# How much money does Buffet's secretary make? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 2, 2012, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578 "2012-02-02T21:10:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2012, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/22 "2012-02-03T05:36:07Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > We may be rapidly departing GQ territory, so don’t take the following statements as opinion or argument, simply as a summary of the reasoning that went into the laws we have now. > > The idea is that the rich DON’T light their cigars with $100 bills. To a large extent, they start companies, and these companies not only hire wage-earners, but they pay taxes themselves. So if Buffett invests $10 billion in Company X and Company X increases in value to $20 billion, there has - in theory, at least - already been $3.5 billion in tax paid (35% of the $10 billion that presumably came from profit). Had the company not paid those taxes, Buffet’s value would have been 23.5 billion. So if Buffet pays another 1.5 billion (15%), we’re really just taxing the same money a second time. > > So… while the rich investor is paying a lower rate when we look at only the individual entity, the lower rate is paid on investments that produce jobs and pay taxes themselves. Oh, job creator, right. Where are the jobs? ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/23 "2012-02-04T00:36:11Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > So if Buffett invests $10 billion in Company X and Company X increases in value to $20 billion, there has - in theory, at least - already been $3.5 billion in tax paid (35% of the $10 billion that presumably came from profit). Had the company not paid those taxes, Buffet’s value would have been 23.5 billion. So if Buffet pays another 1.5 billion (15%), we’re really just taxing the same money a second time. Why would a company pay corporate taxes on the increase in value? In most companies, the value isn’t solely based on their income. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/24 "2012-02-04T04:13:37Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > Oh, that is hilarious. All this time the press has made it seem that she was an ordinary secretary making around 30k a year. So, the whole “outrage” is misplaced by a distortion of the facts. She IS a secretary, but she is a HIGHLY paid secretary. Why the outrage then, she makes a shit ton of money? No, not as much a Buffet of course, but a ton. Also, as expressed so many times before, most of Buffet’s taxable liability is from capital gains and not earned income. Big difference in tax rates between the two forms of income. Actually, if she is making $200k as an executive assistant to Buffet, she probably isn’t that highly paid. 25 years ago I was an executive assistant for a Large Company. Our CEO’s secretary (we were still secretaries back then) make $80k plus overtime in 1986. And she worked her ass off and earned every penny. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/25 "2012-02-04T19:26:17Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > If the whole point is that we must stop the rich people from _gasp_ making money from capital gains, I will ask if we should also stop the same thing from happening to the middle class as well? Plenty of middle class people increase their net worth by investing in stocks, precious medals and the like. Should we go ahead and punish them as well by taking away the lower tax rate on capital gains? > > I am certainly not rich, but I am not jealous enough of those who are to want to tax them into oblivion. They are rich for the most part because they did the things that I didn’t do to get rich. Be it have the brains, the drive or the skill or even the luck. But I really don’t get this whole punish the rich for being rich thing. First of all She could be making 50K and still be paying a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. Second VERY little of a middle class family’s income is capital gains. Between 401Ks and IRAs, you don’t end up with very much catpial gain income certainly not anywhere near 100% capital gains income like Romney. Listen to yourself. You think that taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income is “punishment” and “taxing them into oblivion” Noone wants to punish the rich for being rich but the pendulum has been swining in their favor for decades and it has probably swung too far. What was the capital gains rate under Reagan? 28% now its 15%, can we go back to Reagan era tax rates or did Reagan hate the poor too? > [@xtisme](#): > > What is this ‘fairness’ thing, and how do you quantify it? After all these years you still don’t know what fairness means? Have you read any Rawls? > [@dracoi](#): > > We may be rapidly departing GQ territory, so don’t take the following statements as opinion or argument, simply as a summary of the reasoning that went into the laws we have now. > > The idea is that the rich DON’T light their cigars with $100 bills. To a large extent, they start companies, and these companies not only hire wage-earners, but they pay taxes themselves. So if Buffett invests $10 billion in Company X and Company X increases in value to $20 billion, there has - in theory, at least - already been $3.5 billion in tax paid (35% of the $10 billion that presumably came from profit). Had the company not paid those taxes, Buffet’s value would have been 23.5 billion. So if Buffet pays another 1.5 billion (15%), we’re really just taxing the same money a second time. > > So… while the rich investor is paying a lower rate when we look at only the individual entity, the lower rate is paid on investments that produce jobs and pay taxes themselves. So when you open a sandwich shop, what part of your income is capital gains? The capital gains rate is not the rate paid by entrepreneurs so much as it is the rate paid by returns on capital. Sure capital gains build up inside that sandwich shop over the years but unless you are saying that the ultimate tax on disposition of that sandwich shop is what drives the sandwich shop owners decision to open the shop in the first place, you are barking up the wrong tree. There is nothing about the capital gains rate that creates jobs, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen job growth stay so flat when Bush dropped in to 15%. We’ve just had this conversation about capital gains and the theory that it is a form of double taxation that is dissimilar from all the other instances of multiple layers of taxation in another thread and it doesn’t hold water. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/26 "2012-02-04T20:31:58Z")
In 2007 she made [$60k](http://tusb.stanford.edu/2007/07/warren_buffet_has_a_lower_tax.html). Do you really think she got raises since then to get her over $200k? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/27 "2012-02-04T20:32:49Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > swining in their favor Freudian slip? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/28 "2012-02-04T22:33:04Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > What is this ‘fairness’ thing, and how do you quantify it? > > -XT Fairness, IMHO would be exempting the first 40k or so of income, enough to pay for food, shelter, medical insurance, and transportation, and then charging a flat rate on everything else. Make all other taxes illegal, property, sales, corporate, etc… treat everything as income (with the exception of inheritance) income, dividends, capital gains, gifts, options and stock grants, everything. This would be fair. ---
**Author:** ![Sateryn76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@Sateryn76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sateryn76)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/29 "2012-02-04T22:47:44Z")
> [@L. G. Butts](#): > > Fairness, IMHO would be exempting the first 40k or so of income, enough to pay for food, shelter, medical insurance, and transportation, and then charging a flat rate on everything else. Make all other taxes illegal, property, sales, corporate, etc… treat everything as income (with the exception of inheritance) income, dividends, capital gains, gifts, options and stock grants, everything. This would be fair. Okay. Define shelter. What specifically is the line? A house with one bedroom for each family member? Okay, so then, in what housing market? What do we do when that market changes? What about the land each home is attached to? Are we all allowed a certain square footage for each person? What about vertical housing? And then do the same for food, transportation, etc. Only bicycles and beans and rice? What about blah blah and blah? If it were that easy, we would have done that already. ---
**Author:** ![BeaMyra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@BeaMyra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeaMyra)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2012, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578/30 "2012-02-05T12:13:20Z")
Part of it is location. San Francisco, DC, Boston and Manhattan are outrageous to live in. I find Chicago a bargain. I think you need to close loopholes. Look no one wants to discourage people from starting new businesses and investing but that isn’t what is happening a lot. If you build a businesses that is largely pumping up foreign workers you’re not doing much good. Suppose you hire immigrants that are sending 50% of their paychecks back home. Even if they’re legal, half the effort is not going back into the American economy. What about day traders and those who invest just to get out by the end of the day. Of course the answer is always we can’t make it illegal, because they will just go elsewhere. So let them. Sure we as a nation will lose something, but we’ll gain as well. It’s not as simple as I’m making it. For example Walmart gets a lot of tax breaks. They don’t pay their fair share. It makes Ma and Pa type business unable to compete. But I know plenty of poorer people that thank God, they can get cheap goods at Walmart. It’s a double edged sword. How to raise standards without halting innovation. The real problem is the disparity between the rich and poor. Too many companies have gotten too big. I’m in my 40s and when I was younger, the heads of companies were well off, but they weren’t THAT well off. I am one of six directors in a large multinational company. I make, with bonuses just over 100K. I am lucky. But my GM makes more than five times what I do, BEFORE bonuses. That is simply not equitable. But it’s what he negotiated for and got. That’s the problem people far up are commanding salaries they are not worth. And look at actors, sports stars, and such. A lot of them live poorly but those who make it can live a lifetime and live big off one or two projects. And you can’t blame people. For too long actors and athletes were taken for a ride, now they are in a sense doing what they were complaining about. Bottom line, we need to raise the lower classes and stop the outrageous growth of the top earners. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-does-buffets-secretary-make/611578.md?page=1)