I really don't get it. Warren Buffet is one of some 300,000,000 people in this country and he is so often quoted by people who want to make our country's policy agree with his ideas. Let's listen to him, by all means, but if he wants to pay more in taxes then let him do so without reaching into my pocket at the same time. Why should he take money out of my pocket to give to the government if he already has so much? I'm not a frequent participant in risk-taking for monetary gain but have done a bit of it in the past. My wife and I bought some property for a couple thousand once and sold it three years later for near ten thousand. The capital gains tax, at the time, was 30% so we were visited by the emotional roller coaster of feeling rich one minute, to feeling sick to our stomachs the next. We took the risk while the government waited for the check to be cut and then asked for a large part of it. Just because Mr. Buffett thinks only rich people benefit from capitol gains doesn't mean it's so. It just means he is near-sighted. The capital gains tax is one of the most influential bits of our tax code. Keeping it low can be a significant factor in brining us out of this serious recession we are in right now. Raising it will further impede our ability to grow our way back to solvency as a country. Maybe if every super-rich person, who presumes to speak for all of us, would just pay their "fair share" without having to be forced to do so by the government, then everything would be fine. But no, they wait for the government to put the gun to their head before they exercise their right to be "compassionate" to the rest of our country. And another thing, everyone wants to know what Mr. Buffett is investing in so they can be rich too. While I haven't studied his life in any detail, I don't presume he became rich investing only in Gillette or Coca-Cola. Once you have a fortune, it's easier to make conservative investment decisions, and make ludicrous statements of how raising taxes will only affect him and his super-rich buddies.
