Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim S who wrote (9389)	6/14/2006 5:49:21 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

"families who have the potential to create their own cartels." That potential exists in humankind on more levels than we can imagine. What about the House of Saud? The (insert favorite/least favorite) Union? Congress? Any major medical group, etc. Perhaps the danger of airline mechanics going on strike is worth the professionalism created by their union (or at leas the image of). Perhaps the risk of a family or group gaining too much power from wealth is a risk of allowing the successful the freedom to succeed. Remember that one generation of wealth seldom projects more than a couple generations forward. My wife has a friend who is in the last generation of Vanderbilts to benefit from the original trust. That must have been three or four generations, and she is spending the money afs income. Some Vanderbilts have probably built wealth of their own. It four generations even Bill Gates' fortune will be dispersed enough to be relatively trivial. Look at the Fords. "the 'super-successful' can present a danger to a capitalist society" It is rare in our society. The Kennedy's are the only example I can think of. Their father was head of SEC and got laws passed to enable his father to pass through the fortune untaxed, and then undid the loopholes. How often will any family have that much influence?

To: Jim S who wrote (9389)	6/26/2006 3:47:06 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Billionaire Boys Club "Warren Buffett, the chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will give most of his $44 billion in Berkshire stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, entrusting his philanthropic legacy to the only person richer than him," Bloomberg reports. You can see why Buffett would want to give his billions to charity. The federal death tax is currently being phased out, but it will reappear in 2011 unless Congress acts--which means that if Buffett lives that long, the government will confiscate 55% of his assets upon his death. But wait. Buffett is, as a New York Sun editorial notes, "an avowed supporter of the estate tax." As we noted in 2001, so is Bill Gates Sr., the Microsoft founder's old man, who is an executive of the Bill and Melinda Foundation. As the Sun notes: Mr. Buffett could have let the government take its share of his estate after he dies. But just as Mr. Buffett has accumulated his vast wealth without paying much personal income tax, he has found a way to avoid the tax man in this maneuver as well, even writing in his letter to Bill and Melinda Gates that a condition of the gift is that the foundation "must continue to satisfy legal requirements qualifying my gifts as charitable and not subject to gift or other taxes." On the estate tax, watch what Mr. Buffett does, not what he says. The Gates Foundation isn't the only recipient of his largesse--three foundations headed by Mr. Buffett's three children, Susan, Howard, and Peter, will get hundreds of millions of dollars. Tax documents show that in 2004, Peter Buffett and his wife Jennifer each took a $40,000 a year salary for what they reported was 30 hours a week each of work on the foundation. When billionaires back the death tax, keep in mind that they have no intention of actually paying it. They are being "generous" with other people's money. This is the way in which the superrich wage class warfare against the merely affluent. opinionjournal.com