Epoch Times - Larry Elder DEBUNKS FIve Lies About The Rich and Inequality
Aired: 2022-02-11
Duration: 15:18


=== Wealth Concentration Debate (05:53) ===

[00:00:03]  All the Democrats obsess over wealth and income inequality, don't they?
[00:00:08]  We need a federal jobs guarantee.
[00:00:12]  And we've needed a federal jobs guarantee for a very long time.
[00:00:15]  We should not accept unemployment at 3%, 4%, 7%.
[00:00:21]  There should be no unemployment in our country.
[00:00:25]  We are the wealthiest nation on earth.
[00:00:27]  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.
[00:00:37]  Federal jobs guarantee, $15 minimum wage, prevailing wage for all workers, and more equity in terms of worker pay and CEO pay.
[00:00:50]  Because we are living during the time of the Gilded Age, right?
[00:00:55]  Like wealth inequality is so bad, as bad as the Gilded Age.
[00:00:59]  How do you unpack that horse bleep on stilts?
[00:01:02]  My goodness.
[00:01:04]  There are five left-wing lies told about wealth and income inequality.
[00:01:08]  This is based upon a paper done by an economist named Robert Tanner, except he called them myths.
[00:01:14]  They're not myths when they're pushed by people like Representative Bowman.
[00:01:17]  They're lies.
[00:01:21]  Inequality has never been worse.
[00:01:24]  It's never been this wide.
[00:01:26]  The gap between the rich and the poor has never been this yawning.
[00:01:32]  But all kidding aside, we have not seen this huge concentration of wealth.
[00:01:39]  And the folks at the top aren't bad guys.
[00:01:42]  I get in trouble in my party when I say wealthy Americans are just as patriotic as poor folks.
[00:01:47]  I've found no distinction.
[00:01:49]  I really haven't.
[00:01:51]  But this gap is yawning.
[00:01:56]  It's gaping.
[00:01:59]  First of all, the equality gap is not nearly as yawning as the left says it is.
[00:02:04]  They fail to take into consideration taxes paid by the top, and they fail to take into consideration benefits given to the bottom.
[00:02:13]  Quote, The top 1% of tax filers earn 19% of U.S. income, but in 2013, they paid 37.8% of federal income taxes.
[00:02:27]  That number is now probably close to 40%.
[00:02:29]  The wealthy pay a disproportionate percentage of taxes.
[00:02:34]  If anything, you could argue that based upon their income, the wealthy are overtaxed.
[00:02:40]  Quote, at the same time, lower income earners benefit disproportionately from a variety of wealth transfer programs.
[00:02:48]  The feds alone provide more than 100 anti-poverty programs, dozens of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits directly to individuals.
[00:02:59]  Taking the existing redistribution into account and the taxes paid by the top 1% significantly reduces inequality.
[00:03:09]  But even if that weren't the case, is income inequality and wealth inequality by definition a bad thing?
[00:03:18]  The rich didn't earn their money.
[00:03:23]  False!
[00:03:24]  If you got a business, you didn't build that.
[00:03:28]  Somebody else made that happen.
[00:03:30]  I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.
[00:03:33]  First of all, Americans don't really resent rich people.
[00:03:37]  They want to get rich too.
[00:03:38]  What they resent is the assertion that the money was not earned.
[00:03:43]  It is simply not true.
[00:03:45]  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.
[00:03:57]  Among the wealthy New Americans, 80% reported that they earned rather than inherited their wealth.
[00:04:04]  Another survey found that 70% of wealthy Americans either grew up middle class or lower than middle class.
[00:04:11]  Even among those with assets of over 5 million, only one-third of them grew up wealthy.
[00:04:18]  And there's this idea that the rich got rich by stock trading.
[00:04:25]  I am not a destroyer of companies.
[00:04:29]  I am a liberator of them.
[00:04:33]  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.
[00:04:50]  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%.
[00:05:05]  Regarding sports and actors, sports and entertainment figures comprised Two percent.
[00:05:11]  The other thing about rich people, they work really, really hard.
[00:05:17]  They earn it.
[00:05:18]  Get this.
[00:05:19]  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.
[00:05:29]  But among the top 20 percent of earners, those who work in excess of 49 hours a week increased by almost 80 percent.
[00:05:37]  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 (09:17) ===

[00:05:46]  Is this thing on?
[00:05:50]  The rich stay rich.
[00:05:52]  The poor stay poor.
[00:05:54]  Here's what left-wing people want to do.
[00:05:56]  They want to tax the rich, which causes the economy not to grow as well.
[00:06:01]  It also means poor people are not going to grow as well.
[00:06:04]  But that's okay as long as rich people don't grow really, really rich really, really fast.
[00:06:08]  It's okay if the poor don't make as much money and remain poor.
[00:06:12]  That's just bizarre as the Iron Lady sets out.
[00:06:20]  There is no doubt that the Prime Minister has, in many ways, achieved substantial success in the economy.
[00:06:29]  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.
[00:06:45]  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?
[00:07:03]  Surely she accepts.
[00:07:04]  That is not a record that she or any Prime Minister can be proud of.
[00:07:09]  Mr Speaker, all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979.
[00:07:16]  But what the Honourable Member is saying is that he were rather the poor were poorer, provided the rich were less rich.
[00:07:26]  That way you will never create the wealth for better social services.
[00:07:31]  And what a policy!
[00:07:33]  Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided there is no less risk.
[00:07:39]  That is the Liberal policy.
[00:07:41]  Yes, it came out.
[00:07:42]  He didn't intend it to, but he did.
[00:07:44]  I give way to the honourable gentleman.
[00:07:47]  I'm extremely grateful.
[00:07:49]  The Prime Minister is aware that I detest every single one of her domestic policies, and I've never had that.
[00:07:57]  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.
[00:08:10]  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.
[00:08:18]  Once they start to talk about the gap, they'd rather the gap were that.
[00:08:25]  Down here.
[00:08:26]  That.
[00:08:28]  Not that.
[00:08:31]  But that.
[00:08:34]  So long as the gap is smaller, so long as the gap is smaller, they'd rather have the poor poorer.
[00:08:43]  You do not create wealth and opportunity that way.
[00:08:47]  You do not create a property-owning democracy that way.
[00:08:50]  You'd be surprised at how much wealth at the top 1% dissipates from generation to generation.
[00:08:57]  How poorly off the heirs ultimately become because they misspend the money, can't manage the money, waste the money.
[00:09:04]  Who knows?
[00:09:05]  But the rich don't always stay rich.
[00:09:07]  Quote, Research shows that the wealth accumulated by some intrepid entrepreneur or business person rarely survives long.
[00:09:16]  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.
[00:09:27]  Your expenses have exceeded your income to such a point that you have exhausted your capital.
[00:09:32]  Now you have no capital, no income, therefore no funds for the check, you see.
[00:09:37]  Don't treat me as though I were a child, Mr.
[00:09:39]  Beckett.
[00:09:39]  I am as aware of what it means to have no capital as you are.
[00:09:44]  Now, what about this check?
[00:09:48]  Well, are you entirely sure that you really do understand what I mean by capital, Mr.
[00:09:53]  Graham?
[00:09:54]  You see, you've exhausted the capital.
[00:09:55]  I can't cover the check because the check is for $6,000 and you don't have $6,000.
[00:10:01]  In other words, you don't have $60.
[00:10:04]  Come to the point, Beckett.
[00:10:07]  The point, Mr.
[00:10:08]  Graham, is that you don't have any money.
[00:10:09]  The capital and the income are exhausted and you no longer have any money.
[00:10:13]  I wish there was some other way I could say it.
[00:10:15]  How could I put it?
[00:10:17]  That money, you have no capital, you have no income.
[00:10:20]  No, it's only money.
[00:10:21]  You have no money.
[00:10:23]  And the heirs of great fortune have done particularly poorly.
[00:10:27]  Take the DuPonts and the Rockefellers.
[00:10:30]  38 people from the DuPont and Rockefeller family were on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1982.
[00:10:37]  Guess what?
[00:10:37]  By 2016, none of the 16 DuPont heirs appeared on the list.
[00:10:42]  Only one Rockefeller did.
[00:10:43]  And there are no heirs to the great Hearst fortune.
[00:10:47]  So, the rich didn't stay rich, and the poor do not stay poor.
[00:10:55]  Inequality means more poverty.
[00:10:58]  False!
[00:11:00]  That's a bald-faced lie.
[00:11:02]  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.
[00:11:13]  The economy is not fixed in size.
[00:11:15]  As John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, put it, We have to make sure that everybody has a sense that they can rise.
[00:11:24]  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.
[00:11:36]  It's what Jack Kemp used to say, a rising tide lifts all boats, not just some boats, but all boats.
[00:11:42]  The real problem is government interference and government taxation and government regulation.
[00:11:48]  More regulations mean that those who are winners can foreclose opportunities for newcomers.
[00:11:54]  They can create barriers to entry.
[00:11:57]  The more taxes, the more spending, the more regulation, the less economic freedom, the greater the inequality.
[00:12:04]  That is why people like Jack Kennedy wanted an across-the-board tax cut.
[00:12:10]  A creative tax cut.
[00:12:12]  Creating more jobs and income, and eventually more revenue.
[00:12:17]  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.
[00:12:30]  Such a bill will be presented to the Congress for action next year.
[00:12:34]  It will include an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in both corporate and personal income taxes.
[00:12:42]  It will include long-needed tax reforms that logic and equity demand.
[00:12:48]  And it will date that cut in taxes to take effect as of the start of next year, January 1963.
[00:12:57]  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.
[00:13:07]  Every dollar released from taxation That is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary.
[00:13:14]  And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries.
[00:13:21]  That brings us to lie number five.
[00:13:24]  Inequality distorts the political process.
[00:13:26]  In other words, inequality creates societal chaos.
[00:13:31]  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.
[00:13:44]  I get in trouble in my party when I say wealthy Americans are just as patriotic as poor folks.
[00:13:49]  The freer the economy, the less it is dominated by cronyism or corporate welfare.
[00:13:55]  In other words, countries with less government intervention in the economy tend to have lower levels of inequality.
[00:14:03]  So if you really want to improve upward mobility, cut taxes, cut regulations.
[00:14:08]  Don't burden the rich by thinking you're going to help the poor.
[00:14:12]  You are just doing the opposite.
[00:14:16]  These are the five lies that people like Mr.
[00:14:19]  Bowman push.
[00:14:20]  Don't fall for it.
[00:14:22]  I'm Larry Elder, and this has been the Larry Elder Show for Epic Times.
[00:14:26]  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.
[00:14:34]  Once they start to talk about the gap, they'd rather the gap was that.
[00:14:39]  Down here.
[00:14:42]  That.
[00:14:43]  Not that.

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[00:14:51]  I'll see you next time.
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