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This is all about politics. Obama is all about wealth redistribution. Raising taxes on the rich is an obsession for him. His is on the record as acknowledging it doesn’t matter if raising a tax on the rich won’t raise much revenue, the symbolic value is more important to him.

Buffett is a shrewd businessman. He likely saw the threat Obama posed to his investment empire and decided the best way to protect himself was to jump on board the Obama train. By being on the inside he can influence policy to best protect his companies and accumulated wealth from harmful rules and regulations in return for his public statements supporting the taxes for the rich that will have little impact on him personally as he is well beyond the wealth accumulation phase of his career. Buffett knows increases in marginal tax rates at the top end serve primarily to limit the middle class individual trying to accumulate wealth. These marginal tax rate increase do little to hurt those individuals who have accumulated great wealth. The holders of great wealth, like Buffett, have much more to fear from taxes on net worth or assets. By being on the inside he steers the Marxists to raising marginal tax rates and ignoring the true “soak the rich” asset taxes.

What Buffett ignores is the appetite of the beast will never be satisfied. Once Boehner caves and Obama has his higher marginal income tax rates, as well as higher dividend and capital gains tax rates, the economy will go into a recession, tax collections will fall, and he will need more stimulus money to shovel at his voting base. at the time of the mid term elections. He will then have to look for more sources of revenue. The useful fool Buffett, assuming he is still living, may find his Marxist collaborator now turns on him and proposes a net worth or asset tax on billionaires.