Tag Archives: taxes

Warren Buffett’s Class War

Warren Buffett: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”

Posted on September 24, 2011 by TheLastPsychiatrist | Tagged , | 26 Comments

Framing Deficit Debates

The United States is in debt and running a deficit. Two parties frame the situation differently to define their solutions as correct and hide their subjectivity.
Democrats frame a deficit problem as “Spending more than we take in” – or if in a particularly taxing mood “Taking in less than we spend.” The logical solution is to raise taxes,… Read the rest

Posted on August 17, 2011 by xiphoidmaneuver | Tagged , , , , | 21 Comments

Smoking costs lives but it saves money

BBC discovers a Philip Morris study that found that the Czech Republic could save $147M through the early deaths of smokers.
The study arrived at that figure by subtraction:
cost to the state of $403M – ($1M in pension and other government services + $552M in cigarette taxes) = $147M savings. Welcome to flavor country.
Leaving aside moral… Read the rest

Posted on August 16, 2011 by TheLastPsychiatrist | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Warren Buffett wants to be taxed on this, so you won’t tax him on that.

Warren Buffett wants us to stop coddling the super-rich. He argues for superlatively higher taxes on those with incomes greater than $1 million a year.

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal

… Read the rest

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Pastabagel | Tagged , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

92.1% ownership in AIG: That didn’t work out so well, or it did

aig

You may remember: $180B bailout of AIG. Now the Treasury is selling about 20% of their stake (leaving 77% remaining) at almost breakeven price of $29– and making $5.8B gross– it is probably going to have to wait a long, long time to sell the rest: the price is down to $28.80.
And they can afford to wait, perhaps,… Read the rest

Posted on May 26, 2011 by TheLastPsychiatrist | Tagged , , | 40 Comments

“Here’s why you should always buy into your office lottery pool”


That’s the title of the news article. Not: “here’s what happened.” It’s a recommendation.
A bunch of employees down at the NY Homes and Community Renewal Agency play the lottery regularly. This time, they win– and get to split $300M.
That might seem like a non-story, and after March 29 it should have died.… Read the rest

Posted on April 1, 2011 by TheLastPsychiatrist | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments