Markets

Hey, Now Even Warren Buffet Is a Commie

By Alain Sherter

Updated on: August 17, 2011 / 10:45 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

On Monday I joked about Warren Buffet, one of the preeminent capitalists of this or any other time, being a "socialist" for wanting to raise taxes on millionaires. My parody meter needs resetting. Here's Fox Business News anchor Eric Bolling reacting to the investor's NYT op-ed:

"What is this, is he completely a socialist and he's playing into Mr. Obama's hands of 'tax anyone who makes money' and give it to people who don't work?"

The 'gummint' did it
Marx couldn't make this stuff up -- Groucho, that is. Other attacks predictably sought to paint Buffett as a hypocrite for not putting his money where his mouth is. Said paleocon and MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan:

I'm a little fed up with these people who come on, you know, their big op-eds, all these admonitions. Why doesn't he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He's got about $40 billion.... You get all this noise from these big rich folks. Let them send checks and set an example instead of writing op-eds.

Except who, besides shareholders in the cult of Buffett (and a largely fawning business press), ever upheld the man as some sort of moral exemplar? He may be an oracle, but as his close ties with Wall Street over the years show he's no paragon of virtue. And last I heard, you don't exactly need a merit badge to question economic policy. Otherwise, a former Richard Nixon crony like Buchanan wouldn't be paid to blab on TV.

Tech blogger Michael Arrington was so ruffled by Buffett's remarks that he felt compelled to assault the very idea of government, perhaps fearing that the feds are really serious about raising taxes on venture capital profits. The TechCrunch founder wrote:

As for me, I think the government should be starved of income and be forced to spend money where it's supposed to â€"- defending the border, establishing a trusted currency and protecting property rights. Whenever they muck around with the other stuff everyone gets poorer.

In other words, keep your government out of my Internet that... uh, the government invented! But what about the billions of dollars in tax breaks that VC, private equity and hedge fund investors get from the lower rates on "carried interest" -- doesn't that perk come courtesy of the loathsome federal tax code? Hey, as we say in Brooklyn, shut up, youse!

Urge to purge
I have no problem with mugging Buffet per se. The problem comes in assailing the man without engaging the substance of what he said -- that under our progressive tax system it's absurd for a billionaire like him to pay lower taxes than mere mortals. That such an unremarkable statement would terrify some conservatives into incoherence, not to mention lead the business news, is a sign of that notion's intellectual, ethical and economic force. Even more troubling for such critics is that Americans are waking up to these inequities. Everyone sharpening their pitchforks?

A mild irony in all this is that Buffett's detractors are engaging in just the sort of Stalinist character assassination that Pravda's hacks once used to discredit foes of the Soviet Union. And why not? Like these other apostates, Buffett's "crime" here is the same -- telling the truth.

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