and you ought to have — i’ll eat fillet of fishes if you want. i’ll eat 2800 calories worth of mcnuggets if i want or twinkies. or ice cream. some days i just go through a whole gallon. wow, all right. warren what are you eating for breakfast this morning? here i’m having a cherry coke here. and there are about 200 calories in this. but if — oh, i got some oreo cookies. what size is that bottle, warren? this bottle looks like 16 ounces. yes. no, it’s bigger. no, i think that’s a 20 ounce. you can’t have that! put that down! you know where you can have it? myanmar. but you can’t have that manhattan. yeah. well we can have it in omaha. and we’ll continue to have it in omaha.
people have been looking back at what’s happened since the beginning of the year. we have faced some changes. as you mention there’s about 700 billion dollars that have been coming in or are expected to start coming in in new revenue because of changes to the tax code that took place after the end of the year last year. some people have pointed out with all that you’ve done and said about what needs to change with taxes, with the buffet rule that had been proposed, there was one question that came in, which is a question we got a lot of different variations on. this one is number 32 control room with the end of the 2012 federal income tax changes will we now be paying a higher percentage in taxes than your secretary or your administrative assistant? yeah, i probably will. i’ll make a study when we get the taxes, calculated throughout the office. but, my capital gains rate will go from 15 to 23 and a fraction because of the 20% plus the 3 and a fraction percent. but if you look at social security tax, payroll taxes, plus, plus income taxes, i’ll be a fair amount higher, say 8 or 9 points higher, but the differential between me and the rest of the office, not just — not just my secretary, but the rest of the office, was greater than that. the payroll tax, you’re talking 15 a a fraction% and then start adding the income tax onto that. so, i’ll be glad to give you a report after we get all the income tax returns done. but it will be closer, but i’ll probably be the lowest paying counting payroll taxes i’ll probably be the lowest paying taxpayers in the office. so what happened? we raised marginal tax rate on the top 2% but it still doesn’t fix the problem of the very wealthiest americans getting to a position where they’re paying more of their fair share, if you want to use that phrase. you will still have, when we get the figures a few years from now, you’ll probably have the 400 largest people who might be making 200 million or 250 million a year, you’ll probably have a quarter of those at least probably half of them paying less than 25%. and of course with the payroll tax 15%, you get over 25, and you’re pay over 25%. and that’s why i suggested a minimum tax to get to those. making a lot of money and paying normal tax rates it. but it would affect carried interest people and that sort of thing. it would affect me. was this a stupid change in the tax legislation? it was better than no change. and the minimum tax is still out there as a proposal in the senate. and i think it makes sense. i think that i don’t want to name some of my friends that are in similar low rates, but i think they should be paying at the rates that the people who work in, you know, in this warehouse pay, and they still have a big break. the big break is they don’t pay payroll taxes. and payroll taxes are, you know, if we take in 2.6 trillion this year, payroll taxes will be a third of that, roughly. they’re not quite as much as individual — are you suggesting there shouldn’t be a limit on the amount of income for where the payroll tax ends? what is it $150,000? it’s less thanthat. it’s around $100,000. and it catches many of the people in our office have spouses that work, and they get paid — they get the payrolltax, too. so on the first $200,000 for many families, 15.3%, you know, i mean that — but is the unfairness that they shouldn’t be paying that high of a rate or you think there should be no limit on that? i just think that that — it depends whether you change the whole code in some way. but i think under the code as it presently stands a minimum tax on very high incomes is a start in getting more equity in the tax code. did we mess up, though, by doing this in partway steps? does it make it much less likely that we get to some sort of a grand bargain like a simpson-bowles type plan because we are doing this in increments? i’m not sure we get there under any arrangement. it — there should be a grand bargain. i think there was very close to a grand bargain 18 months ago. i just thinked problem was that when john boehner went back to his group, that he cannot get — he cannot get his — 18 months ago, though, it wasn’t just boehner who couldn’t get his side. the president changed what he was asking for because he couldn’t get his base to go along with
