Posted by Warren Buffet on May 07, 2003 at 13:24:04:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Our business posted by Rick Denney on May 07, 2003 at 11:20:02:
From the AP
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Sunday that President Bush’s proposed tax cut on corporate dividends would be unfair and fail to deliver a boost to the economy.
BUSH WANTS TO ELIMINATE the tax on corporate dividends as a key to his 10-year, $726 billion tax cut plan. But the plan received a cool reception from Buffett at the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway.
Buffett said the tax plan is not fair because it favors the wealthy, and he questioned the economic benefits.
“The idea that it creates all kinds of jobs and everything else, that’s what sort of turns me off,” Buffett said. “That’s like a manager saying we’re going to grow our earnings 20 percent a year. They don’t have the faintest idea, in my view, of how many jobs this is going to create. How could they? Economics is not that precise.”
Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger also spoke strongly against eliminating the corporate dividend tax.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether Bush’s plan would help stimulate the economy, Munger said. But it cannot be made so unfair that people resent it, he said.
“I don’t think you can make it so unfair that a man living entirely on dividends will pay zero tax while a cab driver has to work 16 hours a day to barely feed a family,” Munger said. “I just don’t think it works in a democracy.”
Signed, not really Warren Buffet