On my hefty 75 minute commute to work each morning, I usually stimulate my brain by listening to the Opie & Anthony show on XM radio. Today, however, I found myself listening to CNBC’s interview with Warren Buffett.
Becky Quick, along with the rest of the Squawk Box team, threw question after question at Buffett. Though I claim to know a little about the stock market, simply listening to this man speak, you can tell how much of a genius he is when it comes to the economics and Wall Street.
At one point, Buffett brings up how he’d change the tax rate for the rich. His long standing belief is that the rich are under-taxed. In fact, he goes onto say,
…if you take the 400 richest Americans and the 400 people who paid the greatest income tax— the Treasury’s been putting those figures out for 15 years or so. If you go back 15 years, the average income of the 400 top people— the 400 top people’s around 45 million. They paid about 27 percent. Now it grew, the most recent figures, to 350 million. That is incredible. And that’s nothing like’s happened to the rest of the world. The tax then was 16.6. So while they’ve gotten ungodly richer, the rate has come down 11 points. Now, that is a big tilt in the world. And I would go after the very rich.
I think he is exactly right. By keeping the tax rate so low for the rich, America is truly beginning to divide itself into the haves and have nots.
The quote above is around the 3:30 mark.
It is clear that Warren Buffett is the type of man that we need in an office of power that will get us on the right path. He is for closing corporate tax loopholes and fixing our medical system (which has ballooned to 17% percent of GDP… while other civilized nations it’s around 10%). His analogy of the Euro crisis was brilliant, saying
…They linked 17 countries together. It’s like 17 people holding hands, and they start walking toward a cliff and some guy on the end is going to go over the cliff and he said it won’t make any difference because this guy’s going to keep holding my hand. And then you got two of them over the cliff. And the real question is whether the guy in the center, the big heavyweight, decides, you know, that— whether he wants to keep holding hands with this group.
The chances of Warren Buffett entering the political arena is 0%. That may not be bad though, as he may have more power in his current position.
If you’d like to view the read the transcript of the full interview, click here.

As I was driving back from New Haven, I witnessed $1.95 gas. I haven’t seen gas this cheap in, well I can’t remember when. It realy feel good filling up my tank with $35 instead of $70.



