I did outbound telemarketing back in the Idelman days. I dont know how similar it is to what your doing now but I absolutely hated that job more then any job I have ever had. I learned early on how bad I was and how much I disliked trying to sell products to people in any way. Especially cold calling people on the east coast who treated me like dog poop on the bottom of their shoes.

I have always hated the boss who comes out of his office and does the “Im the big shot up in this place” walk through the facility. Almost as much as I hate the people who get intimidated or feel like they are special when that boss says something to them. I’ll give the young kids some slack in this area but guys like the bizzaro version of you, Shon Riley should be forced to have a vasectomy as soon as they hit puberty. I had a boss like that at Weyerhaeuser and I made it a point to let him know I could care less if he even existed. Turns out he was the guy who gave me my first management job. Not sure what what that says about me but I know he is a super big shot now doing something like Southwest Regional Manager and Im sitting around writing comments to buddies blogs.

I ran into Warren Buffet at a Hotel where I worked. His wife was one of the sweetest women I ever met (God rest her soul), and she was very generous with her tips, but her husband was grouchy and impersonal. A fellow employee of mine called him a snobby, rich Republican. As a Democrat at the time, I laughed hard with the guy. As we all know now, Buffet is and was just a grouchy old Democrat that feels guilty about his wealth. I thought Democrats were supposed to be happy and fun, with free love and a guilt free existence, and I thought Republicans were supposed to be the grouchy, suspender wearing, cigar smoking, baby kicking, Scooby-Doo characters that we saw in all of our movies and TV shows and cartoons. It turns out all those stereotypes they showed us in Scooby-Doo and Captain Planet cartoons apply to as many Democrats as they do Republicans.

Assuming that Ms. Bosanek takes the standard deduction, her taxable income after taking the personal exemption would be $50,650. If she files as single or married filing separately, the income tax on this amount is $8,844. Her payroll tax would be another $4,470 – making her total tax $13,314. This comes out to an effective tax rate of 22.2% which is higher than Warren Buffett’s rate of 17.4%.

To get the 35.8% figure Buffett is talking about, he includes the employer portion of the payroll tax, another $4,470, bringing her total tax to $17,784. If you divide this by her after-tax income of $50,650, you get a total tax rate of 35.1%.