Bloomberg Rips Buffett, Urges Tax Boost for All

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the latest billionaire to fire back at Warren Buffett's call to raise taxes on America's super-rich, reports the New York Daily News. "The Buffett thing is just theatrics," scoffed Bloomberg on NBC's Meet the Press. "I think that it's more than a sound-bite economic policy, and we should look at what the real data is rather than just go and say one guy pays more than his secretary—or doesn't."

Much of Bloomberg's defense of the rich came from the difficulty of definitions. "You can't define what's the middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor," he said. "Every time you have a jump, people play games to get on one side or another, and I think it's not fair to say that wealthy people don't pay their fair share." Instead, Bloomberg called for a small tax hike of 2% to 3% for all Americans. "For the average person that's $150 bucks. For the wealthy it's a lot of money. But that's the only way you are going to get something through Congress," he said. (More Mayor Bloomberg stories.)