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.”
If you decide to NOT PAY Social Security you owe some people a serious REFUND.
Got cash?
Thought not.
Social Security is not what got the government into this pickle ~ rather, it was spending too much on things that have no value.
Any young woman who hits on the likes of Ben Stein must be a crack whore looking for her next trick.
STEIN is out of the closet.. he is a political transvestite..
He knows less federal spending is needed.. but wants more government..
You FORCE one person to “work” to fund the Government more than you FORCE another person to.
If you pay 33% of your income to the Government in Taxes, you are an Indentured Servant for four months out of the year. If you pay 10% of your Income to the Government in Taxes, you work only Six Weeks to fulfill your Tax obligation.
Sadly, 48% of the people pay nothing, therefore they are Free Men, with the rest of us paying for them through EITC and other Socialist Programs of course.
Remember the immortal words of Pharaoh Obama, it's all about “fairness”.
Stein isn’t really conservative; he isn’t an economist (although his father was a well known Keynesian); and his opinions don’t matter. Stein is, however, an actor.
People who talk like old Ben are simply defeatists who can see past their own a**holes. He is obviously a socialist. We can cut spending without touching SS and medicare at the moment and without raising taxes. Getting rid of Bozo care will eliminate a huge amount of future debt. How about making Senators and Reps pay for their own medical insurance and making them pay into SS and eliminating their private retirement plans?
Just how much taxes does Ben think these rich people pay now and who does he think pays the bulk of the taxes that keep the country running now?
SS is recently cash negative, but you are right that it has, on a cashflow basis, over the years helped conceal the true deficit. Nevertheless, the government wouldn’t have defaulted on the debt without the SS cashflow.
Leaving cashflow aside, SS contributes a massive off-balance sheet liability. SS and Medicare may have unfunded liabilities of as much as $107 trillion over the next 40 years or so.
He graduated from Columbia University in 1966 with honors in economics. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1970 as valedictorian of his class by election of his classmates. He also studied in the graduate school of economics at Yale. He has worked as an economist at The Department of Commerce, a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, D.C., a trial lawyer in the field of trade regulation at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., a university adjunct at American University in Washington, D.C., at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. At American U. He taught about the political and social content of mass culture. He taught the same subject at UCSC, as well as about political and civil rights under the Constitution. At Pepperdine, he has taught about libel law and about securities law and ethical issues since 1986.
That’s about it. You had better plan to self-finance or keep working. In every game of financial musical chairs the music stops at some point. I think I hear the music fading...
You are correct sir. Stein is a marxist mole masquerading as a conservative.
Oh well.
There goes my respect for Ben Stein.
In 2007 he said there were no problems in the subprime re market. Fail!
Stein has lost touch with the man on the street. He's gone elitist.
He needs a shot of Clear Eyes right in his arse.
Leni
You could also auction citizenship. Rather we seem to be fixated on having the world's poorest and least educated offered it.
What you said BUMP.
The alleged “economist” Ben Stein is well aware that anytime more money - - no matter where that money comes from - - is flushed down the government toilet, it serves ONLY to grow government. He is certainly not so stupid that the concept of “fungibility” confuses him. “Reduce the federal deficit”, my ass.
I am finding myself reluctantly agreeing with several posters who wonder if maybe Stein has been a mole all along.
“Stein, Art Laffer, Charles Payne and others were dead wrong.”
I saw Art Laffer speak one time, and he said something that made me realize that he is an idiot. He said that democrats would not raise taxes or do anything that much different than republicans if they got in power (This is when Bush was president). Evidentally, he does not understand that democrats are Marxist and they beieve in central planning and wealth redistribution.
A B.A. in economics and a low level job for a short period of time at Commerce makes you an economist? Or is it being a lawyer that makes him an economist? Where is his list of peer reviewed articles in economics?
His father, who served on Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors, was a professional economist . Ben Stein is nothing of the sort.
Ben whines about his spending when he has something like 3-4 homes, nice cars, etc.
He's become an elitist dick. He never discusses the spending in anything but generality's.
I like Art, but I get the same impression. He really doesn’t understand what he and we are up against. He seems to think the opposition are mere contrarians who understand what’s in the nation’s best interest and will ultimately do that to save their political skin. Basically, he thinks all Democrats are like Bill Clinton. They’re not.
Means-testing entitlements that we have been FORCED to pay into from day one (I started working at 16) just because now, at 52, I’ve become successful due to hard work and not spending beyond my means is nothing more than wealth distribution socialist crap talk.
I’d be ashamed to even think it’s viable.
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