the rich are paying more in taxes. that s what billionaire warren buffet has said. yep. that has prompted congressional republicans to call for the berkshire hathaway ceo to put his money where his mouth is and write a check. now the oracle of omaha will do exactly that but there s a catch. what s the catch? stuart varney, a great catch joins us live today. warren buffet says hey, you republicans, if you donate $1 to reduce the deficit, i ll match it with a dollar of my own money. and if it s $1 before mitch mcconnell leading the republicans in the senate, i ll match with $3 of my own money. that s what s going on. pure political gimmickry. that s what it is. is he talking about republicans in the congress or any republican across the country? no, republicans in the congress. this is a kind of tit for tat thing. nobody has money like he s got. that s true. warren buffet comes out in an op ed in the new york times and
millions and millions of shares of stock options and now they re reaping these huge windfalls as ceos. and the irs will let the companies deduct fully the total amount of compensation. on the other side, we have wages in decline because of international competition, because factory workers don t get any of those breaks because the whole tax system is rigged for the top this is this unbelievable gap we ve created in this country of inequality. we need tax reform, but the kind of tax reform our political system is likely to produce is more gimmickry rather than less, and that s why the whole occupy movement took place in the united states this past year really because of whatรง the times is reporting today. massive increases at the top and pay compression at the bottom. how prevalent is this theme when you go out and travel as much as you do across the
home for thanksgiving. let s talk about this. this is getting serious. the leadership created the super committee, invested it with unbelievable, unprecedented procedural clout and power, insulating it from all of the other ravages that slow down legislation, filibusters, amendments, everything. there was work product by two independent commissions laid before this committee. all of the work was done, the procedural guardrails were all knocked down. it s a clean, straight line. what does this tell us? you can t use process to overcome politics until you resolve these issues about taxation entitlements politically, no matter of procedural gimmickry will change the outcome. they might get 1.2 trillion and the lowest common denominator. all of us could find it over ten years with a lot of age-old washington gimmicks, if they do produce something, that s what s going to be in it. won t fundamentally alter the
greatest illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth, but isn t that what republicans have been telling us every day, pursuing single-mindedly the pursuit of wealth? it s even worse. what they re doing is pursuing a policy for the very richest people in this country, forgetting that there s the rest of america. it s quite shocking, actually. over the last 30 years, the income and wealth has been increasingly concentrated at the very top, but you have the republican party, which gives absolutely no recognition of this at all. and the democrats, as you know from the book, i m not very happy with they re looking for gimmickry, less bad than the republicans, but nobody s talking seriously in washington about what s really going on. one of the most remarkable graphs, figures in your book is where you show that between 1981 and 2010, with low marginal tax rates, gdp actually fell and
will make it s arguable that they saved the country from worse. it probably isn t enough to really make the case when the country wants something better than that. my feeling all along, joe, that basically from the beginning they went for kind of gimmickry and short-term measures, the stimulus and then another temporary tax cut and this jobs plan is another gimmick. it s not real. that s not just an indictment on your indictment isn t just with barack obama in this book. it s with all politicians. i agree a hundred percent. they re worried about what we do to choose the numbers for the next quarter instead of the next century. that is exactly it. it s like the ceos twisting the numbers up for their stock options and all the rest. and we re so short-sighted and short term right now. the basic point of my book and