

Off to a promising start here.