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Jon Stewart Defends Warren Buffett on 'Class Warfare'

By Tim Molloy at TheWrap

Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:16am EDT

Jon Stewart belitted conservative commentators' claims that billionaire investor Warren Buffett is engaging in class warfare -- and may be a socialist -- because he wants to end "extraordinary tax breaks" for the very wealthy.

In a New York Times op-ed piece Monday entitled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," Buffett argued that he and many other very wealthy Americans are taxed at "bargain" rates. He said that last year he paid only only 17.4 percent of his taxable income, a lower percentage than any of the other 20 people working in his office.

Buffett's call for ending tax breaks brought cries of "class warfare" from TV pundits. Those in turn prompted Stewart to break out statistics showing the U.S. has worse income inequality than many Third World countries.

He told some jokes, too.

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives

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Comments (1)
WIDTAP wrote:
But the kicker was that you would need to take 1/2 of everything the bottom 50% owned to get the $700 billion that restoring the 1990s tax rates to the top 2% would produce in the next ten years.

Aug 19, 2011 1:28pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
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