“while lowering the tax burden for wealthy people who make money through investments rather than labor. That was the source of Buffett’s complaint.”
First of all, investment is a form of “labor,” that is if labor is what one does to earn money, short of someone else handing it over. Work smart, not hard.
More importantly, it was a stupid complaint. Everyone and his mother knows that such “unearned” income is double taxed. It is absolutely inane to measure Buffet relative to his secretary by taking into account the tax rate on one side while ignoring the other.
Most importantly of all, I don’t believe all this revenue talk is about closing loopholes and otherwise making things more fair. It’s about our central government controlling more of the national wealth. Targeting the wealthy is merely a convenience.
See my post #16