the view from the 1%

The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy

Ever since the financial crisis started, we’ve heard plenty from the 1 percent. We’ve heard them giving defensive testimony in Congressional hearings or issuing anodyne statements flanked by lawyers and image consultants. They typically repeat platitudes about investment, risk-taking and job creation with the veiled contempt that the nation doesn’t understand their contribution. You get the sense that they’re afraid to say what they really believe. What do the superrich say when the cameras aren’t there?

With that in mind, I recently met Edward Conard on 57th Street and Madison Avenue, just outside his office at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped build into a multibillion-dollar business by buying, fixing up and selling off companies at a profit. Conard, who retired a few years ago at 51, is not merely a member of the 1 percent. He’s a member of the 0.1 percent. His wealth is most likely in the hundreds of millions; he lives in an Upper East Side town house just off Fifth Avenue; and he is one of the largest donors to his old boss and friend, Mitt Romney.

Unlike his former colleagues, Conard wants to have an open conversation about wealth. He has spent the last four years writing a book that he hopes will forever change the way we view the superrich’s role in our society. “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio, aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is not a sign that the system is rigged. On the contrary, Conard writes, it is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off. This could be the most hated book of the year.

Conard understands that many believe that the U.S. economy currently serves the rich at the expense of everyone else. He contends that this is largely because most Americans don’t know how the economy really works — that the superrich spend only a small portion of their wealth on personal comforts; most of their money is invested in productive businesses that make life better for everyone. “Most citizens are consumers, not investors,” he told me during one of our long, occasionally contentious conversations. “They don’t recognize the benefits to consumers that come from investment.”

This is the usual defense of the 1 percent. Conard, however, has laid out a tightly argued case for just how much consumers actually benefit from the wealthy. Take computers, for example. A small number of innovators and investors may have earned disproportionate billions as the I.T. industry grew, but they got that money by competing to constantly improve their products and simultaneously lower prices. Their work has helped everyone get a lot more value. Cheap, improved computing helps us do our jobs more effectively and, often, earn more money. Countless other industries (travel, telecom, entertainment) use that computing power to lower their prices and enhance their products. This generally makes life more efficient and helps the economy grow.

The idea that society benefits when investors compete successfully is pretty widely accepted. Dean Baker, a prominent progressive economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says that most economists believe society often benefits from investments by the wealthy. Baker estimates the ratio is 5 to 1, meaning that for every dollar an investor earns, the public receives the equivalent of $5 of value. The Google founder Sergey Brin might be very rich, but the world is far richer than he is because of Google. Conard said Baker was undercounting the social benefits of investment. He looks, in particular, at agriculture, where, since the 1940s, the cost of food has steadily fallen because of a constant stream of innovations. While the businesses that profit from that innovation — like seed companies and fast-food restaurants — have made their owners rich, the average U.S. consumer has benefited far more. Conard concludes that for every dollar an investor gets, the public reaps up to $20 in value. This is crucial to his argument: he thinks it proves that we should all appreciate the vast wealth of others more, because we’re benefiting, proportionally, from it.

Google’s contribution is obvious. What about investment banks, with their complicated financial derivatives and overleveraged balance sheets? Conard argues that they make the economy more efficient, too. The financial crisis, he writes, was not the result of corrupt bankers selling dodgy financial products. It was a simple, old-fashioned run on the banks, which, he says, were just doing their job. There are a huge number of people in our economy who want ready access to their savings — pension-fund managers, insurance companies and you and me with our bank accounts. And because economic growth comes from long-term investments in things like housing, factories and research, the central role of banks, Conard says, is to turn the short-term assets of nervous savers into risky long-term loans that help the economy grow.

Every once in a while, this system breaks down. For one reason or another, the savers panic and demand all their money back. This causes a massive problem because the money isn’t sitting at the bank; it’s out in the world in the form of long-term loans. “A lot of people don’t realize that what happened in 2008 was nearly identical to what happened in 1929,” he says. “Depositors ran to the bank to withdraw their money only to discover, like the citizens of Bedford Falls” — referring to the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” — “that there was no money in the vault. All that money had been lent.”

In 2008 it was large pension funds, insurance companies and other huge institutional investors that withdrew in panic. Conard argues in retrospect that it was these withdrawals that led to the crisis — not, as so many others have argued, an orgy of irresponsible lending. He points to the fact that, according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, banks lost $320 billion through mortgage-backed securities, but withdrawals disproportionately amounted to five times that. This stance, which largely absolves the banks, is not shared by many analysts. Regardless, Conard told me: “The banks did what we wanted them to do. They put short-term money back into the economy. What they didn’t expect is that depositors would withdraw their money, because they hadn’t withdrawn their money en masse since 1929.”

Conard concedes that the banks made some mistakes, but the important thing now, he says, is to provide them even stronger government support. He advocates creating a new government program that guarantees to bail out the banks if they ever face another run. As for exotic derivatives, Conard doesn’t see a problem. He argues that collateralized-debt obligations, credit-default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and other (now deemed toxic) financial products were fundamentally sound. They were new tools that served a market need for the world’s most sophisticated investors, who bought them in droves. And they didn’t cause the panic anyway, he says; the withdrawals did.

Even though these big conclusions are at odds with most other accounts, several economists said that they see Conard’s description of the crisis as more than just an apologia for the banking class (though it certainly is that, too). Andrei Shleifer, an influential Harvard economist, told me that he thought Conard was “genuinely fantastic on finance.”

“Unintended Consequences” only mentions Romney by name once (and in the acknowledgments, at that), but Conard hopes that the arguments detailed in his book will help readers understand why it’s so crucial that his former boss — who believes the government should help the investor class — win this November. As I read “Unintended Consequences,” though, I wondered if the book would have the opposite effect. Even staunch Republicans and many members of the Tea Party might bristle at a worldview that celebrates the coastal elite and says many talented people in the middle class aren’t pulling their weight. Was Conard saddling his old boss with another example of how out of touch those with car elevators and multiple Cadillacs can be? In this time of overheated arguments between opponents who rarely listen to one another, here was a rare member of the 1 percent openly trying to make his case. How convincing is it?

Conard and I eventually sat down at a cafe off Madison. His book is filled with a lot of abstraction, so I asked him to show me how his ideas play out in the real world.

Conard picked up a soda can and pointed to the way the can’s side bent inward at the top. “I worked with the company that makes the machine that tapers that can,” he told me. That little taper allows manufacturers to make the same size can with a tiny bit less aluminum. “It saves a fraction of a penny on every can,” he said. “There are a lot of soda cans in the world. That means the economy can produce more cans with the same amount of resources. It makes every American who buys a soda can a little bit richer because their paycheck buys more.”

It might be hard to get excited about milligrams of aluminum, but Conard says that we live longer, healthier and richer lives because of countless microimprovements like that one. The people looking for them, Conard likes to point out, are not only computer programmers, engineers and scientists. They are also wealthy investors like him, who are willing to risk their own money to finance improvements that may or may not work. There is a huge mechanism constantly trying to seek out and support these new ideas — entrepreneurs, multinationals and, crucially for Conard, investment firms and hedge funds and everyone down to individual bond traders. As Conard told me, one of the crucial lessons he learned at Bain is that it makes no sense to look for easy solutions. In a competitive market, all that’s left are the truly hard puzzles. And they require extraordinary resources. While we often hear about the greatest successes — penicillin, the iPhone — we rarely hear about the countless failures and the people and companies who financed them.

A central problem with the U.S. economy, he told me, is finding a way to get more people to look for solutions despite these terrible odds of success. Conard’s solution is simple. Society benefits if the successful risk takers get a lot of money. For proof, he looks to the market. At a nearby table we saw three young people with plaid shirts and floppy hair. For all we know, they may have been plotting the next generation’s Twitter, but Conard felt sure they were merely lounging on the sidelines. “What are they doing, sitting here, having a coffee at 2:30?” he asked. “I’m sure those guys are college-educated.” Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life. In Conard’s mind, this includes, surprisingly, people like lawyers, who opt for stable professions that don’t maximize their wealth-creating potential. He said the only way to persuade these “art-history majors” to join the fiercely competitive economic mechanism is to tempt them with extraordinary payoffs.

“It’s not like the current payoff is motivating everybody to take risks,” he said. “We need twice as many people. When I look around, I see a world of unrealized opportunities for improvements, an abundance of talented people able to take the risks necessary to make improvements but a shortage of people and investors willing to take those risks. That doesn’t indicate to me that risk takers, as a whole, are overpaid. Quite the opposite.” The wealth concentrated at the top should be twice as large, he said. That way, the art-history majors would feel compelled to try to join them.

I first met Conard last fall, around the same period in which I was spending a lot of time in Zuccotti Park, interviewing anti-Wall Street protesters who argued that people like him were destroying our democracy. Most Wall Street leaders ignored the Occupy movement or evaded it, and I was sure Conard would be among the most silent. He had recently been stung by a 1 percent scandal of his own: setting up a company whose sole purpose was to donate $1 million to a political-action committee that supported Romney. He was being cast as the embodiment of the secretive and growing influence that the hyperrich have in our political system. If anybody was going to be shy with a reporter, I figured, it was him.

Over lunch with editors from The Times Magazine, Conard proved the exact opposite. He looks like a benign middle-aged guy until he starts making an argument. At which point, Conard stares into your eyes and talks with intense force, punctuated by the occasional profanity, in full paragraphs. He delighted in arguing over corporate-bond rates and Chinese central-bank policy, among other arcane minutiae. It also became clear that he had exhaustively thought through the role of the superrich in our economy, and he wasn’t afraid to share those opinions.

Conard’s life serves as the perfect model for his economic philosophy. Born in 1956, he grew up in a middle-class suburb of Detroit, the son of a kindergarten teacher and a Ford engineer. His childhood ambition was to be able to afford his own house in a Detroit suburb, but, he likes to say, he took a series of risks (like forgoing the more secure path of law school) that eventually led him to Harvard Business School. When Conard graduated, in 1982, he entered the burgeoning field of management consulting. He joined the prestigious Boston-based firm Bain & Company, which nine years earlier was founded with a radically different approach from the more traditional New York-based consulting firms. Those firms positioned themselves as grand thinkers, far above the fray of daily business struggles. Bain’s approach was to join its clients in the trenches, providing analysis and working with senior management to beat the competition.

In 1990, Conard decided to pursue even greater wealth by quitting Bain to become a manager at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella, in New York. He disliked the job, though, and when his old colleague Mitt Romney took him to lunch in 1992, Conard offered his services to Bain Capital, a division that Romney helped start in order to acquire companies with the goal of improving them itself. When Romney said he couldn’t afford to match his Wall Street pay, Conard offered to work for less until Romney decided he had added enough value to deserve a bonus and stock options. His first year did not go terribly well, though Conard eventually identified an ideal takeover target, a company that made pharmaceutical-test instruments. Bain paid less than a half billion for the company. Its value has since risen to more than $7 billion. In 2000, he became the head of the New York office.

Which leads us to what Conard said was his next big risk — leaving the business world to make his case for a new, decidedly pro-investor way to think about the economy. He seems genuinely certain that his arguments in “Unintended Consequences” will persuade a fair number of economists, politicians and thought leaders. I suggested during many of our conversations that being a public intellectual might be tricky when you freely say the sorts of things that Conard often does. During one conversation, he expressed anger over the praise that Warren Buffett has received for pledging billions of his fortune to charity. It was no sacrifice, Conard argued; Buffett still has plenty left over to lead his normal quality of life. By taking billions out of productive investment, he was depriving the middle class of the potential of its 20-to-1 benefits. If anyone was sacrificing, it was those people. “Quit taking a victory lap,” he said, referring to Buffett. “That money was for the middle class.”

There’s also the fact that Conard applies a relentless, mathematical logic to nearly everything, even finding a good spouse. He advocates, in utter seriousness, using demographic data to calculate the number of potential mates in your geographic area. Then, he says, you should set aside a bit of time for “calibration” — dating as many people as you can so that you have a sense of what the marriage marketplace is like. Then you enter the selection phase, this time with the goal of picking a permanent mate. The first woman you date who is a better match than the best woman you met during the calibration phase is, therefore, the person you should marry. By statistical probability, she is as good a match as you’re going to get. (Conard used this system himself.)

This constant calculation — even of the incalculable — can be both fascinating and absurd. The world Conard describes too often feels grim and soulless, one in which art and romance and the nonremunerative satisfactions of a simpler life are invisible. And that, I realized, really is Conard’s world. “God didn’t create the universe so that talented people would be happy,” he said. “It’s not beautiful. It’s hard work. It’s responsibility and deadlines, working till 11 o’clock at night when you want to watch your baby and be with your wife. It’s not serenity and beauty.”

Central to this investor’s work ethic is another pillar of his worldview. Unlike Romney, Conard rejects the notion that America has “some monopoly on hard work or entrepreneurship.” “I think it’s simple economics,” he said. “If the payoff for risk-taking is better, people will take more risks.” Conard sees the success of the U.S. economy as, in part, the result of a series of historic accidents. Most recently, the coincidence of Roe v. Wade and the late 1970s economic malaise allowed Ronald Reagan to unify social conservatives and free-market advocates and set the country on a pro-investment path for decades. Europeans, he says, made all the wrong decisions. Concern about promoting equality and protecting favored industries have led to onerous work rules, higher taxes and all sorts of social programs that keep them poorer than Americans.

Now we’re at a particularly crucial moment, he writes. Technology and global competition have made it more important than ever that the United States remain the world’s most productive, risk-taking, success-rewarding society. Obama, Conard says, is “going to dampen the incentives.” Even worse, Conard says, “he’s slowing the accumulation of equity” by fighting income inequality. Only with a pro-investment president, he says, can the American economy reach its full potential.

At its core, Conard’s book addresses what is perhaps the most important question in economics, the one Adam Smith set out to answer in “The Wealth of Nations”: Why do some countries grow so rich and others stay poor? Where you come down on the answer has as much to do with your politics as your economic worldview (two things that can often be the same). Glenn Hubbard, a prominent economist and one of Romney’s chief economic advisers, takes his ideas seriously. “He doesn’t have the blinders of a model-based view of the world, which is an advantage and a disadvantage,” Hubbard told me. Others, like the progressive economist Dean Baker, were less kind. “I can’t say there was much I found compelling,” he told me. The celebrated New York University economist Nouriel Roubini went out of his way to say that he had “great intellectual respect for his sharp mind,” even if he didn’t agree on numerous points, especially the benefits of inequality.

Nearly every economist I spoke with said that Conard has too much faith in the market’s ability to reward only those who create real value. Conard, for instance, insists that even the dodgiest financial products must have been beneficial or else nobody would have bought them in the first place. If a Wall Street trader or a corporate chief executive is filthy rich, Conard says that the merciless process of economic selection has assured that they have somehow benefited society. Even pro-market Romney supporters take issue with this. “Ed ought to be more concerned about crony capitalism,” Hubbard told me.

“Unintended Consequences” ignores some of the most important economic work of the past few decades, about how power and politics influence economic growth. In technical language, this field is the study of “rent seeking,” in which people or companies get rich because of their power, not because of their ideas. This is one of the few fields in economics in which left and right share many influences and ideas — namely that wealthy individuals and corporations are able to influence politicians and regulators to make seemingly insignificant changes to regulations that benefit themselves. In other words, to rig the game. One classic example is banking. Banks have enormous resources to constantly put explicit or subtle pressure on lawmakers and regulators so that regulation can eventually serve their interests.

Conard’s version of the financial crisis ignores much reporting and analysis — including work I’ve done with NPR’s “Planet Money” team — that shows that some of the nation’s largest banks actively manipulated customers and regulators and, sometimes, their own stockholders to profit from dangerous risk. And for many economists, rising inequality can create exactly the wrong outcomes for society over all. Rather than simply serving as an invitation for everybody to engage in potentially beneficial risk-taking, inequality can allow those with wealth to crush new ideas.

I kept raising these questions with Conard, but he repeatedly waved them off. “I don’t want to talk about rent-seeking,” he told me. “When you go off to a third-world country, there’s a dictator who says, ‘I’m giving the telephone franchise to my brother-in-law.’ It’s pretty hard to do that here.” I countered that many economists see rent-seeking in the United States as a much more subtle but still destructive process. If some rich people are able to get and stay rich by messing around with the rules, then those art-history majors will feel as if they have no chance to break into a well-connected, well-protected elite.

Perhaps concentrated wealth will inspire a nation of innovative problem-solvers. But if the view of many economists is right — that it sometimes discourages innovation — then we should worry. While Conard offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue, on this one he resorted to anecdotes and gut feelings. During his work at Bain, he said, he saw that successful companies had to battle against one another. Nobody was just given a free ride because of their power. “Was a person, like me, excluded from opportunity?” he asked rhetorically. “If so, I wasn’t aware!”

I suggested that both could be true. The rich could earn a great deal of wealth through their own hard work, skill and luck. They could also use their subsequent influence to make themselves even richer. One of the great political and economic challenges of our time is figuring out the balance between wealth that benefits society and wealth that distorts. Of course we want to encourage people to take risks and find areas of productive innovation. It’s just not in the interest of the United States to allow wealth to skew the political process so that good new ideas are barred.

Are Conard’s views the uncensored, impolitic version of the man he hopes will be president? The Romney campaign said they wouldn’t comment in any way on “Unintended Consequences,” and Conard wouldn’t share with me anything about his private conversations with his old friend. Glenn Hubbard said only that at a broad level, Romney and Conard share “beliefs about innovation and growth and responsible risk-taking.”

Conard and Romney certainly share views on numerous policy matters. Like many Republicans, they promote lower taxes and less regulation for those who achieve financial success. Romney has also said that rising inequality is not a problem and that the attention paid to the issue is “about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.” The differences between these two men are also striking. Romney’s economic platform and his record as the governor of Massachusetts suggest that he is more of a centrist than Conard. Romney wants to eliminate capital-gains taxes for people earning less than $200,000 a year but keep them in place for the 1 percent, which Conard says is a good start but doesn’t go far enough.

The biggest difference is that Romney is running for president and needs more people to like him. Conard doesn’t have to worry about that. “People get very angry before they change their mind,” he said. “Economics is counterintuitive. It just is.” I told him that surely is true, but his ideas are counterintuitive even to people well versed in economics. After we spoke for one of the last times, he sent me an e-mail summing up his argument: At base, having a small elite with vast wealth is good for the poor and middle class. “From my perspective,” he wrote, “it’s not a close call.”

And on the other side of the coin.....

Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!

The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America.

Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while discussing New Jersey’s newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett’s observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn’t fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I’m tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the ability to write a check—go ahead and write it.”

Heard it all before. At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.

Cut a check and shut up, they said.

If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.

Tired of hearing about it, they said.

Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.

And hey, why don’t we get real about this? Most rich folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don’t strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios. They keep them and then pass them on to their children, their children’s children. And what they do give away is—like the monies my wife and I donate—totally at their own discretion. That’s the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: don’t tell us how to use our money; we’ll tell you.

The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but they’re giving right-wing creepazoids. Here’s an example: 68 million fine American dollars to Deerfield Academy. Which is great for Deerfield Academy. But it won’t do squat for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where food fish are now showing up with black lesions. It won’t pay for stronger regulations to keep BP (or some other bunch of dipshit oil drillers) from doing it again. It won’t repair the levees surrounding New Orleans. It won’t improve education in Mississippi or Alabama. But what the hell—them li’l crackers ain’t never going to go to Deerfield Academy anyway. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

Here’s another crock of fresh bullshit delivered by the right wing of the Republican Party (which has become, so far as I can see, the only wing of the Republican Party): the richer rich people get, the more jobs they create. Really? I have a total payroll of about 60 people, most of them working for the two radio stations I own in Bangor, Maine. If I hit the movie jackpot—as I have, from time to time—and own a piece of a film that grosses $200 million, what am I going to do with it? Buy another radio station? I don’t think so, since I’m losing my shirt on the ones I own already. But suppose I did, and hired on an additional dozen folks. Good for them. Whoopee-ding for the rest of the economy.

At the risk of repeating myself, here’s what rich folks do when they get richer: they invest. A lot of those investments are overseas, thanks to the anti-American business policies of the last four administrations. Don’t think so? Check the tag on that T-shirt or gimme cap you’re wearing. If it says MADE IN AMERICA, I’ll … well, I won’t say I’ll eat your shorts, because some of that stuff is made here, but not much of it. And what does get made here doesn’t get made by America’s small cadre of pluted bloatocrats; it’s made, for the most part, in barely-gittin’-by factories in the Deep South, where the only unions people believe in are those solemnized at the altar of the local church (as long as they’re from different sexes, that is).

The U.S. senators and representatives who refuse even to consider raising taxes on the rich—they squall like scalded babies (usually on Fox News) every time the subject comes up—are not, by and large, superrich themselves, although many are millionaires and all have had the equivalent of Obamacare for years. They simply idolize the rich. Don’t ask me why; I don’t get it either, since most rich people are as boring as old, dead dog shit. The Mitch McConnells and John Boehners and Eric Cantors just can’t seem to help themselves. These guys and their right-wing supporters regard deep pockets like Christy Walton and Sheldon Adelson the way little girls regard Justin Bieber … which is to say, with wide eyes, slack jaws, and the drool of adoration dripping from their chins. I’ve gotten the same reaction myself, even though I’m only “baby rich” compared with some of these guys, who float serenely over the lives of the struggling middle class like blimps made of thousand-dollar bills.

In America, the rich are hallowed. Even Warren Buffett, who has largely been drummed out of the club for his radical ideas about putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to patriotism, made the front pages when he announced that he had stage-1 prostate cancer. Stage 1, for God’s sake! A hundred clinics can fix him up, and he can put the bill on his American Express black card! But the press made it sound like the pope’s balls had just dropped off and shattered! Because it was cancer? No! Because it was Warren Buffett, he of Berkshire-Hathaway!

I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.

This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals. It’s a practical necessity and a moral imperative. Last year during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) or Ebenezer Scrooge (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn’t fairly addressed, last year’s protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.

Think about it.

This BS is getting tiresome, really it is.

What happens if we do up taxes on the rich??? The resulting revenue wouldn't even cover 3 weeks of the country's spending. It still won't stop people who pay zero in taxes from getting a 6200 dollar refund (I personally know 3 of these and my wife, who made taxes her profession knows hundreds). It still won't stop the bleeding.

King's dumbass comment about the massive war debt made me chuckle. The wars are only a drop in the debt bucket (go to the debt clock to check).

How long have we been trying to "spread the wealth"???
How long have we been "providing for the poor"???
What are the results of this lengthy undertaking???

Poverty rates are the same, inequality has gotten greater, and more and more people are reliant on government for their daily living.

I extended an offer, back in the Myspace days, to anyone willing to take me up on it. That offer is still open. Come on down to where I live. Let me take you around the welfare districts of various parts of Louisiana. Have conversations with some of the people who live on the dole. Then you can tell me whether it is worth it or not. Then you can tell me if the ones who really need help are in the majority or if those taking advantage of the system or the majority.

The problem is that most people never see those who are on the system so they don't know just where our money is going. Those who are on it talk a good game as long as they don't know you. Once they get comfortable with you (or have been friends with you all their life) you get the true story. Yeah, I know many who needed help.....usually they never got it. The majority of the ones who do get it do not need it. Believe whatever you want, but until you see the results of government programs and the destruction they cause ('cause King really sees it in frickin Maine.....yeah right) then you really don't know anything.

Who the hell does King think he is??? He tries to make us think that the rich are greedy 'cause they "don't wanna pay one red cent more". What a joke. If I asked 100 random people (including those that pay no taxes), every single one would say that they paid enough. Isn't what this is really about anyeway??? Certain interests want more revenue for the government but those interests don't wanna pay it themselves. They want someone else to pay instead. Someone they are envious of. Why do you still side with those losers. Most do not have a job, never had a job, and don't want one in the first place(main reason why certain interests always protest is because the rest of us is too busy working). Most are criminals. They have raped each other. They have assaulted each other. They have started riots. They have planned terror attacks. The list goes on and on.....what did the TEA party do to compare to that??? Answer is nothing. No arrests. No riots. No crimes committed against one another. Nada, zip, zero, zilch. And they are the ones you choose to show contempt for. Seems that certain interests have their thoughts and morals backwards.

I asked a question once and never got an answer.
In a good year I make a fair amount over 250000. What makes you think that I somehow should pay a higher percentage than someone who works 40 hours a week at BestBuy and goes home to friends and family every day??? Did he not have the same choices I had??? Did he not choose to settle for a lower paying job just so he could reap the benefits of going home at the end of the day??? There is a price to pay for the choices you make. My price was at home. The guy at BestBuy is in his bank account. Why make me pay for it???

Can someone please answer that??? What makes us so different??? Are you really gonna sit there and tell me that you deserve to keep a higher percentage of the fruits of your labor than I do??? If so explain and be sure to tell me why other than "well you should 'cause it's only fair", 'cause quite frankly, I just don't see it that way.

I'm happy that you DO make a lot of money Mark./ I really am and I dont think for 1 second that you should have to pay more than is fair. And I say this as an unemployed person struggling to get by.

I personally feel that a flat tax solved 90% of our tax issues. Its fair and would eliminate rich folks(like GE) from paying no taxes. I do think that some folks who are struggling would be hurt by having to pay the same % though. For instance, while 20% tax on you would be a heckuva lot more than I'd have to pay. Lets say for this example I make only $20,000 per year, (I dont make that much but lets just say
I did). that would amount to me paying something like...$4000 bucks. That hits hard man. I cant survive with a debt like that. At $20 grand, I'm living paycheck to paycheck as it is. And since the oil you guys dig up costs more and more, food and energy prices keep going higher and higher, so its killing me.

So I think anyone who makes less that, say...$50 or 60 thousand should be exempt. Because those people are the ones who really need help.

But other than that, a flat tax is really the way to go imo.

BTW..before we feel too sorry for Warren Buffett's secretary, Forbes.com reports that she makes between $200,000 to $500,000 per year.

Thats not chump change. So if they paid the flat tax, while Buffet would still pay more than his secretary (which is what he and King and the liberals are all crying about) they'd pay the same rate.

Forbes.com

Dennis324 wrote:BTW..before we feel too sorry for Warren Buffett's secretary, Forbes.com reports that she makes between $200,000 to $500,000 per year.

Thats not chump change. So if they paid the flat tax, while Buffet would still pay more than his secretary (which is what he and King and the liberals are all crying about) they'd pay the same rate.

Forbes.com

Or Buffett could just turn his dividend profit allowance into an actual paycheck. That way he would be subject to a higher tax rate than his secretary. It would be very simple for him to do and would only take 5 minutes of his time.

Nah....that's too easy and wouldn't help out the class warfare agenda.

Dennis324 wrote:I'm happy that you DO make a lot of money Mark./ I really am and I dont think for 1 second that you should have to pay more than is fair. And I say this as an unemployed person struggling to get by.

I personally feel that a flat tax solved 90% of our tax issues. Its fair and would eliminate rich folks(like GE) from paying no taxes. I do think that some folks who are struggling would be hurt by having to pay the same % though. For instance, while 20% tax on you would be a heckuva lot more than I'd have to pay. Lets say for this example I make only $20,000 per year, (I dont make that much but lets just say
I did). that would amount to me paying something like...$4000 bucks. That hits hard man. I cant survive with a debt like that. At $20 grand, I'm living paycheck to paycheck as it is. And since the oil you guys dig up costs more and more, food and energy prices keep going higher and higher, so its killing me.

So I think anyone who makes less that, say...$50 or 60 thousand should be exempt. Because those people are the ones who really need help.

But other than that, a flat tax is really the way to go imo.

20grand huh.......seems to me that you are one of those many people who need the help yet never get it. My in-laws were the very same. I can't tell you how pissed I was when I brought Mrs. Gloria (my mother-in-law) to the social services office just to hear them say (and I quote) "Well Mrs. West, if you were a minority you would have your disability by now". She was a diabetic who lived the last 10 years of her life with a broken foot and ankle on her left leg (government said she could still get work). She got her first (and last) disability check 9 years after she first applied and 1 month after she died. The only thing that saved her and Mr. Harry (besides me paying their electricity, cable, phone, and water) was the income tax rebate they received every year. This is funny.......they didn't pay income tax (the amount of social security benefits they received were not taxable), yet got anywhere between 5 and 6 grand back per year after filing. Damn but that is hilarious to me in a sardonic sort of way.

So no tax on anyone making less than 50 or 60 grand??? really didn't think that one through did you??? You do realize that that would increase the number of people who pay no taxes now. I'm sorry, but if you can't make it on 50 grand there is something wrong with you and not the taxation code (kinda like a 30 year old who still works for minimum wage at Starbucks). That is more than most people I know make.

Anyway, yea a flat tax is the best way, but 20% is about twice what it needs to be. A flat 7-10% tax with no loop holes or refunds would increase revenue greatly....and you can't get more "fair share" than everybody paying the same. If you wanna tax the rich more, then a consumption tax (read Federal sales tax) on any non-food item works wonders (of course we already have luxury taxes). The rich consume and buy more than the rest of us so they pay more (of course this would be slightly rigged against blacks because they actually purchase more goods per household than any other group of people with the same income).

Of course income tax is paltry. Why don't you start looking into our unfair trade and tariff agreements (especially with China, Mexico, and Japan). Then tell me how much revenue we are losing out on. Really, the world's largest GDP (by far, it takes a whole continent just to barely pass us) and control the world's trade currency and we have money problems??? Really??? That's like saying Carlos Slim (world's richest man) can't make ends meet. Hell when you really step back and look at it.......we really shouldn't even need to pay income taxes (and everyone paying no income taxes is the pinnacle of fairness).

Of course this all means nothing. You Republicans are gonna keep ridiculing us Constitutional conservatives (funny how you think we are radical....yep, the Constitution and believing in it is radical) while drifting further and further to the right (all the while forcing us out of the GOP) while the Dems are gonna just keep getting dumber and dumber (European model pffft, lemme hear about that when we pay their bills again) and government will continue to grow and grow (Mitt is not now, nor will he ever be the answer....he is another Obama who was another GWB who was another Clinton who was another.....well you get the picture). With that growth comes the need for more revenue and more taxation. Lemme know when you've had enough of the insanity. I'll lead you back to true conservatism.

Well, the 50 or 60 grand...I dunno. I was just throwing out a number. Maybe 30 or 40 grand? I mean.....I'd LOVE to make that much. But there again...if I were hit with a $4-8 thousand dollar income tax bill at the end of the year...I'd never be able to pay it. Well..."I" might, but I have no wife or kids to support, so....

Which is incidentally the reason I was told I didnt qualify for Medicaid. I dont have a buncha kids to support. I'm not a single mom, so I dont get any halep. No medical help....nothing. Thank the good Lord for the VA.

Oh...and I'm not a registered Republican.

Dennis324 wrote:Well, the 50 or 60 grand...I dunno. I was just throwing out a number. Maybe 30 or 40 grand? I mean.....I'd LOVE to make that much. But there again...if I were hit with a $4-8 thousand dollar income tax bill at the end of the year...I'd never be able to pay it. Well..."I" might, but I have no wife or kids to support, so....

Which is incidentally the reason I was told I didnt qualify for Medicaid. I dont have a buncha kids to support. I'm not a single mom, so I dont get any halep. No medical help....nothing. Thank the good Lord for the VA.

Hey Dennis, haven't I told you yet.......the system's broke

Dennis324 wrote:Oh...and I'm not a registered Republican.

touche Dennis.......touche.......