Dr. Ben Carson sounded almost Palin-esque as he argued that deregulation is the answer to the income inequality resulting from his tax policy that at least triples taxes for the poor while halving them for the rich.
Carson said that he wants to talk more to the public about the economy and foreign affairs but when Fox host Chris Wallace gave him that opportunity – well, let’s just say Carson might want to be a little more careful about what he wishes for.
Wallace started with a very fair and very wonkish question:
WALLACE: You say that income inequality is a big issue. You favor raising the minimum wage but you also want to impose a flat tax of somewhere between 10% and 15% for all Americans, all taxpayers. And the allegation is, the charge is that that would be a big tax increase for low and middle-income wage earners but a big tax cut for the wealthy.
Obviously, Carson didn’t have the faintest idea about how to reconcile that discrepancy. He babbled incoherently.
CARSON: Well, first of all, what I want to do is, I want to equalize things. I want things to be fair for everybody. I don’t want to pick and choose who the winners and losers are and I think when you do things in a proportional basis, it works very well. 10% is an easy number to use because it’s easy to do the calculations but, you know, you make $10 billion, you pay a billion.
Now, I know there are a lot of people who say, "That’s a problem because the guy’s still got $9 billion left. We need to take more of his money." But you see, Chris, that’s called socialism. And I recognize that there are a lot of people here who believe in socialism, that number is increasing, but the problem with socialism is they all end up looking the same way, with a small group of elites at the top, you know, a rapidly diminishing middle class and a vastly expanded dependent class. That’s not America. We’re different than that.
…The other thing I want to mention is when you have a tax system that includes everybody, it’s very difficult for the politicians to engage in their favorite activity of raising taxes. ….It’s hard to do it on a hundred percent and you have to live within your budget.
Wallace wasn’t buying it. “We’ve had a principle in this country of a progressive tax rate… for decades,” he said. Then he displayed a graphic showing that the bottom 5th of earners pay an average federal tax rate of 2% while the top 5th pay an average of 21%. “If your flat tax is somewhere between 10 and 15%... the bottom gets hit while the top makes out,” he noted.
Instead of addressing the point, Carson turned condescending.
CARSON: OK, what we have to think about, Chris is, how do we fix the economy so that it encourages entrepreneurial risk taking and capital investment? How do we create a ladder that allows those people in the lower income brackets to move up that ladder? That’s what we need to be concentrating on, not how do we make them comfortable in that situation. That’s not what America was all about. And we can do that.
Right, Doc. Because nothing allows people in the lower income brackets to move up the economic ladder like making them pay 3-8 times more in taxes.
Wallace challenged again. “But what do you say to that person who’s making 30 or $40,000 and may be paying an effective tax rate of 5 or 10%. Basically, you’re saying, ‘You’re gonna get a tax increase.’”
Let them eat deregulation!
CARSON: I say the thing that is really impacting that person making 30 or $40,000 is all the incessant regulations that we’re coming up with. Every single regulation costs us in terms of goods and services. It increases the price of everything. And who gets hit by that the most? The people in the lower economic brackets. That’s what we need to be concentrating on. Those are the kinds of things that are driving the income gap. Opportunities we make available, we create a ladder, we create opportunities and a can-do attitude rather than the what-can-you-do-for-me attitude. That’s what made America great.
And all that was before Carson proved he didn’t know what the term “anti-Semitic” means.
Watch it below, from the August 16 Fox News Sunday, another FNS with no Democratic guests.