Christie: Buffett Should ‘Just Write a Check and Shut Up’

[RichardGibbons]

This nicely sums up the conversation, from the third reply on this thread, by hardincap:

im always surprised when people use the "if he wants others to help, he should just write a check himself!" argument. the point of policy is to achieve critical mass in order to make a difference in scale.

What a nice statement -- totally summarizes and refutes all the opposing arguments, so that really, you have no choice but to understand.

But,

Not one person has answered a simple but straight-forward question put forward by another poster, "Are you going to offer an argument for why Christie was wrong for what he said, or why on this issue Buffett isn't more of a demagogue than Christie?"

Hmm.  I'm not sure if it's deliberately not reading the other persons said, or just simply misunderstanding.  It's hard to imagine that it's the latter, since hardincap explained it so clearly and concisely.

My working hypothesis is that the right wing media, with its one-sided view and demagoguery, has made people believe that they don't need to make sensible arguments when discussing an issue, but that shouting down is sufficient.  Hence, the Christie's comments and the response of some people on this thread.

The really unfortunate thing is that there are actually good arguments against Buffett's position.  It's just that nobody's making them.

I think Munger summarizes the situation very well:

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It’s a big danger. In my mind, I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology. The example is these Scandinavia canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools of the Aron (sp) Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into, and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology. I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life.

[Myth465]

Southern Yankee, have you learned enough to share with us an investment idea?

Dammit you beat me to it. I will answer the question, no.

Yankee only post on political threads which is unlike any other poster here. Even Ben Graham and that other guy post about LVLT...

[Myth465]

Christie should just 'put down the fork and shut up.'

Thats the funniest thing I have read all day....

[ERICOPOLY]

He knows, in reality, that the current administration will blow it, spend it, redistribute it, and we will have nothing to show for it.

A pretty good read here if you have the time (I'm hoping it changes your tone):

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf

quote:
On spending, both parties have blended together to form one giant Republocrat party.

[AZ_Value]

This nicely sums up the conversation, from the third reply on this thread, by hardincap:

im always surprised when people use the "if he wants others to help, he should just write a check himself!" argument. the point of policy is to achieve critical mass in order to make a difference in scale.

What a nice statement -- totally summarizes and refutes all the opposing arguments, so that really, you have no choice but to understand.

But,

Not one person has answered a simple but straight-forward question put forward by another poster, "Are you going to offer an argument for why Christie was wrong for what he said, or why on this issue Buffett isn't more of a demagogue than Christie?"

Hmm.  I'm not sure if it's deliberately not reading the other persons said, or just simply misunderstanding.  It's hard to imagine that it's the latter, since hardincap explained it so clearly and concisely.

My working hypothesis is that the right wing media, with its one-sided view and demagoguery, has made people believe that they don't need to make sensible arguments when discussing an issue, but that shouting down is sufficient.  Hence, the Christie's comments and the response of some people on this thread.

The really unfortunate thing is that there are actually good arguments against Buffett's position.  It's just that nobody's making them.

I think Munger summarizes the situation very well:

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It’s a big danger. In my mind, I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology. The example is these Scandinavia canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools of the Aron (sp) Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into, and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology. I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life.

+1

[AZ_Value]

I'm also seriously getting tired of people, who otherwise seem pretty smart, thinking that "Just write a check Warren!!" is anything more than a childish and useless answer to Buffett's proposal.

Given that WEB's proposal revolves around the fact that in order to get its fiscal house in order, the country will soon be enacting policies that will inflict some serious pain on sections of the population, take for example retirees who will undoubtedly see their social security and medicare benefits take a serious hit; and WEB's point is that since you're asking all those people to bear the pain of balancing our finances,why not ask the richest of us like him to shoulder some of that pain and pay more than 16% in taxes.

If you all allow me, I would suggest that WEB offers this as a rebuttal to those idiotic "write a check Warren!!" arguments:

"Since you want to make it the country's policy that, I will shoulder some of the pain of righting the American fiscal ship only  on a voluntary basis, I will go ahead and write a check to Geithner that will take my taxes from 16% to 30% ONLY if you also make it that the coming cuts to social security and medicare are on an "opt-in" basis! Meaning retirees will have to voluntarily opt-in for their social security payments to be cut."
I wonder how that would go... 

[misterstockwell]

He knows, in reality, that the current administration will blow it, spend it, redistribute it, and we will have nothing to show for it.

A pretty good read here if you have the time (I'm hoping it changes your tone):

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf

quote:
On spending, both parties have blended together to form one giant Republocrat party.

That's from 2004--now extend all those pretty graphs to today and you will see what real spending is all about.

[ERICOPOLY]

He knows, in reality, that the current administration will blow it, spend it, redistribute it, and we will have nothing to show for it.

A pretty good read here if you have the time (I'm hoping it changes your tone):

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf

quote:
On spending, both parties have blended together to form one giant Republocrat party.

That's from 2004--now extend all those pretty graphs to today and you will see what real spending is all about.

Here are the numbers for U.S. discretionary spending:

+16.7%  (cumulative increase for Obama's first 3 years in office)
+39.7%  (cumulative increase for Bush's first 3 years in office)

[Liberty]

If this was a practical problem and Warren was saying "I have too much money, I want to give more of it to the government." the answer would be "write a check!"

But from a practical point of view, I'm pretty sure Warren would love to keep all the money for himself.

His argument has ethical foundations. He believes in meritocracy and fairness, and regardless of how much waste there is in government (and there is plenty! and Warren doesn't like it!), he doesn't believe it's right that people making millions each year are paying a much smaller % in taxes than secretaries and mechanics.

This position isn't incompatible with lowering taxes (or even raising them). It's not even about raising taxes, it's about preferential treatment of some of the very very rich in a society. He's arguing for what he thinks is fairer, and doesn't like to have the guy or girl making peanuts paying a larger fraction of his income than the guy making billions.

If Christie or anyone else wants to address that argument, fine. But to distort it into something else completely and then attack that straw man is just dishonest and wrong (well, it's what politicians do).

[Liberty]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-23/christie-says-obama-using-buffett.html