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There Aren't Enough "Rich" to Tax
The Rush Limbaugh Program ^ | 7 August 2011 | Rush Limbaugh

Posted on 08/06/2011 11:11:18 AM PDT by COBOL2Java

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We're into statistics today and the unemployment statistics are just fascinating in the way that we're being spun. It's as bad as the way we were spun on this debt deal, and the more you look at this debt deal, what a disaster that is.

I'm gonna explain why as the program unfolds. This is from the UK Daily Mail. You're not gonna see this in the American media. Speaking of the American media, remember all of those years, the Bush years, the media apparatchiks on TV were trying to talk down the economy and trying to talk down the market. They did everything they could to talk down the economy. Why, it was almost as though they wanted Bush to fail. Shazam, it was almost as though they wanted Bush to fail. You remember.

For four years running at 4.7% unemployment, at 5% unemployment, at 5.6% unemployment, they were proclaiming we were either on the verge of a recession or were in one. They were out trying to find the worst sob stories. Now they're doing everything they can to talk it up. Do they really think we're such fools that we don't see this? When unemployment started spiraling upward, what did we get from 'em? We got stories on how wonderful that is. Families are finding one another again, friends have social time, the stress and strain of working is no longer a part of anybody's day. It really is a new perspective on life. All the wonderful aspects of not having a job, all the great things you could do if you didn't have any work you had to do. "Funemployment," they called it. And now they're doing everything they can, they're just incapable of telling us the truth, totally incapable.

The question here is who will tank first? Right now it looks like we're in a race to see whether the country or Obama will tank first. It looks like it's running neck and neck here. And the trick here is to make Obama tank first. Now, this UK Daily Mail story that you will not see in the US media. "Soak the rich, eh? They do not have the money. A report from the Internal Revenue Service found that the rich --" and the rich are defined this way: 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more. What do you think those 8,274 people earned combined in 2009? Snerdley, take a wild guess. All of you out there, take a wild guess in your mind. I'm not asking you to call and I'm gonna tell you what the number is here in just a second. But just think about this, 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more.

Now, you got Buffett in there and Gates at their $40 to 50 billion, but that's their net worth. What do they earn? It's a different number. But you take all of those people, just give me a number, what do you think, 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more, what was the combined total income earned of all those 8,274 people in 2009? One trillion, $250 billion. That's what you say, Brian? Snerdley says a trillion. The answer is $240 billion. Brian, you were $10 billion off. That's it. That's right. That's it. The 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more earned a total of $240 billion in 2009.

"Even of you confiscated every dime they earned, you would barely have enough money to cover government spending for 24 days." In fact, this $240 billion, I mean that's pretty close to the actual real number of budget cuts in the debt deal when you strip everything away. Now, about 25% of that money already goes to the federal government for federal income. So actually that $240 billion would run the government for 18 days.

"Another 227,000 people earned $1 million or more in 2009. Millionaires averaged taxes of 24.4% of their income -- up from 23.1% in 2008." Now, you might be asking, how did that happen? Well, the Bush tax cuts, folks. Obama's tax increases hadn't started, and Obama's not immaculated yet. "They, too, did not earn enough money to come anywhere close to covering the annual deficits that are $1.5 trillion a year." So 8,274 people who earn $10 million per year or more, earn a total of $240 billion in 2009. Another 227,000 people earned a million dollars or more in 2009. But it doesn't come anywhere close to covering the deficit of $1.5 trillion.

"Barack Obama was the first president to sign a budget with a $1 trillion deficit into law. In fact, all the taxpayers -- including the ones who get a refund check bigger than the withholding taxes they paid -- have the money." The point of this is next time you hear Obama or a Democrat say we've got to raise taxes on the rich, it's not about getting revenue to run the government because they don't have the money. Now, I've been doing this show for 23 years, and I have been employing this data, whatever the accurate data was for the year I was disclosing it, it hasn't changed in terms of percentages. Confiscate every dollar earned by people who make $10 million a year or more and you run the country for barely over two weeks. That has not changed since I first heard of this statistic 23, 25 years ago. It hasn't changed. As it is, these people are already paying 70% of the total income tax burden! So there's no economic growth hidden away here in a tax increase on these people.

How does taking money out of the private sector grow it? And that's what tax increases do. How in the world does taking money out of the private sector cause it to grow? Mathematically impossible, folks. From Reuters: "Total adjusted gross income reported on tax returns, measured in 2009 dollars, was $7.626 trillion, down from $8.233 trillion in 2008 and $8.989 trillion in 2007. Total adjusted gross income was up only slightly from the $7.475 trillion reported in 2001, when there were 10 million fewer taxpayers."

Individual tax collections equaled 15.4% of all income. "Doubling federal income taxes for everyone would still leave us $400 billion or so shy of balancing the budget." That's the bottom line. Doubling federal income taxes for everybody would raise $1.1 trillion, $400 billion shy of the deficit. I know these numbers are hard to follow, but all this is gonna be on RushLimbaugh.com later today, and I suggest you go there, print it out, or e-mail it, make electronic copies, PDF, whatever you want, and spread this around. This needs to be seen by many people. It's not going to be in the US media.

END TRANSCRIPT


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: rush; soaktherich; taxtherich
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1 posted on 08/06/2011 11:11:24 AM PDT by COBOL2Java
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To: COBOL2Java

Tax the rich or thou shall not covet other people’s stuff. Choose this day whom you will serve.


2 posted on 08/06/2011 11:14:32 AM PDT by all the best
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To: COBOL2Java

3 posted on 08/06/2011 11:18:10 AM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: COBOL2Java

Tax the rich only works if you define rich as anyone making more than $40,000.


4 posted on 08/06/2011 11:19:32 AM PDT by Drango (NO-vember is payback for April 15th)
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To: COBOL2Java
"There Aren't Enough "Rich" to Tax"

Most everyone knows that. Most everyone will also soon know what the real objective is.

5 posted on 08/06/2011 11:20:35 AM PDT by Baynative (If the government was in charge of the desert , we'd soon have a shortage of sand.)
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To: COBOL2Java

Facts once again getting in the way of the propaganda!


6 posted on 08/06/2011 11:23:49 AM PDT by LiteKeeper ("Who is John Galt?")
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To: COBOL2Java

...and the number of rich certainly isn’t increasing.


7 posted on 08/06/2011 11:28:19 AM PDT by BookmanTheJanitor
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To: Drango
Tax the rich only works if you define rich as anyone making more than $40,000.

Got a job? You're "the rich."

8 posted on 08/06/2011 11:36:05 AM PDT by Steely Tom (Obama goes on long after the thrill of Obama is gone)
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To: COBOL2Java

The rich is anyone making more than you.


9 posted on 08/06/2011 11:37:20 AM PDT by SkyDancer (You know, they invented wheelbarrows to teach government employees how to walk on their hind legs.)
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To: COBOL2Java
That is such a good point and should be explained by the Right to a mass audience[ not just to the choir ] of all political persuasions then these Lefty Town Criers who persistently waste our time calling for:

"tax the rich"..."tax the rich"

even from the President's Peeps...would find they were "out of style..so over" in their marketing of bumper sticker rhetoric.

These leaders have no plan and/or original thought in their heads.

10 posted on 08/06/2011 11:41:28 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
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To: COBOL2Java

“Taxing the rich” has never been about balancing the budget or reducing the deficit.


11 posted on 08/06/2011 11:43:57 AM PDT by DPMD (~)
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To: COBOL2Java

Cold hard facts to Democrats are like sunshine to a vampire.


12 posted on 08/06/2011 11:45:35 AM PDT by Jvette
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To: COBOL2Java

After you eat the rich then you eat the middle class..
When everybody is poor the poor eat each other..

Socialism is cannibalistic.. parasitic or both.. at different stages..


13 posted on 08/06/2011 11:48:10 AM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole...)
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Comment #14 Removed by Moderator

To: SkyDancer
I came up with a handy way to determine if you're considered rich. If the politicians talk about cutting middle-income taxes, and raising taxes on "the rich," watch what happens to your taxes. If they go down or stay the same, you're middle income. If they go up, then you know the government classifies you as "the rich."

I've always been in the latter, even when I was making <$40K. Watch what they do, not what they say. One exception in the past 20 years: The "Bush Tax Cuts." My taxes really did go down. But that was the one time.

15 posted on 08/06/2011 12:18:06 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (Oh, well, any excuse to buy a new gun is good enough for me.)
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To: Cyber Liberty

Yeah, I’m in that range too. I’ve been overseas long enough not to pay US tax but the Aussies get me anyway. LOL


16 posted on 08/06/2011 12:37:48 PM PDT by SkyDancer (You know, they invented wheelbarrows to teach government employees how to walk on their hind legs.)
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To: COBOL2Java

“Doubling federal income taxes for everybody would raise $1.1 trillion, $400 billion shy of the deficit.”

In that case Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits will need to be cut. Rush will not admit this of course - don’t want to upset the audience or the sponsors.


17 posted on 08/06/2011 3:01:14 PM PDT by KantianBurke
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To: COBOL2Java

RepvCooper Rat Tennessee told Neil Cavuto you can’t tax the 51% that pay no taxes because they don’t have any money.

While it is true they have less, there s a hell of a lot of them. a hundred bucks here, a hundred bucks there, pretty soon you’re talking real money

Tax the 51% Eliminate the income tax and institute the flat tax or something on consumption


18 posted on 08/06/2011 3:09:51 PM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 ....Flash mobs are trickle down leftwing REDISTRIBUTION))
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To: Steely Tom

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2759727/posts

You Might Be Rich if....


19 posted on 08/06/2011 3:28:30 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
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To: DPMD
I got into a "discusion" with a guy at work. He pretty much parrots liberal talking points. And pretty much parrots liberal rhetoric and name calling about "teabaggers".

So one day we were talking about taxes, and he said the rich don't pay their share, yada yada yada...the middle class blah blah blah. So I asked how many kids he had (I already knew, 2). I then pointed out that the government spends about $11,000 per student on public education. I then asked how much his property taxes were. About $6k. I said $22k is alot more than $6k, and SOMEBODY ELSE was paying HIS SHARE for HIS KIDS. And I doubt it was another "middle" class person as they'd be in the same boat he's in.

We then talked about income taxes. He told me he was probably in the 28% tax range.

I pointed out that this years deficit alone was $1.6 TRILLION, and that there was about 310 million people in the US. That comes to $5,160 for EVERY man woman AND CHILD. I then, on paper, listed his approximate income, deducted for his standard exemptions, property tax, mortgage interest, union dues, 401k, work clothes. Then I figured his tax payment. He had no clue about the different tax rates and levels they kicked in at. I then used the married filing jointly vs single tax rate, and the adjusted gross inc vs gross inc. Well, with his adjusted gross income he ALMOST made it out of the 15% bracket,and his yearly taxes didn't even cover his share of the deficit for him and his wife, let alone his kids. And that was JUST the deficit.

About a week later, he was scoffing at me about the "teabaggers" and the debt ceiling, and once again spewing CNNs talking points.

I then mocked his mental capabilitilies, and asked him if he ever got past remedial Jr High math. He snarled "yes, of course".

So we did basic math. Took $100,000 as a random starting point for investment, had a 15% return (as all investers make HUGE returns) which means a $15,000 return. We taxed that at 35%, which he thinks all investments should be taxed at. We took the remainder and copied the previous calculations, so that we'd have 2 theoretical tax years.

We then took $100,000 and had a return of 15% but taxed that at 10%. Well it was obvious that there was more tax revenue at the 35% rate than the 10% rate. I then continued the earning and taxing cycle until the 10% tax revenue matched the first 35% tax revenue, about 12-15 cycles, I forget. Then I went one more, and low and behold the tax revenue earned increased faster under the 10% tax bracket than the 35%, once the 10% had caught up to the 35%.

My coworker said we couldn't cut taxes that much now. I made the point that he likes to denounce the Reagan tax cuts, and that we should still be at those rates. That the tax revenues today, are because of the tax cuts done years ago.

He's been rather quiet lately, and nowhere near as smug.

I think he's finding out that "teabaggers" aren't as stupid as he thinks. And that he's not quite as smart as he thinks he is.

Its kind of hard to tout someones superior knowledge and understanding of a subject, when they don't even know the basics by which the subject is defined. Its even harder to deride an obviously stupid "teabagger" when the "teabagger" knows stats and facts and their usage, from memory, and they can't.

Everything he "thought" HE KNEW, I think he's beginning to realise he doesn't "understand" as much as he thinks. Its one thing to spout rhetoric. Its another to prove it.

20 posted on 08/06/2011 3:46:46 PM PDT by mountn man (The pleasure you get from life, is equal to the attitude you put into it.)
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