Bill O’Reilly seems to think “income inequality” means that rich guys like himself are suffering with more taxes while all the “takers” are on easy street – at his expense.
In his Talking Points commentary last night, O’Reilly suggested that the most important question, or at least the most important economic question for the 2016 presidential campaign is whether or not he’ll have shell out any more of his $18 million a year (or is it $20 million?) earnings.
O’REILLY: It is the notion that somehow our capitalistic system has gone corrupt, and the feds must punish those making money, that will be in the forefront of 2016 campaign.
O’Reilly was so upset worried about scraping by on his millions, he lost sight of the truth. He said, “Since taking office, President Obama has proposed a whopping 442 tax increases.”
However, Media Matters pointed out that is a distorted version of reality. Or, you might call it spin:
But O’Reilly’s claim that Obama raised taxes comes from Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative anti-tax group headed by Grover Norquist, and was rated as “Mostly False” by PolitiFact in 2014. According to PolitiFact, Americans for Tax Reform “overstate[d] the total number by a significant amount,” noting that “removing duplicates eliminates about 159 of the proposals” and “failed to account for other tax cuts that are part of Obama’s record, including nearly $220 billion in tax cuts that were part of the federal stimulus.”
But then O’Reilly revealed he thinks guys like him deserve to pay less because they do so much for the economy and the rest of us:
O’REILLY: In fact, the U.S.A. has the highest tax rate on business in the world. And if you invest in business, short-term cap gains now close to 40 percent. Long-term cap gains up 15 percent to 20 percent. There’s also additional 3.8 percent tax on investment income to pay for ObamaCare. So you can see, you have to be able to see, that taxes are everywhere on affluent Americans and business profits.
But for the rest of Americans, things aren’t so bad. Bottom 60 percent of wage earners pay just 2.7 percent of all federal income taxes. The bottom 40 percent actually get money from the feds they receive payments called earned income tax credits.
According to financial analyst Alexander Green who works for the Oxford Club the tax burden on business investors drives down job creation and economic expansion. I believe that because I have cut back investing due to the heavy capital gains hit. Why should I risk my money?
…But how much more? How much more can the government take from the affluent without crashing the entire free market economy? That’s the real question campaign 2016.
Sure it is. If you’re in the one percent and don’t know what it’s like to work full-time and have to choose between paying your rent and fixing your car.
Watch it below, from last night’s The O’Reilly Factor.
And the top tax rate was 80+% (and that was on as little as $200K per year).
It’s kind of funny but anyone else remember “The Beverly Hillbillies?” Where the Clampetts—especially Jed—didn’t seem to have any problem paying taxes and tended to feel somewhat offended when “Banker” Drysdale talked about ways of paying a lower tax rate. It’s so funny that the average TV viewer of the period was supposed to support Jed and his kin’s desire to pay what they rightfully owed (they almost seemed to feel a sense of it being their patriotic duty to give back when they had so much to give) and to boo Mr Drysdale for all his schemes to “protect” the Clampett fortune. (It’s also a touch ironic that the show’s first season showed Mr Drysdale to be a fairly nice character, more concerned about the Clampetts’ overall well-being rather than the near caricature he became where all he cared about was their fortune staying in his bank.)
Hey Bill, how much more must my property taxes go up to support a business that I don’t work for? Hhmmmmm?
How many “part-time” jobs must a business fill to make up the loss individuals incur by not getting benefits? I would no amount of jobs would make up for that! Do you disagree Bill?
How many access roads must my tax dollars build in order to satisfy the wealthy out-of-state owners of this business?
How much of my tax dollars will be spent on getting “utilities” like electric and sewer to the new business?
Will the new business cut me a check when they donate money to a local sports team and get a tax break for it? Did that contribution come from company funds which also included money gained from other tax breaks, like property taxes?
Are they receiving 2 tax breaks on the same dollar? Is that legal? My guess is that it is legal!
Poor O’Reilly, I had no idea he was suffering so badly due to his opulence!
And you are right Anita, where is his millions going to go??? To his kids, who will never learn the dignity (as O’Loofah often puts it) of doing a day’s work. They will start off with every advantage given to a child of a multi-millionaire. And yet his over-70 audience laps it up and sympathizes with him. And I know people like this (friends of my mom). I guess tonite he will talk about what a great job-creator he is, and how he can’t hire any more young people (who are respectful, dress correctly and speak proper English) to service him, because of the high taxes he pays.
“…But how much more? How much more can the government take from the affluent without crashing the entire free market economy?”
EXCUSE ME BULLY O’LIELLY: mark my words:
THE AMERICAN ECONOMY NEVER HAS BEEN AND NEVER, EVER WILL BE A “FREE MARKET” ECONOMY!!
You’ve obviously TOTALLY FORGOTTEN about the MASSIVE $700 BILLION PLUS TAXPAYER FUNDED BAILOUT of your Wall Street pals in 2008, especially those LONGTIME PERENNIAL SMIRKING BLOODSUCKERS Jaime Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase) and Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) !!
’Nuff said.
