In a New York Times op-ed on August 14 2011, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett wrote that the US should “stop coddling the super-rich” and called for tax rates to be raised “immediately on taxable incomes in excess of $1m, including, of course, dividends and capital gains”. The next morning, at a televised “town hall” meeting in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, President Barack Obama praised Mr Buffett’s intervention. A few weeks later a “Buffett rule”, requiring that millionaires pay higher taxes as a share of their incomes than middle-class Americans, featured in the budget plan the president sent to Congress.
伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司(Berkshire Hathaway)首席執行官沃倫?巴菲特(Warren Buffett)去年8月14日在《紐約時報》(New York Times)專欄版上撰文稱，美國“不應再溺愛超級富翁”，他還呼吁“立即提高100萬美元以上應稅收入適用的稅率，這些收入當然包括股息和資本利得”。次日上午，美國總統巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)出現在電視里，他在當時于明尼蘇達州坎農瀑布鎮(Cannon Falls)舉行的“市政廳”會議上，對巴菲特的挺身而出表示了贊賞。數周之后，在奧巴馬提交給國會的預算案中，就包含了一項“巴菲特規則”(Buffett rule)，意在使百萬富翁的納稅額占收入之比高于美國中產階級。