“President Barack Obama met billionaire philanthropists and businessmen Warren Buffett and Bill Gates on Tuesday for a conversation that touched on how to expand the economy, the White House said,” Reuters reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Asking a thief and a famed investor (who ought to know better, but may be more than a touch batty nowadays) for economic expansion advice? What advice did Gates offer, “Copy Apple and illegally abuse the resultant monopoly, it worked like gangbusters for me?”
Reuters reports, “Gates’ wife Melinda was also at the meeting, which focused on an initiative to encourage the wealthiest Americans to give the majority of their wealth to charity.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, for Jobs’ sake. Note to Melinda the former MS Bob manager and the rest of the esteemed panel: No economy has ever been driven by having the “wealthiest give the majority of their wealth to charity.” It’s patently unsustainable.
That said, if Gates and Buffett want to give all of their vast wealth to the U.S government to pay down the national debt, by all means have at it! Let’s see… that’s $45 billion for Buffett and – wow! – $54 billion for Gates, so that’s $99 billion to subtract from $13.853 t-t-t-trillion *gack!* or, in other words, Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s entire fortunes combined are a meaningless drop an ocean of U.S. debt plus there’s the added bonus that two more potential job producers will be broke and therefore no longer able to produce jobs. Wonderful. Great idea, Melind! Sheer genius.
@SirROM – thanks. Didn’t know that.
in other news the Lions were interviewed to better discover how to win the Superbowl.
This just goes to show how clueless everyone is. Stuck in the past. give it another year or two they will learn… they will all learn a hard lesson.
Start by bringing it all back home – manufacturing, troops, etc.
Perfect PR strategy! Get these ageing, fading super-rich to come in for a photo opportunity to pretend you’re doing something real. One’s a thief, the other’s an investor – neither skills particularly relevant to running an economy.
Of course, doing something effective like talking to Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman would actually achieve something, but then Obama would have to admit he’s totally clueless on the economy, and that would never do…
Obama is captive to his third rate advisers, who cocoon him effectively from anything they don’t want him to hear.
It’s very simple: the US GDP falters when the investor/corporate leader/business owner sits on cash. What we have today is the accumulation of decades of outsourcing, offshoring, and outright money laundering which has enriched the few but destroyed industrial output and put millions out of work. The money-changers would be wise to heed Henry Ford’s advice: if the worker isn’t paid enough to buy the product, then there is no market for the product. Corporate leaders have worked so hard to employ the China to use slave/child labor for production, it has left the former middle class in America with credit debt and no realistic options for future prosperity.
So why again do we go to the money changers for advice on how to be self-sufficient?
MDN, your anti-MS bias is blinding you. Giving to charity is good, no matter how much negative light you want to shine on this event.
Amazing amount of mindless drivel being posed again. Well done, MDN – you got a ton of hits and support from the truly brainless.
MDN, I know how you feel about Microsoft and enjoy every bit of your rabid insistence on the way they still everyone else’s stuff, but your first idea isn’t that bad. The US government should do exactly what made Microsoft successful. Copy everything Apple does at a governmental level and create great stuff. The problems we have are never going to be solved by money and we all know that regardless of our political leanings, neither party knows crap about how to resolve the problems created by both. Why not innovate, get rid of dead wood, be creative, look beyond what we already know, figure out how to make things happen, lower inventory, create a coherent ecosystem of products that feed off of and into one another, make stuff that’s aesthetically pleasing, lead with decisiveness, don’t give a rat’s ass about being popular, make a healthy profit, defy convention, let everyone else scramble for the lowest profit, while you skim the high end. Most of all make government cool.
The irony is that neither Buffet nor Gates have paid much in income taxes as most of their wealth was in unredeemed stock. Transferred directly to charity, that wealth remains untaxed.
But for those who do bequeath their wealth to charity, where is the justification for taxing – whether at 35% or 55% – what is already after-tax wealth? What justifies this “one more bite” except that the government wants/needs your money?
Obama: “What should I do?”
Gates: ” Buy 80 million copies of Office”
Buffet: ” Give me all the money to invest”.
Reuters reports, “Gates’ wife Melinda was also at the meeting, which focused on an initiative to encourage the wealthiest Americans to give the majority of their wealth to charity.”
LOL ya~ going communism sure would help…… NOT!
I voted for Obama, but he certainly hasn’t turned out to be the Savior I thought he was going to be. Reagan did a far better job of picking the Country back up. We need another Ronnie.
@Mark : I agree with you, we need to keep business here. I also think we should stop immigration since we can’t employe what we’ve got already here.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/warren_buffett_robber_baron.html
@First 2010, then 2012
Being Canadian it would have been tough to have voted for Obama…but I probably would have.
I hope he picks up his game. Our current Liberal head (but in opposition), Michael Ignatieff is a lame duck, especially against Stephen Harper who single-handedly is ruining everything that was ever positive about being Canadian.
Get rid of unions and the jobs will come back to the US.
You liberals are out of your minds. Stay the hell out of our pocketbooks, hair, and better yet country. Please leave. WE hate you!
Obama SUCKS!
I suggest you guys read “Philantrocapitalism” by Matthew Bishop & Michael Green. http://www.philanthrocapitalism.net/
@frothing at the mouth:
“So much hate (HATE!!!) on the right… you should all be ashamed; you are not human, you are corporate lickspittles and murderous bastards. Go kill something, it will ease your tensions.”
So much for all the hate (HATE!!!) being on the Right…
Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican, etc…
Hate is hate, regardless of the label you choose to use. Personally, I’m none of the above. My beliefs are my own. I do tend to be more liberal in so much that I prefer to keep an open mind and judge for myself on what I believe to be right or wrong, or better or worse. But I do try to understand and at least respect the opinions of others as well.
I’ve got my own life to live, I’d rather not waste that time wondering why there are so many idiots in the world! ;-p
Back on topic… Why not ask the two richest Americans and probably largest investors where they see opportunities in fixing/expanding the economy? Most of their wealth is on paper, so of course they’re interested in seeing investments grow.
@ first 2010, then 2012
and all the other troglodytes:
Here’s a great column suggesting one reason why corporatist libertarian viewpoints are so over-represented on the Web… (hint: hiring paid trolls is cheap… and cheaper for rich corporatist rightwing libertarians who stand to gain big $$$ from spreading libertarian propaganda, than for Joe Sixpack or even rich liberals operating against their financial self-interest)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/dec/13/astroturf-libertarians-internet-democracy
Not saying any of the troglodytes on MDN are paid trolls… but in general when you find an anonymous forum flooded by pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation viewpoints, it doesn’t take an IQ over 80 to see all the money such comments are worth to the banksters, fossil fuel criminals and their paid PR minions.
Obama has seen the dark side of society by meeting the american working poors. Now, to have a better idea of the other dark side of the american way of life, he HAS TO KNOW how people like Gates made to fake so many people.
Obama is quite courageous… It’s hard to be open minded in some places…
MDN quote: “That said, if Gates and Buffett want to give all of their vast wealth to the U.S government to pay down the national debt, by all means have at it! Let’s see… that’s $45 billion for Buffett and – wow! – $54 billion for Gates, so that’s $99 billion to subtract from $13.853 t-t-t-trillion *gack!* or, in other words, Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s entire fortunes combined are a meaningless drop an ocean of U.S. debt plus there’s the added bonus that two more potential job producers will be broke and therefore no longer able to produce jobs. Wonderful. Great idea, Melind! Sheer genius.”
Oh! Thank you GW Bush. These wars where just a fantastic idea! Usually wars always helped USA to rise up the $… Damn! It didn’t work this time!..
@SirROM – thanks. Didn’t know that.
Well, it was certainly no secret.
It was “reported” here on 21st October and met with the predictable level of scorn and abuse from the idiots who really know nothing about political philosophies other than what they’ve heard from some other equally uneducated doofus like Glenn Beck or Limbaugh (both of whom are as dumb as a box of rocks).
This is the problem when people start believing education and having an willingness to see problems in a multi-dimensional context are akin to some sort of plot to undermine the nation.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/27159/P0/
MDN hit piece. Shame.
I’m not worried, this comment will be removed by the MDN thought police like many of the others.