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Feb. 11, 2022 - Epoch Times
15:18
Larry Elder DEBUNKS FIve Lies About The Rich and Inequality
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Time Text
Wealth Concentration Debate 00:05:53
All the Democrats obsess over wealth and income inequality, don't they?
We need a federal jobs guarantee.
And we've needed a federal jobs guarantee for a very long time.
We should not accept unemployment at 3%, 4%, 7%.
There should be no unemployment in our country.
We are the wealthiest nation on earth.
We need to redesign our economy so that wealth is not continually concentrated in the hands of a few, but everyone gets to share equitably in the wealth.
Federal jobs guarantee, $15 minimum wage, prevailing wage for all workers, and more equity in terms of worker pay and CEO pay.
Because we are living during the time of the Gilded Age, right?
Like wealth inequality is so bad, as bad as the Gilded Age.
How do you unpack that horse bleep on stilts?
My goodness.
There are five left-wing lies told about wealth and income inequality.
This is based upon a paper done by an economist named Robert Tanner, except he called them myths.
They're not myths when they're pushed by people like Representative Bowman.
They're lies.
Inequality has never been worse.
It's never been this wide.
The gap between the rich and the poor has never been this yawning.
But all kidding aside, we have not seen this huge concentration of wealth.
And the folks at the top aren't bad guys.
I get in trouble in my party when I say wealthy Americans are just as patriotic as poor folks.
I've found no distinction.
I really haven't.
But this gap is yawning.
It's gaping.
First of all, the equality gap is not nearly as yawning as the left says it is.
They fail to take into consideration taxes paid by the top, and they fail to take into consideration benefits given to the bottom.
Quote, The top 1% of tax filers earn 19% of U.S. income, but in 2013, they paid 37.8% of federal income taxes.
That number is now probably close to 40%.
The wealthy pay a disproportionate percentage of taxes.
If anything, you could argue that based upon their income, the wealthy are overtaxed.
Quote, at the same time, lower income earners benefit disproportionately from a variety of wealth transfer programs.
The feds alone provide more than 100 anti-poverty programs, dozens of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits directly to individuals.
Taking the existing redistribution into account and the taxes paid by the top 1% significantly reduces inequality.
But even if that weren't the case, is income inequality and wealth inequality by definition a bad thing?
The rich didn't earn their money.
False!
If you got a business, you didn't build that.
Somebody else made that happen.
I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.
First of all, Americans don't really resent rich people.
They want to get rich too.
What they resent is the assertion that the money was not earned.
It is simply not true.
One report found that two-thirds of high-income, net-worth Americans could be considered to be self-made, compared to 3% who inherited the majority of their wealth.
Among the wealthy New Americans, 80% reported that they earned rather than inherited their wealth.
Another survey found that 70% of wealthy Americans either grew up middle class or lower than middle class.
Even among those with assets of over 5 million, only one-third of them grew up wealthy.
And there's this idea that the rich got rich by stock trading.
I am not a destroyer of companies.
I am a liberator of them.
The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, According to one survey of the top 1% of American earners, less than 14% were involved in banking or finance.
Roughly a third were entrepreneurs or managers of non-financial businesses, 16% were doctors or other medical professionals, lawyers accounted for slightly more than 8%, and engineers, scientists, and computer professionals another 6.6%.
Regarding sports and actors, sports and entertainment figures comprised Two percent.
The other thing about rich people, they work really, really hard.
They earn it.
Get this.
One study found that those in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work more than 40 hours a week dropped almost 40 percent since 1980.
But among the top 20 percent of earners, those who work in excess of 49 hours a week increased by almost 80 percent.
The chairman of NYU sociology department concludes that, quote, high income folks work more hours than lower wage earners do, end of quote.
Why Rich Stay Rich 00:09:17
Is this thing on?
The rich stay rich.
The poor stay poor.
Here's what left-wing people want to do.
They want to tax the rich, which causes the economy not to grow as well.
It also means poor people are not going to grow as well.
But that's okay as long as rich people don't grow really, really rich really, really fast.
It's okay if the poor don't make as much money and remain poor.
That's just bizarre as the Iron Lady sets out.
There is no doubt that the Prime Minister has, in many ways, achieved substantial success in the economy.
There is one statistic that I understand is not, however, challengeable, and that is that over her 11 years, the gap between the richest 10% And the poorest 10% in this country has widened substantially.
How can she say at the end of her chapter of British politics that she can justify many people in a constituency such as mine being relatively much poorer, much less well housed and much less well provided than it was in 1979?
Surely she accepts.
That is not a record that she or any Prime Minister can be proud of.
Mr Speaker, all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979.
But what the Honourable Member is saying is that he were rather the poor were poorer, provided the rich were less rich.
That way you will never create the wealth for better social services.
And what a policy!
Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided there is no less risk.
That is the Liberal policy.
Yes, it came out.
He didn't intend it to, but he did.
I give way to the honourable gentleman.
I'm extremely grateful.
The Prime Minister is aware that I detest every single one of her domestic policies, and I've never had that.
And I think that the honourable gentleman knows that I have the same contempt for his socialist policies as the people of East Europe who have experienced it have before they have.
I think I must have hit the right nail on the head when I pointed out that the logic of those policies are they'd rather have the poor poorer.
Once they start to talk about the gap, they'd rather the gap were that.
Down here.
That.
Not that.
But that.
So long as the gap is smaller, so long as the gap is smaller, they'd rather have the poor poorer.
You do not create wealth and opportunity that way.
You do not create a property-owning democracy that way.
You'd be surprised at how much wealth at the top 1% dissipates from generation to generation.
How poorly off the heirs ultimately become because they misspend the money, can't manage the money, waste the money.
Who knows?
But the rich don't always stay rich.
Quote, Research shows that the wealth accumulated by some intrepid entrepreneur or business person rarely survives long.
In many cases, get this, as much as 70% has evaporated by the end of the second generation and as much as 90% by the end of the third.
Your expenses have exceeded your income to such a point that you have exhausted your capital.
Now you have no capital, no income, therefore no funds for the check, you see.
Don't treat me as though I were a child, Mr.
Beckett.
I am as aware of what it means to have no capital as you are.
Now, what about this check?
Well, are you entirely sure that you really do understand what I mean by capital, Mr.
Graham?
You see, you've exhausted the capital.
I can't cover the check because the check is for $6,000 and you don't have $6,000.
In other words, you don't have $60.
Come to the point, Beckett.
The point, Mr.
Graham, is that you don't have any money.
The capital and the income are exhausted and you no longer have any money.
I wish there was some other way I could say it.
How could I put it?
That money, you have no capital, you have no income.
No, it's only money.
You have no money.
And the heirs of great fortune have done particularly poorly.
Take the DuPonts and the Rockefellers.
38 people from the DuPont and Rockefeller family were on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1982.
Guess what?
By 2016, none of the 16 DuPont heirs appeared on the list.
Only one Rockefeller did.
And there are no heirs to the great Hearst fortune.
So, the rich didn't stay rich, and the poor do not stay poor.
Inequality means more poverty.
False!
That's a bald-faced lie.
The idea that gains by one person necessarily mean losses by another reflects a zero-sum view of the economy that is simply not true.
The economy is not fixed in size.
As John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, put it, We have to make sure that everybody has a sense that they can rise.
Of course, our friends in the Hispanic community, our friends in the African-American community, the promise of America is that our system, when we follow the right formula, is going to give opportunity for everyone.
It's what Jack Kemp used to say, a rising tide lifts all boats, not just some boats, but all boats.
The real problem is government interference and government taxation and government regulation.
More regulations mean that those who are winners can foreclose opportunities for newcomers.
They can create barriers to entry.
The more taxes, the more spending, the more regulation, the less economic freedom, the greater the inequality.
That is why people like Jack Kennedy wanted an across-the-board tax cut.
A creative tax cut.
Creating more jobs and income, and eventually more revenue.
And the right time for that kind of bill, it now appears, in the absence of an economic crisis today, and if the job is to be done in a responsible way, is January 1963.
Such a bill will be presented to the Congress for action next year.
It will include an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in both corporate and personal income taxes.
It will include long-needed tax reforms that logic and equity demand.
And it will date that cut in taxes to take effect as of the start of next year, January 1963.
The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy.
Every dollar released from taxation That is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary.
And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries.
That brings us to lie number five.
Inequality distorts the political process.
In other words, inequality creates societal chaos.
Even Joe Biden once said, "You know, those at the top, they're not bad guys." And the folks at the top aren't bad guys.
I get in trouble in my party when I say wealthy Americans are just as patriotic as poor folks.
The freer the economy, the less it is dominated by cronyism or corporate welfare.
In other words, countries with less government intervention in the economy tend to have lower levels of inequality.
So if you really want to improve upward mobility, cut taxes, cut regulations.
Don't burden the rich by thinking you're going to help the poor.
You are just doing the opposite.
These are the five lies that people like Mr.
Bowman push.
Don't fall for it.
I'm Larry Elder, and this has been the Larry Elder Show for Epic Times.
I think I must have hit the right nail on the head when I pointed out that the logic of those policies are they'd rather have the poor poorer.
Once they start to talk about the gap, they'd rather the gap was that.
Down here.
That.
Not that.
EpicTV: Censorship-Free Videos 00:00:34
But that.
We've got a country to say.
I'll see you next time.
Larry Elder here, and I've got some great news for you.
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