Warren Buffet Asks, "What Would Jesus Do?"

I originally wrote this piece for another site, but my opinions were thought offensive and it wasn't published. I have my opinions and I stand by them as they are informed by the experiences I've lived. I do however welcome anyone to challenge them and maybe even successfully change them by offering new experiences and insight. After all by sharing ideas we gain the opportunity to expand our minds. If at the end of a conversation we choose to maintain our perspectives then we can just accept and respect "to each his own."


Warren Buffet Asks, "What Would Jesus Do?"
By Pia Monique Murray


In Congress the battle of how to address the nation’s deficit has been exhausting and shameful, unearthing the despicable impulse of greed to wager others’ meager subsistence for the sake of one’s own exorbitant wealth. The fundamental debate is over who has responsibility to the nation’s poverty. Republicans think the country’s wealthy class shouldn’t have any responsibility to the rest of the country, although the outlandish bonuses and tax exemptions that this class continually receives  is the cause for most of this nation’s vastly unbalanced wealth distribution. Democrats however believe the 20% of the country’s population that controls over 84% of the country’s wealth should be accountable to the other 80% who are already struggling to sustain themselves and contribute to the nation.


Republicans have gone so far as to blast billionaire Warren Buffett who published an op ed in the New York Times last week saying, “my friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” Buffett’s suggestions that millionaires should pay higher taxes than working and impoverished classes has received vehement backlash from republicans and right wing media sources. A proposed 10% income tax hike on those grossing $1 million or more a year could yield $73 billion, nearly half of the $1.5 trillion the “super-congress” group is charged with eliminating from the deficit over the next ten years. Instead of solving the problem with modest contributions from less than 250,000 extremely wealthy people, republicans propose further budget cuts to hundreds of public programs serving millions of middle, working class and impoverished people.


The current debate in Congress illuminates the ugliest aspects of humanity. It is the the proof that democracy will never succeed because human beings are selfish and vindictive and are willing to sacrifice the basic needs of many people so that a few people can continue to live in luxury. I applaud Buffett’s accountability to his wealth and that he recognizes that his ability to make “money from money” is a privilege that few others will ever enjoy, no matter how hard they work. He seems to have taken a lesson from Jesus in Luke 12:48 stated “to whom much has been given, much will be expected.” What do the right-wing zealots have to say about that? *cough* Michelle Bachmann *cough*