Take Ben Stein's Money!
Posted on 07/11/2011 7:23:27 PM PDT by markomalley
Ben Stein, an economist, actor, and conservative writer, said taxes should be raised on millionaires and billionaires to help reduce the federal deficit.
“I am in favor of greatly raising the taxes on very wealthy people, millionaires and billionaires. I wouldn't raise the taxes on people making $250,000 a year,” said Stein in a June 29 interview on The O’Reilly Factor, guest-hosted by Laura Ingraham.
Earlier, on June 25, Stein had told Cavuto on Business, “We've got to raise taxes. There's just no way around it. The deficit situation is so serious that while I wish we did not have to raise taxes, we just can't cut spending enough. I wish we could. We can't. We have to raise taxes.”
“Mr. Obama is going to have to do it,” said Stein. “I don't know if the Republicans in the House will go along with it. If they don't, there will be a genuine crisis, and I am frankly frightened about it. I'm extremely concerned about it.”
In the interview with Ingraham, Stein defended his position, saying, “Look, it's a basic arithmetic thing; it's not an ideological thing. We are spending an enormous amount of money that we're not covering with tax revenue; we're borrowing it. At some point we're going to have so much debt that there's going to be a crisis and there will have to be austerity measures here just as they were in Greece.”
Congress has the right to raise taxes on the rich and the president can sign it into law, said Stein, who added that the very wealthy are “not paying enough.” He also said that one “cannot correlate low taxes with high productivity.”
Ingraham remarked that the federal budget is nearly $4 trillion and the national debt is over $14 trillion. She then asked Stein, “Do we have a spending problem? Is the spending a bigger problem than taxing the rich, yes or no?”
Stein said, “The spending is a huge problem, it depends on how you calculate it,” adding that, “We're not going to be able to eliminate Social Security, we're not going to be able -- going to be able to eliminate Medicare. We've got to do both. We've got to cut spending and raise taxes on the rich.”
Take Ben Stein's Money!
I have been working for a long time. I have had numerous jobs. I prefer working for 'rich people.'
Why? their checks don't bounce.
Also, I have never been hired by a politician. Wouldn't work for one even if offered a job.
I have never been hired by someone on welfare.
Conservatives don’t do that. period.
...but RHINO’s do.
Conservatives don’t do that. period.
...but RHINO’s do.
“propose elimination of inheritance.”
Karl Marx beat you to it!
Come on people! What did Bill Gates and Warren Buffett ever do for conservatism? I think that millionaires tend to vote for the Rats. I say screw them! Take their money. As long as the TOTAL income tax amounts to whatever the Laffer Curve says it should be taken from the ‘useful idiots.’ Just who r they?
At the moment the federales have added federal employ retirement funds to the ledger of things they've borrowed.
They've done that before.
The federal government is out of control. The way to get it back into control is to force it to cease spending money it doesn't have on processes it doesn't need to handle.
I read Ben Stein’s musings on spectator.org. He writes in an entertaining way about his wonderful travels and how young women employed in that industry are hitting on him all the time and about all his wellplaced rich friends.
He is so completely self-absorbed.
I am not working to bail out the Democrat party.
Good point....which is why tax should be based on net worth. I pay no taxes at all on my muni bonds income. Rich people have 1000 times more such channels available than me.
Not really. He comes across to me as scared shitless. He thinks he is at risk of losing everything (he is, we all are) and he’s willing to deal with the devil to keep a little of what he’s got. A case of the old Nazi Germany tale of the Jewiah merchant who kept saying “surely it won’t get worse than this” straight up until he boarded the train for the camp.
Yes we will if there is no money to be had. If things hit the wall the house will come down. Stein and Will needs to stop thinking of liberal policies as inevitable.
Not really Stein has always said these kinds of things on TV in the last couple of years.
Ben if free to send in extra if he wants. But he should be honest about how government is going to spend his money. In the previous year, it created jobs that on average cost the taxpayers over $120,000 per year. And this is compared to the median household income of $52,026. In other words, every dollar that we allow the federal government to spend, it gets less than 50% in value.
Half pay no income tax at all. Many get money back.
Tax the non-productive and the illegals first.
You are right. Many in the political class have exactly that problem. They are beneficieries of the corupt system of money lending and the govt ponzi scheme and don’t want to experience the pain necessary to cast off the yoke of tyranny.
No, it’s not. He’s been saying this for years. He’s consistent.
A high income does not mean you are rich.
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