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Hi, kids. Let’s check out Townhall and find out what Tea Party Command has on its mind today. (Yesterday’s topic was “We know that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are having rallies in D.C. to make fun of us, and while we don’t want to appear to be humorless nuts by complaining about them, we HATE THEM SO MUCH for making fun of us.”)

Hmm, it seems that today’s theme is: “You should be HONORED to pay a billionaire’s taxes for him, after all he’s done for you. So, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, even unto the next life.”

Here’s John Stossel to explain it all to even the most ungrateful of Americans.

Taxing the Rich

Progressives want to raise taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year because they say it’s wrong for the rich to be “given” more money.

Granted, it is wrong to give money to millionaire pan handlers (instead, give them half-eaten sandwiches or some toilet paper, as they will just use cash for hookers and drugs). But I have never heard anybody talking about taxes say that it’s wrong to give the rich more money. Instead, they say stuff like, “The richest 20% of Americans own 85% of all the wealth in America, but they pay only 72% of the taxes. If they were contributing their fair share, they would be paying at least 85% of the taxes, instead of passing on their tax burden to the middle class.” (I don’t know why Stossel got it so wrong — do you think maybe he doesn’t actually know any people, or is he just stupid?)

As I’ve said before, a tax cut is not a handout. It simply means government steals less. What progressives want to do is take money from some — by force — and spend it on others. It sounds less noble when plainly stated.

And what Stossel wants to is force the middle class pay more for the government and its services, a goverment that benefits the rich more than it does them. What Stossel wants is to make the middle class forget about college for their kids so that the rich can buy another private island or luxury yacht. What Stossel wants is for YOU to pay a larger portion of your income on taxes than he does, even though he makes millions for being a jerk, while you have to work for your money. It sounds really wrong and immoral when plainly stated.

But Stossel claims that the rich aren’t in it for the Impressionist paintings or the Ferraris — no, they do it all for YOU, by, um, creating jobs for art forgers or Ferrari mechanics. And if we don’t show our gratitude to the rich by giving them tax breaks, they will just pack up their billions and go home to their private islands, or take their luxury yachts to shack up with their money in Aruba. If you don’t believe Stossel, just ask the revered Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, who knows something about making money, says of course the rich will leave when hit with higher taxes. “I know these people,” he told me. “They’re international people. Whether they live here or live in a place like Switzerland doesn’t really matter to them.”

Personally, it doesn’t matter to me either where they live. But if they make money here or have money here, they should pay their fair share of taxes here. And since America offers a much better environment for making money (and not just hiding money) than does Swizerland, I doubt they will be leaving any time soon. So, I call your bluff, Mr. Trump and Mr. Stossel!

You haven’t left, I told him.

“I haven’t left yet. …

Hey, don’t let the door hit you on your way out, Donnie.

“Look, the rich people are going to leave. And other people are going to leave. You’re going to end up with lots of people that don’t produce. And then that’s the spiral. That’s the end.”

Can we afford to live in a country where nobody produces Trump towers or “The Apprentice”? Look deep into your soul, and then vote to increase Stossel’s income (a stupidity tax?) until he is forced to leave the country.

Now, let’s hear from young Katie Pavlich, who screams Youth of America, Stop Drinking Obama’s Kool-Aid and instead start guzzling from the Townhall teats.

If America’s youth want any chance at having a stable economic future, free from total government control, I suggest they put down the Kool-Aid and start drinking some tea.

Those are your only choices, young people: Total Government Control or joining up with far-right nut jobs.

Katie is also here to speak up for oppressed and disadvantaged rich people, whom the President so cruelly defamed in a recent speech.

President Obama went on to slam big corporations and “rich” people while failing to mention that those evil people and corporations give recent college graduates jobs, a very rare thing this day in age.

College graduates finding employment is very rare “this day in age”? That is indeed troubling. I guess illegal immigrants from Mexico have stolen all the entry-level positions that the young people of other days in ages used to get, leaving today’s graduates no choice but to work for Evil, Inc. as an Assistant Editor (especially if their editing skills aren’t all that great).

Katie Pavlich, a May 2010 journalism graduate of the University of Arizona and former Townhall.com editorial intern, is Assistant Editor at Townhall.com.

But Katie does have statistics to support her claims about how rare it is for other recent college grads to find work.

According to the Economic Policies Institute, unemployment among people 16-24 years old is 18.9 percent

Personally, I will not rest until every 16-year-old has at least one full-time job, so that they can help pay the taxes of those billionaires who are counting on them.

But, hey, let’s look at Katie’s stats again: apparently over 80% of people 16-24 ARE employed. So, if Katie is telling the truth about how rare it is for college grads to get jobs, then once you graduate from MIT and turn 24, you are either fired or send to the Carousel from Logan’s Run, and then executed. And the news gets even worse!

. . . and on top of that, a majority of college graduates have been so discouraged looking for full employment that they have stopped looking altogether.

So, over 50% of college graduates not only don’t have jobs, they aren’t even looking anymore, due to clinical depression or something (their ennui undoubtedly caused by the knowledge that any day now Donald Trump will be fleeing the country, taking with him such jobs as “Toupee Maker For Dorks.” Things are much worse than I even imagined!

Youth fortunate to actually land a job after graduating may not have one on January 1, 2011, due to President Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to extend the Bush tax cuts, leading to the biggest tax hike in American history. More taxes equal less money to pay workers, especially in the middle of a recession.

Katie, if you had taken a job somewhere other than Evil, Inc. you might find that “More taxes equal less dividends for the share holders,” or “More taxes equal a million dollar pay cut for the CEO” or even “More taxes equal we fire a few Washington lobbyists.”

Without this tax-cut extension, employers will be forced to cut employees along with salaries, and lucky recent graduates will be first ones the chopping block.

Katie, is that what the Senior Editor told you? But here’s an idea you can pitch to the Town Hall Board: Instead of firing the recent grads who make the least, fire the senior employees, who make the most. That’s the evil thing to do. Or, just fire John Stossel, since he’s a douche bag.

31 Responses to “Take a Billionaire to Lunch”

A John Stossel neutering and a Logan’s Run reference? This day can’t possibly get any better.

do you think maybe he doesn’t actually know any people, or is he just stupid?

For John Stossel, that’s not an “or” question.

Do you know who actually fled high taxes by moving to France? The Rolling Stones! O.K., there were some drug busts involved also. Still, I’m not holding my breath waiting for Donald Trump and John Stossel to emulate them, rent a villa, and record their decade-defining* double album, “Exiles on Wall Street.”

*What, you were voting for “Tusk”?

As usual, they never bother to look up what the tax rate actually is in Switzerland.

In the USA, capital gains taxes are based partly on the duration of the holding: if your capital gain is on an asset held more than a year, AND you’re in the 25% income tax bracket, THEN, your tax will be 15%. Below that tax bracket, your rate is 0%.

In Switzerland, the capital gains tax rate varies based on several things, such as the type of investment, but for real estate–the most common kind–it averages 18%.

Income taxes in Switzerland are a little more complicated, because the CH had three layers of taxation and the confederal level is the lowest (unlike the USA, where about 60% of taxes are collected at the federal level). The top bracket can be as high as 40% in some cantons, and there is a special withholding tax for extra-high incomes.

Someone MIGHT possibly have assured Stossel that some cantons allow residents (who are not citizens of Switzerland) to enter into a “fiscal deal” in which they pay a fixed low rate on overseas income. This deal NEVER applies to income earned in Switzerland.

So some cantons basically allow a person whose income consists of money rolling in–or rentseekers–to be assessed on the basis of fictitiously low income. This is morally compromised behavior, because the CH does not allow Swiss nationals to do the same; it’s basically just an arrangement whereby the CH gets to benefit from super-rich avoiding the taxes of other countries by moving to the CH, provided none of that income is earned in the CH. It’ not like the CH has tax rates that really are lower than the USA, it’s just that it helps non-Swiss avoid paying tax to countries OTHER THAN the CH.

Note: “rent” is a term of art in economics; it refers to a premium that the owner of a productive factor pays in excess of what would be needed to induce the owner to bring that unit of factor to market.

So, for example, if I have a spare tractor, and someone pays me $10/hr to use it despite the fact I’d be happy to let her use it for $2/hr, then $8/hr is rent. Economically, it’s unproductive; it’s WELFARE TO ME.

The economic rationale for progressive income taxes–as opposed to the moral one–is that most high incomes are in fact rent.

What most on the right arguing this tax=slavery nonsense, fails to mention is that it’s a primary government function to arbitrate/regulate the economy. Our government happens to do little in this respect and as such allows many questionable (on moral/ethical grounds) practices to function where the net effect is basically to strip mine wealth from the lower and middle classes up to the top 2%. For example, if because of lax usury laws, the credit card industry can change your interest rate from 7% to 32% that is a case of redistributing your wealth upward. In this respect, taxes on the wealthy for the socially beneficial, is really a matter of righting the original wrong of legislating an uneven playing field that front loads advantage to the rich.
redistributing the wealth

As Anna said, government’s primary task is to spend the common pool of money.We elect a person or party because they will spend in line with our own priorities – helping poor people or waging war, say.We do not elect them because s/he thinks gays are icky.That would be really silly, right?

Hey, Stossel, you mewling little weasel, why don’t you go Galt already? I’m certain the Swiss would be delighted to compensate you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed for your entirely predictable series of thumbsuckers about how global warming is a hoax and why the rich deserve to survive catastrophes. I’m guessing your shiny brand of grade 7 Rand-crushing social Darwinism will be real popular in a European-style socialist democracy.

Seriously, I’ve always wondered: are our rich really so fucking stupid they don’t understand marginal tax rates, or are they just such morally leprous assholes they figure we won’t? Because taxing you slightly more on everything after your first quarter million in income annually seems like a net good to me anyway, and if it makes you sulking bastards slink away and gift some other nation with your super productive skills at repackaging the labor of others to skim off premiums for yourselves, then all the better.

Meanwhile, us non-productive parasites will just keep cleaning toilets and styling hair and building cabinets for a living, none of which, I grant you, is sufficiently valuable enough to compare with the obvious economic benefits to society of the guys at AIG selling each other bad debts and betting against them.

You know, I’ve always hated Stossel, he’s seemed like such a calculating grifter. But it’s gotten worse the last decade or so, which he’s spent standing on an eighteen-inch curb vowing to jump if everyone doesn’t stop what they’re doing and try to talk him down. If you think you’re so goddamned valuable to us, and we’ll all be really, really sorry when you’re gone, just fucking go already since pretty clearly making us miserable is your goal anyway. Unless you’re actually worried we won’t, you know, notice.

“Donald Trump, who knows something about making money, says of course the rich will leave when hit with higher taxes. “I know these people,” he told me. “They’re international people. Whether they live here or live in a place like Switzerland doesn’t really matter to them.” ”

And it doesn’t matter to the US government, which taxes citizens’ global income wherever they live.

I’m a young recent graduate whose had a hard time finding a job (just got one – but only for the month of October) and I’m not feeling very grateful to the highest tax bracket.

Tax cuts for the richest do not shift the tax burden to the middle class, it largely puts the burden on the working class who rely heavily on public services.

‘Course, what neither of these fools bothers to note is that we’ve had these tax cuts in place for nine years, and what do we have to show for it?

An economy in the tank, a society that is being stratified into something resembling feudalism, and a massive budget deficit ( I mean, ya just can’t fight two wars and cut taxes at the same time….).

Let’s face it: the evidence that the St. Ronnie School of Economics doesn’t work is right in our faces. But I guess these rightie types can’t see that through their rose-colored glasses.

“You’re going to end up with lots of people that don’t produce.”

I love how someone can say this with a straight face. Like, yeah, I know, all those rich people who are putting together cars and serving lattes and cleaning the hotels and trucking your supplies across the country and pick-and-packing the online orders and harvesting the potatoes, we’re gonna miss those….

Oh, wait.

What do you call Donald Trump and John Stossel together on a boat headed somewhere?

If it sinks, you call it “a start.”

Good point, tls. However, the super rich do produce jobs. Mostly in places like Mexico, Shanghai and Malaysia. By eliminating jobs here.

When super rich people do produce something in the US, it’s often something like the new Yankee Stadium, which seats fewer people than the old one but has more luxury skyboxes, which cost a fortune mostly paid by taxpayers, which will probably do even less for South Bronx economic development than the old one did, and which sacrificed a great New York cultural and architectural monument to fatten the wallets of the Steinbrenner family and other shiftless louts. Woulda made more sense to melt down the Statue of Liberty for the copper and put up a PVC replica.

Of course Trump also has an exceptional record of diverting tax revenues toward his own projects. This is what is known as “producing” in his world. I’d call it stealing, which is the term Stossel uses for taxes on the rich. (Taxing the poor isn’t stealing because they didn’t have much to begin with.)

George Carlin was right: The rich take everything, the middle class do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle class and make sure they keep showing up for their jobs.

So let’s keep those tax cuts going, and let’s take some federal money to set up some gourmet-soup-and-espresso kitchens in Newport, Vail, and Malibu, maybe divert some public transit money for public yachting off Montauk and Key West.

Miss Pavlich is another data point supporting my observation that Wingnut Women look like freaks. And I mean the woodwork-squeaking kind, not the circus-sideshow kind.

It’s the eyes. Why do so many vitriol-spewing ultraconservative females have eyes that seem to say, “I’m ready to rip my clothes off and do you right here on the desk?” Is it real, perhaps a repressed sexuality that manifests in kink (a la catholic schoolgirls), and is betrayed by the eyes? Or is it just a superficial veneer that the nutter men are drawn to, a trait that selects for success in an environment dominated by chauvinism and testosterone?

Not to say that there aren’t a lot of hot liberal women (Katrina VdH, you’re at the top of my list) but the conservative women literally smoulder. Geller, Marsden, Coulter, Cupp – even Kat Harris and Michelle Bachmann – all have a predatory look in their eye that I don’t notice with as many liberal and progressive ladies. To be sure, the right wing also has more than their fair share of vacant-looking blondes. An observation which –since examples like Megyn Kelly are anything but vacant– tends to support the superficial selection trait idea, if only by induction.

Whatever. I’m not ashamed to be attracted to women like Michelle Malkin and even Bachmann, even if I detest what comes out of their mouths. If my impressions are correct, they’d consent to wearing a ballgag in my fetish dungeon, anyway.

“those evil people and corporations give recent college graduates jobs, a very rare thing this day in age.”
There’s something wrong with this sentence. Could it be that these evil corporations aren’t very good at doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is to give people jobs? Why not? Because they’re trying to keep all the money to themselves? Why, that would be… evil! Why is she not complaining about that?

I really dislike this canard about how it’s rich people that create jobs with their personal income. It seems to imagine something like a Victorian household where the gruff and aloof patriarch has a retinue of servants bustling about, not allowed to look him in the eye, glad that they’re not abandoned to the streets… yet.

“Donald Trump, who knows something about making money” — really?

Uh-huh. He started with 9 figures of seed money from his father. His first project was built thanks to a 40-year tax abatement from NYC. He has filed for business bankruptcy at least twice. He claimed that he did not have to repay a $40 million loan to Deutsche Bank because the collapse of the economy was “an Act of God”. In court papers, the bank noted that “Trump is no stranger to overdue debt.” Most recently, Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

So, he knows how to take money from relatives, get tax breaks from government, and stiff his creditors.

Guy sure does know how to make money, all right.

“If we tax the rich they will run away to a country where we can’t tax them, so we must not tax them HERE so they will stay HERE and not pay taxes! And by not paying taxes they will create jobs and money for people who do pay taxes. Or something.”

@Carrie Prejean’s Little Friend…
dude, that’s just crazy you’re seeing. Walk/run away.

David in NYC:
I knew about that 20 years ago just from reading Spy magazine. Anyone who thinks Trump is a genius businessman never bothered to look at his many failures.

I love how these beginner wing-nut editors all write like very, very good high school students.

Plus, “leading to the biggest tax hike in American history.” O rly? A hike of what–three or four points?

But why stop there? “…leading to the biggest tax hike in American history as well as causing the environment to be destroyed and harming our right to pursue happiness.”

Whoa, fuck forbid Donald Trump leaves the country. What would we ever do without a self-important cock with a bad comb-over who builds ugly shit and makes shitty television shows?

“You’re going to end up with lots of people that don’t produce.”

What valuable product does the depressingly stupid Stossel “produce”?

Extend the tax cuts so that Donald and the Gang can pretend to create more private sector jobs. Worked last time, if you consider government subsidized defense contractors the private sector.

KWillow, judging from that pic, gay yachthand porn.

Seriously, what is it going to take to get these assholes to finally go Galt?

“the middle class do all the work and pay all the taxes”

That’s really not true. A great deal of production is done by the working class in the United States, and most of our wealth is generated by an even poorer working class worldwide. The American middle class is fairly small, regardless of whether they’re productive or not.

I accidentally watched Stossel’s show on Fox last week (I was looking for Huckabee-don’t judge me) and the premise was that he tosses out some bullshit then presents someone to back it up. It goes like this: Stossel says that black people love living in the projects and sponging off the government.Cut to film of a black woman (Star Parker) talking about how she loved living in the projects and sponging off the government until she finally saw the light.
Then came Stossel: unemployment benefits discourage job seeking. Cut to random man saying he could have gotten a job sooner but waited until his benefits ran out. So we don’t have to take Stossels word for it, he has the anecdotal evidence to back it up.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Teh stoopid!!! It BURRRRNNNNSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

So which crusty ol’ republicunt bastid did THIS illiterate child blow all through “college,” in order to go straight to the head of the line for “Shit Batshit-Crazy Teabagger-Ravers” jobs?

I had an internship or two in college, and I didn’t go straight to “Assistant Editor” of SHIT!!!!!! And are we sure that she went to “The University of Arizona,” and not “THE UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX”??!?!?!!?

I know, I know, it’s all my fault that I didn’t go at broadcasting with rhinestone-studded kneepads and a skanky polyester stripper shirt like this child is wearing (with enough eyeliner for 3 goth drag queens!), but dammit, they weren’t just handing-out editing jobs willy-fucking-nilly then, or HERE, either.

I can’t even deal with Stossel, it’s too fucking much. I just had to start taking blood-pressure medicine (12 years in NOLA, going from 300 lbs. to 180 in a year of radio slavery, six months on the road, looking for a gig, and then eight wasted months with NO gig in Miami — through ALL OF IT, on and off the fucking narcotics, and I was ***ALWAYS**** 120/80. ALWAYS. Seven years north of I-10, including L’Hotel des Fouquetards & Crackery’s Shittiest Ghetto, and *NOW* I’m on BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICINE!!!!!!), I am NOT going to have a fucking stroke just to poke at THAT fucking FAILURE OF THE PRIVATE SCHOOL SYSTEM with a sharp stick. Fuck, I remember back when he & Geraldo were (allegedly) TRYING TO BE “JOURNALISTS,” back before the Disneyfication and Clear Channel Conquest of the media beast.

Stossel USED TO BE a “consumer advocate,” trying to protect EVERYDAY PEOPLE from being RIPPED OFF BY CROOKED CORPORATIONS AND SKEEZY RETAILERS. I guess we know who paid HIS first-class trip down the road to moral failure, don’t we. He ain’t bitchin’ about any corporations NOW, is he…

Like Papa Zita: As for “contributions” from HUMP, *THE* most-often-bankrupted OUTRIGHT FUCKING SCAMMER in this country after Dumbya himself, he would NEVER leave Jersey, because Ronnie Ray-Gun corporate welfare is what allows that illiterate white-trash to slap his name on fugly constructions and claim ‘credit’ for having made HIS FATHER’S MONEY, which props-up all of his fucking ILLEGAL & IMMORAL DEBTS, which we, the public, ARE **PAYING**. All I need is a roll of duct tape and a straight razor, and THAT ignorant piece of shit will FINALLY shut the fuck up and get off of my television.

No, no, I won’t CUT the idiotic twunt, that’d be too MERCIFUL. Just shave him as bald as he really is (bust that head ’til the white meat shows!), then make him actually get a fucking JOB.

And when, SOMEBODY, PLEASE TELL ME ***WHEN*** it will become INTERNATIONAL LAW THAT SPELLCHECK DOES ***NOT*** EQUAL “WRITING”??!??!?!?! The aforementioned republicunt twinkie could not POSSIBLY have graduated from a REAL “journalism” school whilst minting chestnuts like “this day in age”!!!!!!

And Carrie Prejean’s Little Friend? Dood, sounds like you’re looking for THE most-stridently-screaming batshit-crazy psycho-cunts on earth. Well, taste is subjective, but that’s just flat-out MASOCHISM.

Lastly, I *highly* enjoyed THIS exchange:

“What valuable product does the depressingly stupid Stossel “produce”?” — KWillow

“KWillow, judging from that pic, gay yachthand porn.” — D. Sidhe

CLASSIC!

Although the Stossel ‘stache is TRULY reminiscent of ’70s omnisexual porn (not TOO terribly far-off of the Hedgehog’s stache itself!), I *would* GREATLY appreciate y’all not putting images of THAT sort into my oft-dented skull. A dain-bramaged woman can only take so much in one lifetime, y’know. I’m just glad that I hadn’t recently eaten when you drew that horrific (and tiny!) cartoon in my cerebrum.

Something to say?