Bill O’Reilly is very disturbed about President Obama’s plan to raise his taxes. It's all part of his job of looking out for you, of course. Tonight, he told former Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee that he's "looking at" a tax rate of 60% and if that happens, he’ll retire. You may recall O’Reilly made the same threat last September. He also repeated his threat to quit investing “at the level I am now” if his capital gains taxes rise to 40% and to move his money to the Cayman Islands and/or Switzerland.
“The President wants social justice, redistributing the wealth from the few to the many, correct?” O’Reilly said to Goolsbee.
Goolsbee, not surprisingly, disagreed.
O’Reilly continued,
He’s rolling the dice on the economy because his vision could very well fail. And if all of these things got passed, the economy could just collapse because the achievers basically saying, ‘I’m not going to invest any more money.’ I certainly would not invest at the level that I am now. With a 40% hit on anything that I make, I’m just pulling it back. I’m puttin’ it in the Caymans, I’m puttin’ it in Switzerland, I’m puttin’ it some place else. I’m not puttin’ it in here.
…You take the cap off the payroll tax, Social Security, my taxes go up another 5%. It’s really insane to do that to people who have earned their money.”
I believe that’s the real rub for O’Reilly – that he thinks he has earned his money while higher taxes will go to welfare queens loafing on his dime. He really ought to take a look at the working poor: people who work full time but still struggle to meet basic needs. In 2010, the share of working families classified as low income, i.e. earning less than 200 percent of the official poverty threshold, reached 31%. That's a third of working families. While O'Reilly and his fellow Foxies continually whine about paying an unfair proportion of taxes, they always seem to overlook how they earn a disproportionate share of the income.
O’Reilly complained now, “5% are handling 65% of the tax burden.” He added, “I’m looking at 60%, Professor, and I’m not gonna do it. I’ll retire.”
If that’s how you feel about your country, Bill - that you’d rather quit working and move your piles of money to some offshore haven rather than chip in a few dollars more, even when so many of your fellow citizens are struggling just to get by – well, go right ahead.
First of all, explain to me how you retiring is a threat to anyone. Your fans will move on, and everyone else would actually like that.
Second, your idle threats are getting old- if you’re gonna leave the country, do it. If you’re gonna stop investing or paying your taxes, do it. Shit or get off the pot.
1. Nursing homes would have to find a new TV program to use a a nightlight.
2. Unemployable ass-kissers like D-List Dennis Miller would go on food stamps.
3. Someone would have to giveaway a warehouse full of crappy The Factor merchandise.