Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Matt Damon, Central Planner, on Taxes

He wants them higher. Get this, for Head Start.

"It’s criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much,” he says Damon. “I don’t mind paying more. I really don’t mind paying more taxes. I’d rather pay the taxes than cut, you know, Reading is Fundamental or, you know, Head Start, or some of these programs that are really helping kids."

The 2010 budget for Head Start was $7.2 billion. The entire 2010 budget was $2,080 billion. The impact Head Start has on government spending pretty much approximates zero. Damon has no idea what the hell he is talking about. And, where the hell did he get that hair cut?


Matt Damon on debt limit: 'I'm so disgusted,' 'it's criminal' the wealthy are not paying more from Nicholas Ballasy on Vimeo.

29 comments:

  1. I bet we will see him in more movies pertaining to government being the savor of humanity.

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  2. Hey Matthew, I have a suggestion. How about making a pledge that the salary for the next crappy movie in which you star, you use that money to create your own Head Start? What's stopping you big boy?

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  3. There is none so graceful as those who are dispensing the largesse of others ...

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  4. He should just give more money to the govt if he wants to pay more taxes.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I have a friend in my town who occasionally lived in the 'ghetto'.

    He informed me that Obamamama has showered the residents with welfare programs hitherto unknown.

    One of them, and I am not making this up, is to give away laptops in return for 'community service'.

    No, alas, in my neighborhood ...

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  7. It never ceases to amaze me how people like Damon, in the limelight as entertainers, suddenly seem to acquire genius. And how others, mainly the media, seem to publicize their inane utterances. He has little, if any grasp of the underlying functioning of the economy. Nor of the role of free enterprise.

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  8. There is a scene in "Good Will Hunting" where he pulls out "A People's History Of The United States" by Howard Zinn off his shrink's book shelf (played by Robin Williams) and says "That will knock ya on your ass". All I can say my ass is black and blue after reading Rothbard, Mises, Hazlitt, or many of the Austrian school thinkers.

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  9. If he really wants to pay more, why doesn't he just pay more? I would expect that to be more meaningful than simply paying more because you're forced, along with everyone else, to pay more.

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  10. @Richie, Brian & Anonymous: He's saying that he wouldn't mind a higher tax rate for people like him. That's obviously not the same as you imply. The motiviation to fulfill your duties (e.g. paying taxes) is generally much higher when you know that the others will also be taken into responsibility.

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  11. @Robert: please try coming up with higher quality arguments. You know yourself that if there are broad cuts, every program, including 'Head Start', is at risk of losing some funding. So what Matt says isn't as absurd as you claim, at least not for the reasons you are giving here.

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  12. Here ya go, Matty Boy...

    https://pay.gov/paygov/forms/formInstance.html?nc=1312398887649&agencyFormId=23779454&userFormSearch=https%3A%2F%2Fpay.gov%2Fpaygov%2FkeywordSearchForms.html%3FshowingDetails%3Dtrue%26showingAll%3Dfalse%26sortProperty%3DagencyFormName%26totalResults%3D2%26keyword%3Dgift%26formAction%3DGo%26ascending%3Dtrue%26pageOffset%3D0

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  13. ya know... like... ya know... like.... like... ya know... the rich... like ya know... gotta give more to the government cause they are so smart and know how to wisely spend money and keep us out debt... I mean... ya know... like... there smarter than the average guy... ya know. - Matt Damon. Translation: I haven't got a clue what I;m talking about cause I never read Rothbard or Mises.

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  14. News flash to all of you hedge fund managers and day traders: the "free market" does not regulate itself, due to a little thing called "human greed" which none of you holier-than-thou Austrian Economics cunts ever seem to consider. So while everyone clamors about how the USA is dead broke, the cream (scum?) is steadily rising to the top. The problem is not INADEQUATE wealth, but UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION of said wealth. But heaven forbid anyone should try to infringe upon your constitutionally-given right to bleed the fucking earth dry.

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  15. Hey dar chRon,

    The real scum rises within a centralized stateplanned society....Mao, Stalin, Hitler...these greedy people make the earth red with the blood of their surfs...in a free market the greedy just go out of business.

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  16. Man, when did this board become infested with Marxist parasites?

    Notice the inability to refrain from using foul language. The true mark of intellectual bankruptcy. Covetousness is a sin. So is theft for that matter. But then, does anyone know a morally consistent Marxist... I mean liberal?

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  17. I'm seeing lots of misled people triumph Matt Damon as some type of champion for teachers slapping down a 'right wing' reporter. It is sad to routinely see such blithering idiocy mistaken for compassion.

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  18. Uh oh. The Matt Damon fan club got wind of this post. The trolls are strolling in.

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  19. @chRon

    The "greed of day traders" is exactly HOW the free market regulates itself.

    Or do you think everyone's greed works selflessly to help someone else's greed?

    Don't think so.

    Your greed is reined in by my greed and by the other fellow's.

    However, when the government steps in, it reins in your greed, my greed, and the other fellow's, and then....oops....puts its stamp of approval on the greed of the people who pull the strings behind.

    The big guys get bigger, precisely because my greed, yours, and the other fellows' can't take a bite out of their greed And why? Because the government BACKS his greed.

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  20. @Melvin,

    Well said! One can only hope that this point actually sinks into chRon's closed mind.

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  21. Luzius Meisser,

    What Matt is saying is that he does not like the percentage of theft from the productive capacity of people who currently have a high productive capacity. He labels this "reduced" theft as criminal. That is a contradiction in and of itself. Matt actually has no real idea what he is saying. Most of the logic that he supposedly has, according to the media who covers Hollywood, is in fact nothing more than emotion. Anyone who claims a lack of theft as being criminal has reduced any intellectual credibility they might have to be less than zero. The reason his credibility is negative is because someone who has zero credibility with regards to the subject knows as much, and refrains from polluting the matter at hand.

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  22. I think the people working on the movie set should be making several times more, not to mention all of the minor actors who aren't stars yet care a lot and work really hard. In fact, go to any broadway play and virtually everyone on the stage blows Damon away when it comes to acting ability, yet they make a fraction of what Damon does. Why?

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  23. @Anon: I'm not saying Matt is right. I'm saying that we (including the blog's author) shouldn't attack him with invalid arguments as that makes us look stupid.

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  24. @ chRon

    You can tell a socialist is speaking by the pathos (appeal to emotion), the envy (again, appeal to emotion), the irrationality and the foul language (ad hominem) aimed at anyone with the nerve not to believe in large scale state-violence and theft.

    If only they actually knew what a logical argument looked like, it might have been worth it to attempt to talk some sense to him. But since they don't have brains and are forced to "think" with their bleeding hearts, you may as well be talking to a flopping fish.

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  25. Wow, at first I wanted to slap him. By the end I had to just feel sorry for him. He is so clueless it's pathetic. Awwwwe. Poor guy, "...they don't want all of this government." He says in disbelief!

    I like Richie's idea. Why doesn't Matt start his own reading program for kids?

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  26. chron,

    the FED creates the wealth disparity.

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  27. When Damon said, "It’s criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much". My first thought was, you're right, all those people getting so much of other people's money should give more, by taking less. Of course that's not what he meant.

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  28. Matt Damon wins the "Douchebag of the Day" award.

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