As the near endless series of parasites chastise the productive class and demand more free stuff, Stefan Molyneux is simply out of kindness. The tax livestock are growing progressively more frustrated as western civilization edges closer to financial upheaval.Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hey, would you like some emotion mixed in with your reasons, some moral exhaustion, some terminal death throttling of compassion and empathy?
Well, you've come to the right place because let's start talking some basic numbers.
So there's this tax cut stuff floating around through Trump.
And people are saying, well, it doesn't really benefit the middle class.
It benefits the rich a lot.
And this, of course, ties into this.
The rich aren't paying their fair share.
You know, like the cow that you don't physically turn inside out is somehow not giving you enough meat and milk.
So this is from the Office of Management and Budget, just came out.
Any tax cut for middle-income owners will also provide a benefit for those further up the income scale.
Including the top 20% who now pay 95% of all income taxes.
Top fifth of the population now pay 95% of all income taxes.
And that's astonishing.
It's actually 94.8% for those who want their precision.
And this has gone up.
In 2015, the top 20% only paid 84% of income taxes.
So in two years, it's gone up over 10%.
And that is really quite astonishing.
Say, well, why do you want to give a tax cut to the rich?
Because there's no one else to give tax cuts to!
The rich are all that are left in terms of giving tax cuts.
I mean, it's absolutely astonishing.
Here are a couple of other numbers a little bit further back in time.
2014, people with adjusted gross income of above a quarter million paid just over half or 51.6% of all individual income taxes.
So people who made quarter million above paid just over half of all individual income taxes, though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed.
Though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed.
So less than 3% of people paying 51.6% of the income taxes.
The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% taxes, and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates.
Obviously, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes.
So, there are...
Three groups of people. And I gotta tell you, I'm really out of compassion for some of these groups.
I'm just done.
The tank is dry. I am out.
Let me tell you what.
So three groups of people.
There are the people who work and pay a lot in taxes because they work hard, they're smart, they're ambitious, they take risks.
And some of them have inherited, so that's fine.
So they're rich. And they pay the vast majority Of the taxes in the country, right?
In America. Top 20%, paying 95%.
Then there are the people who work, but who don't pay a massive amount in taxes.
Or they get more banking benefits than they pay in taxes.
And then there are people who don't work, who just hoover up all the lifeblood and productivity of everyone else, you know?
I've seen some reports...
I'll let you judge their veracity, but I've seen some reports.
So when you were a slave, you got to keep 70% or 80% of your productivity because you had to be housed and fed and healthcare and so on, right?
So under slavery, you had an effective tax rate of 20%, 25%, maybe 30%.
Dear God, the forced transfer of other people's labor is a sin.
It is an immorality. Thou shalt not steal.
Hey, charity, generosity, people who down on their luck, people who had hard times starting out, people who have had misfortune, people who have made bad decisions but want to make better decisions, my heart doth overflow.
With compassion. But that's not who we're facing in the world today.
This pathological altruism, this hold up the crying baby and pillage the productive of all of their resources.
I'm done with that. Like, I was just thinking about this today.
I was just mulling it over and sort of probing in my heart of hearts saying, okay, how do I feel about all of this?
Because here's the thing.
We're not making these decisions rationally.
We all know that when you have 20% of people paying 95% of the taxes or less than 3% of people paying over 50% of the taxes, it's not a sustainable situation.
And also, this is not a republic.
This is not a place of law.
This is a place of demagoguery and sophistry and pillaging.
And stirring, emotional, rousing speeches designed to awaken guilt in the productive and to justify rank predation in the clause of the parasitical.
This is not a sustainable situation.
If you are on welfare, if you are taking food stamps, if you are in Section 8 housing, if you have your swipe card for government-sponsored groceries, Can you really honestly vote about the welfare state?
Can you really honestly vote about how high taxes should be if A, you're not paying any and B, you're dependent upon the pillaging of those who do pay.
Can you be objective?
You know, if you're some financial writer and you're writing about some company and you hold one share in that company, you really should disclose it as a conflict of interest so people can assess your claims in the context of the personal benefit you might receive from the value of the stock price going up.
That's the kind of honor and integrity smart people have, or should have.
Can you really vote honestly and objectively about tax increases when those tax increases are likely to dump more money in your lap?
This is a civil war, you understand.
This is a not hot but cold, still language-based civil war.
Between the takers and the makers.
It's not the haves and the have-nots.
It's the makers and the takers.
It's the productive and the parasitical.
And by that, I don't just mean the poor.
We have the military industrial complex.
We have giant corporations who get hundreds of dollars back for every one dollar they spend on lobbying, therefore making it just about the most productive thing they can do, which is why they tend to buy politicians more than engineers or scientists.
And all of this has been foisted upon you and I. Because we care.
Because we're smart.
And a lot of people who are smart tend to have just a little bit more compassion, just a little bit more empathy, and are capable of being guilted into coughing up resources because this great brand called Lucky...
Or privileged has been seared into our foreheads.
So that every time we look, we don't feel pride in our accomplishments, in the risks we've taken, in the things we have created, the jobs, the products, the intellectual acuity we have documented and broadcasted.
We're not supposed to feel proud of that anymore.
You're not supposed to feel proud of that at all, you understand?
Because you're just lucky. You're just lucky.
You yawned in a park and a lottery ticket, I'm sure it was white, a lottery ticket just floated into your mouth.
Aren't you lucky?
Of course to the incompetent, success always looks like luck.
Like the blindfolded golfer always imagines that every good shot is just good luck.
And I'm tired of it. I'm tired of everyone and their dog yapping like little cocaine-laced chihuahuas that all who succeed, all who do well, have either A, been lucky, B, are resulting in some gender or racial privilege, neither of which is supposed to exist, of course, according to postmodernists.
Or C. You've only gathered wealth because you've stolen it from everyone else.
You have pillaged the poor.
You have scoured up.
Their potential. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
You have scoured up their potential.
You go to some low-rent neighborhood, you see guys sitting out in their wife beaters drinking beer at one o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and they're only poor, you see, because rich people scooped up all of their wonderful potential and great business ideas and hard-working Puritan work ethic and just cast them aside like old cans of beer down by the Good Samaritans victim in the side of the road.
All that potential.
See, they could have been all that and more and hot dog with a slice of cheese on the side.
But you see, some rich capitalist came and scooped up all of the great businesses they were just about to start.
And I'm... I'm sick of it.
Maybe it's because I'm a father.
My child's going to go out in the world and she's going to hear that, you see, the rich people, they're only rich because they're mean and privileged and sexist and racist and exploiters and ha-ha.
Damn you all for that.
How about a little gratitude for the wealthy?
I feel it. You know, when I was younger and I worked cleaning offices as a teenager, when I worked as a waiter, when I worked as a dishwasher, when I worked in a hardware store, when I worked at the various places that I worked...
I was very thankful that those businesses existed.
I knew that they didn't just sprout out of the ground like weeds, that somebody had to take risk, that somebody had to work hard, that somebody had to continue to take those risks and the personal liability and exposure.
I knew that my paycheck was guaranteed, although the income of the places I worked at was highly variable.
I was guaranteed and I knew that guarantees come with a price.
You don't get to say, when you bet, I want higher returns on more common occurrences, more likely occurrences.
No. It's the extremes that give you the benefits.
So I knew all of that. I was grateful.
I was happy that people had risked their life, their capital, their sanity, their nights of good sleep in order to create a business that I could waltz in with very little training and start making $2.50 an hour.
Even when I worked at a convenience store...
When I was 12 and I was scraping the gum off the floor and looked up past the pretty shoes up into the eyes of a girl I liked at school.
Here I am scraping gum.
Hey, wanna have a date?
I was still grateful for that job and for that opportunity and that experience.
Got my first job at 10, painting plaques for the silver anniversary of Queen Elizabeth.
Got a job at 11 in a bookstore putting together New York Times and other newspapers on Sunday morning.
And have worked and had three jobs for a while.
Been paying my own bills since I was 15.
It's been a lot of work.
Let me tell you that, my friends.
It's been a lot of work.
When I do this show, It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of concentration. Sometimes it's a lot of takes.
But I'm just lucky.
I'm just privileged, you see.
It's amazing how privilege and hard work seem to go hand in hand.
It's amazing how I get my first job at the age of 10 and have worked continuously ever since.
Put myself through college through gold panning and prospecting and claim staking in the frozen ass tundra just north of Tiddy Freeze, Canada.
I spent my winter in a tent where sometimes it was minus 40.
Yes, that will make your nipples stand to attention and your balls will sound like frozen castanets when you jog in snow shoes through the snow carrying an 80-pound pion jar drill on your back.
But I'm just lucky.
It's just privilege. Because I'm male and white, I'm sure.
Screw you for all of that.
I bet you anyone who works so hard ends up so lucky.
So, when you transfer this amount of money from the tiny slice of the rich to the broad swaths of the dependent, you don't have a democracy.
You have a bribe-ocracy. You have a semi-civilized civil war, which turns from cold to hot when the resources run out.
Everybody knows that's coming. Everybody is aware what's tsunami, what red tsunami is streaming over the horizon, held back only by the Gandalf light of the rationally eloquent.
And it comes with a whole host of ideological paroxysms that change everything.
See, if you're dependent, On the rich.
You must first be taught to hate the rich and to fear the rich.
You must dehumanize those who you prey upon.
Otherwise, simple compassion and empathy, and we're all human, will interrupt the greedy, sadomasochistic vampire arrows of your infinite democratic covetousness.
Thirst, feed, thirst, feed, thirst, feed.
A vampire has to look at human beings as blank, fleshy livestock in order to be able to drain their fluids.
And it's the same with the poor or the corporations.
They must look at the taxpayers as blank, evil, Marxist-inspired, jetpacks of privilege, unjust, nasty, parasitical bourgeoisie.
Now, at least, though, on the military-industrial complex and the high corporate complex, the people who are manipulating the state for their own benefit, for their own profit, are themselves subject to high taxes, and therefore there's some limitation on how far that stuff can go.
But... The poor, those who are working for the government, pushing paper back and forth and clogging up the general arteries of the body politic, those people who get their unjust privileges, everyone from teachers to postal workers to, what was it, there was some government union recently that was appalled that they may have to, because of unfunded pension liabilities, end up with some pension that might be roughly equivalent to what you get at the Private sector.
Lord above.
Couch fainting smelling salts.
Victorian hysteria inevitably ensues.
People in the government get about 40% more in income and benefits, not even counting the supposed...
security of their position than those in the private sector.
Far less efficient and paid far more.
And promised far more, all of which is completely unsustainable and We'll cause chaos, of course, and we'll have everyone then say, well, let's tax the rich more, because you see, you see, when less than 3% of people are paying more than half of it, or when the top 20% of income earners are paying 95% of the taxes, they're not paying their fair share!
Screw you, people!
You tell me, what is the fair share?
Are the rich supposed to sell off their children for body parts in Mogadishu?
Are they supposed to be as poor as you are?
Are you supposed to strip them down and reduce them to the same level of poverty?
Are you supposed to disincentivize anyone who wants to climb the ladder of wealth, which basically in the remnants of the free market means that you are supplying more value and services to people?
The rich are not Cossacks, for God's sakes.
They're not Genghis Khan.
They're not Vikings.
There are people offering up, in general, goods and services in the free market and seeing if people like it.
Run that freak flag up the pole and just see who salutes.
That's all it is. And for this, for their ambition, for their service.
We say, ah, thank you for your service, we say, to the military men while denying them health care and watching them starve to death in VA hospitals.
Do we ever say to the rich, thank you for your service?
Because that's how they become rich in general, in the remnants of the free market.
There are lots of exceptions. I know, I know.
Everyone's out there with their own military, industrial, lobbying.
Yes, I get all of that.
But that's exactly what we're supposed to be fighting.
But the honorable wealthy, who get their money by providing valuable services in the free market, are we supposed to strip them of everything that they have?
And insult them, and condemn them, and portray them as relentlessly evil in all the children's movies ever known to mankind.
Oh look, the fluffy bunnies gambling in the field are having their entire homes plowed under by a property developer.
See, property development apparently is really, really bad.
But massive immigration that drives up the value of houses and causes more property development is aces.
No. I'm out.
I'm out. I'm out of compassion.
I'm out of compassion.
Like, the people who are going to cry poverty.
You know, just yesterday, the news came out, tens of thousands of teachers are going to have to leave if DACA is rescinded.
Wait a minute, I thought these people were doing the jobs that Americans just won't do.
Are you saying it's impossible to find any American who wants all the plum summers off?
Massive pensions and healthcare benefits and job security afforded by the teaching profession?
No Americans want to do that!
We're not talking about picking razor fruit in a Venus-style environment.
No, I'm out. I'm out.
I'm out. Maybe it's a white male thing.
Maybe you feel it too. Maybe you don't.
Maybe I'm an outlier.
But I'm absolutely out.
And people will come crying and say, but there will be so much suffering and there will be so much agony and sadness if society becomes fair, just, equitable.
Let's say we have a flat tax in the West to step in the right direction.
Of course, because then people who are Invested in having property get to vote on whether there's such a thing as property rights.
If you are getting your income from all of these people who are forced to pay for you, what do you care about property rights?
Violation of property rights is how you get your goddamn cornflakes in the morning.
You're supposed to vote for restraint of government when growth of government increases your income.
You're supposed to vote for lower taxation when increased taxation increases your income.
People on the receiving end of government money have conflicts of interest to such a degree that their votes are, philosophically speaking, worse than meaningless.
They're bought. They're paid for.
It's absolute corruption.
Again, that is rich and poor as well.
The military-industrial complex parasites, how do they feel about the cessation of conflict?
The state as a whole, with all this immigration stuff going on, well, they just want to provoke conflict to continue to justify the reason for the existence of the state.
I don't think it's any accident that as violent crime in particular began its precipitous decline from the early 1990s, you saw a massive uptick in third-world immigration into the West.
Because if violent crime kept going down and down and down, why would we need such a big giant government?
Ah, but you see now, there are all of these people to monitor, and all of these plots to overthrow, and all of this danger, and now they're overworked.
They don't want to end up like the police in Japan, apparently, who are kicking stones around the street trying to think of things to do because society is largely peaceful.
What with everyone bagging robots and not having babies.
There you go. As poverty began to decline.
Post-Second World Period, I've said this before, poverty went down.
Real poverty went down one percentage point every year.
We were within a stone's throw, probably half a generation, of eliminating all that voluntary poverty, like a monk or somebody who wants to quit their job to write a novel or something like that.
We were within a stone's throw of defying the New Testament that the poor would not always be with us.
And then you get the welfare state, and then you get the immigration, the beginning of the immigration from the Third World, and oh, lo and behold, look at that.
We have significant poverty again.
So the government has something to do, someone to save, votes to buy, people to guilt.
And then when violent crime began declining in the 1990s around the West, Oh no.
Might we have to reduce government expenditures?
Do we not have as big a need for the massive security state?
We have the rise of the internet and the fall in crime while they want to use the internet to monitor and control.
So I know. Let's bring in high crime populations.
Oh look! A lot of crime now.
I guess you need us again, don't you?
And I'm out. I'm out.
I have said this for many years on this show.
I'll say it again. People haven't listened to the older stuff.
Or the younger me.
4K and 51.
I'm brave. But if you are in a relationship with anyone or any group wherein you have compassion, you have altruism, and they don't, You will lose.
You will lose big, you will lose hard, and you may lose forever.
Virtue is not something that you just will out into the world like some fire hose torn loose of its mountain just spraying all over the place.
It's not what virtue is.
Virtue is a relationship and it requires reciprocity.
To project virtue or to act virtuously in a void of reciprocity is immoral.
It's wrong. It's foolish, it's self-destructive and it is an affront to morality and it is an affront to people who actually do reflect back your compassion to you.
You understand? So I'll give you an example.
You go to some online store and somebody says, I'm going to sell you this cell phone for 200 bucks.
Like, I'll send you the cell phone, you send me the 200 bucks.
You're like, okay, so then they send you a box.
You open up the box, there's nothing in it.
Empty. And then they message you and say, hey man, you send me the 200 bucks.
You would say, I'm not sending you the 200 bucks because the box you sent me was empty.
You see? Ah, but you made a promise to send $200.
Yes, but that promise was contingent upon integrity on the part of the other.
You see, it's a relationship.
It's not, well, you've got to pay 200 bucks because you're taking a paycheck.
That's stupid, self-destructive, suicidal, and profoundly dishonorous those who are actually going to send you a box with a cell phone in it.
Compassion, kindness, charity, concern, care.
These are not things that you just will out into the world.
Regardless of reciprocity, regardless of consequences, regardless of effect.
No. No, that is horrendously wrong.
Downright immoral.
You bring compassion to a relationship.
You see if the compassion is reflected.
And then, if the compassion is reflected, you can up it a little more and see if it is reflected.
And then you have a relationship that is mutually beneficial, that is bound by the ties of integrity and virtue and kindness.
Virtue is not an isolated, willed thing.
It's not like stomping on a toothpaste tube and squirting the fluoride of virtue out into the world, regardless of what's going on out there.
Reciprocity is key.
O West. It is everything.
And the reason I'm bringing all this up is that as a white male, how have you, if you're a white male, if you can imagine, right, being a white male, I know that in America more than half of whites thinks that whites are being discriminated against because they can read.
As a white male, how have you been treated?
How much compassion has been extended to you?
How much kindness has been extended to you?
How much curiosity about your experience has been extended to you?
If you're rich, how much thanks or how many thank yous have been supplied to you?
How many people have said, wow, you guys worked hard for your money.
I was dumb, unlucky or lazy or some combination maybe.
And I really need your help.
So thank you everyone.
Thank you everyone out there who's rich, who's paying the vast majority of taxes, who is funding my life, my family, my education.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much white males for building a civilization that perhaps pathologically purports itself to be the most welcoming, anti-sexist, anti-racist civilization the world has ever seen.
Thank you so much! For building the freedoms that I can come and take advantage of, sometimes literally through acquisition of resources via the welfare state.
How many people have said thank you?
You know, I go down the street and I put five bucks in the hand of a panhandler.
What does he say? Thank you.
Have a great day. Are you thanked?
Do people appreciate the wealth that you have generated that they can pillage?
Of course not. They can't pillage it if they appreciate it, and they don't want the humiliation of voicing their dependence upon you.
It's a profoundly humiliating and anti-life position in the long run to be parasitical on other people's productivity.
It's profoundly humiliating.
And people avoid that humiliation by creating ideological ramparts that they can scale up and imagine that they're chest-thumping their King Kong virtuous way across the rooftop of the world.
Rather than it being a political species of taxpayer-funded parasite.
Politics. Poly-many.
Tics. Well, they burn them under your skin, feast on your blood.
Many tics. Democracy.
Politics. How many people are compassionate towards you?
How does it feel to pay so much in taxes and to be hated for it?
How does it feel to be hated and attacked for something you have no control over, which is the gender of your birth and the color of your skin?
How does it feel to have the virtues you have pursued and manifested?
Hard work, excellence, maturity, focusing on customer satisfaction, nimbleness, management, careful marshalling and focusing of resources, endless work.
How does it feel to have all of these virtues?
Turn you from somebody to be admired and respected, thanked and praised.
Into a fine species of taxed livestock to be hunted down in a stony canyon, scalped and feasted upon while being decried as the greatest evil produced by Mother Earth.
How does it feel? If those who are dependent upon the wealthy claim as their justification That we should have compassion on them, that the rich should have compassion on them.
That the general society as a whole, the middle class and above, We should have compassion on these poor people.
And they say that you must have compassion on us.
We are in need.
We are in want.
We have dependence.
We suffer.
You must have compassion for us.
Well then, clearly they say that compassion is a virtue.
Now, they're not asking.
You understand? Through the vote, they're not asking.
See, the IRS can illegally target conservative Charity groups, or potential charity groups, as they have recently admitted, as I did a show about, they have illegally targeted these groups and denied them their charitable status and demanded lists of donors and political aspirations and beliefs and so on.
And now they've just apologized.
And they're going to throw a couple of mil into the kitty, but of course not from any of the personal accounts of the people who authorized this.
So the IRS can do all of this terrible stuff, and they just apologize.
You know, you try not paying your taxes or you try getting something wrong in the 12,000 books of tax code.
I strip your assets, throw you in jail.
When the IRS does something illegal, an apology suffices.
When you do something illegal vis-a-vis the IRS, I don't think a sorry is going to work.
Like that old Steve Martin routine, I'm sorry, I forgot that Grand Theft Auto was illegal.
I forgot! If compassion to those in need, if compassion to those who are unfairly maligned, if compassion, kindness, thoughtfulness, altruism, is such a value, then why is it not applied ever in reverse?
Why is it just a one-way ride?
Why is compassion like water that always flows downhill, never back uphill?
Why is there no compassion for the rich who suffer and groan under such excessive taxation?
Why is there no compassion for white males who can be publicly attacked and humiliated and aggressed against, often with impunity?
I have Deep wells of compassion in my heart and mind.
It's one of the reasons why this show has been so successful for that, I thank you.
But even the deepest wells in the driest desert face an end.
I get that it's no longer reciprocal in the world.
I get that the compassion never seems to flow both ways.
The deepest well in the hottest desert has only so much water.
