My problem with Bernie is that he could straight up die. Who knows?

Why doesn't BERN walk up to every podium to Enter Sandman?

Well he'll be inaugurated at 75 and a half years old, so ya, he probably will

He could. I think (hope) he'll definitely stick to his guns and choose a very progressive VP instead of worrying about electibility.

If he beats Hillary then he'll have no trouble getting elected.

Cruz ad pulled for having a pornstar in it

Fantastic

This already gives the BERN a lot of GOAT equity, it won't really matter when he'll die if he'd change the course of the future so much:

• Only appoint Supreme Court justices who will make it a priority to overturn Citizens United and who understand that corruption in politics means more than just quid pro quo.
  
• Fight to pass a constitutional amendment making it clear that Congress and the states have the power to regulate money in elections. I have been a proud sponsor and leading champion of such an amendment in the Senate.
  
• Fight for a publicly financed, transparent system of campaign financing that amplifies small donations, along the lines of the Fair Elections Now Act that I have been pleased to co-sponsor, and an effective public financing system for president.
  
• Insist on complete transparency regarding the funding of campaigns, including through disclosure of contributions to outside spending groups, via legislation, action by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Election Commission, and Federal Communication Commission, and an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political spending.
  
• Fight to eliminate super PACs and other outside spending abuses.
  
• Work to aggressively enforce campaign finance rules.

Though since he could change a lot almost willy nilly then it's just a countdown until a crooked president gets elected and does his/her best to change everything back.

And ironic that it might actually handicap small ball decent politicians in the future and instead help celebrities and such. Not a bad thing necessarily but maybe starting from 2020 every day will be Louis Vuitton Don night and America gon' do everything that Kan' like.

Also, BERN already got Larry David to do 5 minutes of curb, everything from this point forward is essentially a freeroll.

lol wtf? gonna need some more info on this

http://nypost.com/2016/02/12/ted-cru...ing-porn-star/

There really isn't a bigger insult to democracy than the current democratic delegate count

Our voting system really is a farce

wanting to start or engage in wars is obviously super ****ing stupid and as dumb of an idea as any politician can have*. Wanting to increase the defense and military budget is laughably stupid.

IDK how much we need to spend on defense, but it certainly isn't whatever we spend now. We should just cut the defense budget by 15% each of the next 2 years and then an additional 5% per year for the next decade at which point it would stand at 43.26% the current budget which seems like an ok reset over a 12 year timeframe.

We can use every single dollar saved to go toward the deficit and if we get to the point where we run a surplus we should just use the surplus to fund direct transfer payments to the bottom 25% of the population.



*probably not, but I don't want to hurt my head thinking of ways these idiots could be dumber and worse for America

Let's talk capital gains tax. True or false: It is incorrect to say that Warren Buffett pays less taxes than his secretary, since his income is disproportionately made from investments, because those investments get taxed at the corporate income tax rate (say 35%) before being taxed again at the capital gains rate (15%).

The company I work at pays taxes. I still pay taxes on my paycheck. It's personal income.

Soft core, lol Cruz. It's 2016, if I can't watch a penis going into your ******* in HD, you're an actress, not a porn star

just saw that rubio debate thing for the first time, my god wat was he thinking going for it a third time wtfff

I don't think anyone would find it hard to believe that I've never watched an episode of The West Wing.

Well, a company gets to deduct your paycheck as a business expense. If there's no profit left over after paying everyone's salary and rent and materials cost, etc, then there's no taxes and no dividends, but you still get your salary

You should add AMERICA to your inputs and think about what you just said some more




War is the biggest most profitable racket around, where fear and the need for defense is propagated throughout society to maintain political power and enrich connected interests at the literal expense of human life

that's one way to phrase the question, but the Buffets of the world are a small minority. the bigger problem (or rather, question) most folks would have are all the people whose income is derived from personal investments/trusts etc.

Not nec. money managers like Buffet but just say Facebook employee #450 who cashed out for $10m after the IPO and now lives on passive income from investments. he might make $400k a year but only owe long term capital gains tax

can we just clarify whether or not this is a gotcha type question first?

he almost certainly pay a higher amount than his secretary so if we are talking about him paying "less" in the sense of fewer dollars then that is almost 100% likely to be wrong.

he almost certainly pays his personal income tax at a lower average rate than his secretary and has said as much.

now that we have that out of the way we can debate the percentages. This part is much less clear as different companies pay different corporate income taxes and these taxes for the same company can vary from year to year especially in the event of present year losses or tax loss carry forwards. While Buffett invests in high cash flow companies who basically never have negative profits this is not true of all companies. Each of his investments is more likely to be taxed at multiple levels than the average investor is (at the corporate level and again at the personal level) resulting in a higher effective tax rate than what is published as his personal income tax liability.

Furthermore, Buffett is an extreme case not because of his wealth, but due to the sheer longevity of his holding periods and the fact that his wealth is diversified due to Berkshire's diversity and not due to having to turnover his personal portfolio which would trigger more taxable gains. Thus, most of his wealth is fluctuating on a mark to market basis which is a non-taxable gain.

His real tax rate could fluctuate from minuscule to through the roof depending on how you want to frame it:

If he goes through a year without selling any shares of Berkshire while Berkshire is up significantly you could very well see him pay income taxes of less than 1% of the increase in his net worth (however, he would also pay this same amount in years where he lost billions).

If he sells shares then he triggers large capital gains as his cost basis is tiny. Thus, he pay long-term capital gains taxes plus whatever his normal income tax comes out to minus deductions which probably ends up in the high teens given how much of his income would be derived from the shares he sells.

If you consider the tax Berkshire pays (which appears to be 30-31% annually) on top of his gains then you get a tax rate of .7*.80 which equals 44% (the tax rate on capital gains for the highest income bracket is actually 20% and I assume Buffett falls in this bracket).

Beyond this there should be some consideration that some of Berkshire's profits come from investments in other companies that pay taxes so those profits are getting taxed which factors into the valuations that are then reflected on Berkshire's balance sheets. This means there is an additional layer of tax that would bring this effective rate up. However, a lot of this is likely mitigated by the structural efficiency of Berkshire which surely offsets some tax liabilities.

It does appear that if he could have made the same investments as Berkshire did as an individual that he would have had a significantly lower tax liability throughout the years (due to corporate taxes for Berkshire exceeding what is available to individual investors) and have been able to achieve multiples of his current wealth.

Someone can correct me if any of this is wrong as I probably missed a key point or two somewhere.

So great.

"Well, it ain't Henry Kissinger, that's for sure." GOAT quote

they pay corporate taxes only on profits though. Your paycheck is pre-tax money for the corporation so this is not a good analogy. If your company never turns a profit again then they won't ever pay taxes again, but so long as they have liquidity they will keep cutting payroll checks and you will get yours.

then he praised winston churchill, who was the O.G. war criminal

and FDR, who put japanese americans in concentration camps during WWII

but hey, GOAT quote! #feelthebern!

Yea, not having appropriate follow up names there was criminal.

I'm just feeling the #lolHillary, agree with the Churchill/FDR criticisms as well, but Bernie definitely came off much better

Zimmer's take on Capital Gains

Raise the rate to 20%. You're only allowed to claim the capital gains rate on an amount equal to your income that year. If you produce something, you get to reap the benefits of a lower Cap Gains rate. Everything above your income is taxed at normal income brackets.

Slap on more protections and punishments for investing/holding $$ overseas, boom. US dollars invested in US companies.