A Multi Millionaire calls USA To Stop “Coddling” Mega Rich

Warren Buffett, the third richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine, today asked the U.S. to stop “coddling” the super rich with tax breaks and urged the country’s political leaders to raise taxes on billionaires like him.

“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” said Buffett in an article published today in the New York Times , entitled “Stop coddling the super rich.”

The billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate said that in the long debate made in the U.S. Congress to raise the public debt ceiling, political leaders called for a “shared sacrifice” but, however, upper classes were not considered part of the idea.

” Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate,” Buffett stated in that letter.

“Super rich pay 15% tax on their income but virtually nothing for their salaries,” the paper said.

Buffett notes that his billionaire friends are “generally very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them” so that “many of them would not care to be told they have to pay more taxes particularly when so many of his countrymen are suffering.”

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Warren%20Buffett&st=cse

Source: Diario Expreso / EFE / The New York Times