Marc Lasry — the billionaire hedge fund manager/Milwaukee Bucks co-owner — is a noted Hillary Clinton fan. Just 3 months ago, the prodigious fundraiser opened his Beachside Avenue home for an event featuring the Democratic presidential candidate’s husband, a guy named Bill.
Last night, Lasry talked up Clinton’s candidacy with PBS interviewer Charlie Rose.
Alert “06880” reader JP Vellotti watched his fellow Westporter with interest.
But one subject did not come up.
“I wonder what Lasry thinks of her line promising to make the ultra-rich pay their fair share of taxes,” Vellotti says.
Mark Lasry and Charlie Rose talk about Hillary Clinton. (Screenshot/JP Vellotti)
I’m pretty sure he’s fine with it.
That’s the point, Evan. There ARE wealthy people in Westport and the U.S. who are satisfied with a good living and don’t mind giving back the owed part of their assets/earnings. I too am sure that Marc Lasry is fine with it. I always compare Joel Olsteen, a preacher in TX who makes megabucks and lives an opulent life, and Rick Warren, a preacher in CA who wrote the wildly successful Purpose Driven Life book, who stopped taking his salary from his church AND tithed 90% of the millions in royalties from his book. Which person is the better person in my book? No question. Stronger Together.
Lasry has a great deal of wealth,he is supporting an increase in the tax rate on income. If he were supporting a wealth tax, I would be impressed.
I think those who want to pay more taxes, should be free to do so.
Michael is right about the wealth tax. It is very easy for those that have a lot of wealth to be more than happy to raise taxes on income. Sure they pay more but, frankly, they don’t really need it anymore anyway. Of course it makes it much harder for those on the way up to accumulate the sort of wealth they have. As we used to say in the hood, mighty white of Mark.
On a slightly different note, I wonder how high of a tax rate he’d be fine with. I recall a French interview with Will Smith around the time they were going to impose a 75% tax rate on incomes above €1MM. Will was talking about how increasing tax rates was fine and he’d be more than happy to pay higher taxes until he was told the rate was 75%. Backtracked a bit from there. Money line starts around 1:25 of the clip. Pretty funny.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyf6NvaAKHU
Transcript of the back and forth:
Will Smith: I have no issue with paying taxes and whatever needs to be done for my country to grow. I believe very firmly that my ability to sit here—I’m a black man who didn’t go to college, yet I get to travel around the world and sell my movies, and I believe very firmly that America is the only place on Earth that I could exist. So I will pay anything that I need to pay to keep my country growing. . . .
Interviewer: Do you know how much in France you would have to pay on earnings above one million euros [under new French President Francois Hollande’s proposal]? Not 30%. 75%.
Smith: I… not 30, 75?! Yeah, that’s different, that’s different. Yeah, 75. Well, you know, God bless America.
By the way, I don’t actually have an issue with higher income tax rates, though there is a limit. However, I do have an issue with the description of higher taxes as one’s “fair share”. They are taxes. They have little if nothing to do with “fair” or “not fair” but simply are what is necessary to deal with the fiscal choices that are made.
When half of the population doesn’t pay them and are big proponents of spending more money while the bulk of income taxes are already collected from the top 10%, we’ve arguably already left the realm of “fairness”.
Two tax questions were asked of Marc on a CNBC segment on Thursday afternoon. I caught enough of the interview to hear him say that he expected taxes on the rich would go up. He was also asked his opinion on carried interest. My understanding of his reply lead me to believe he would not object to paying ordinary taxes (vs. the current 15% capital gains rate) on monies returning from offshore.