Warren Buffett said that wealthy people should be paying “a lot more” money in taxes, and that the Bush tax cuts should expire for “people at the high end.”
The legendary investor and one of the world’s richest men, with an estimated net worth of $47 billion, told Christiane Amanpour on ABC’s
“If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further,” Buffett said. “But I think that people at the high end — people like myself — should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.”
Buffett, the chairman and CEO of holding company Berkshire Hathaway, also dismissed contentions that raising taxes on the rich would hamper economic growth.
“The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you,” said Buffett. “But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”
President Obama plans to give Buffett a Presidential Medal of Freedom early next year.
