Probably because he knows all the wars he wants the United States to fight will cost many, many $$$$. Also, note that he also calls the 1940s to 1970s a high tax rate period, but fails to note the significant tax deductions and loopholes, which brought those rates down significantly.
Absolutely!!! I fully support taxing Ben Stein more...
ReplyDeletePeter Schiff vs. Ben Stein & friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZyvnWFbR84
ReplyDeleteParaphrasing:
Stein: 'The subprime crisis is overblown, the dollar is perfectly sound, bla bla bla bla BLA.'.
Schiff: 'I predicted this. We are screwed'.
Classic.
BTW, still waiting for you geniuses to read and debunk Nanex & Zerohedge's analysis & conclusion (it ain't pretty) regarding HFT!
So sad that people like Stein get a pass when video proof of their ignorance is readily available, while Schiff has to justify to hostile hosts his uncannily accurate predictions.
DeleteWe need this idiot to go back to the 1980s, where he can film Wonderyears and Ferris Bueller again. Scary as it is, I welcome a bankrupt government, with an elimination of taxes. Ron Paul's plan was the only sane proposal. American government needs to be slashed to the stone age, so that productive Americans can build in the 21st century.
ReplyDeleteBen Stein : high brow charlatan.
ReplyDeleteI really get a kick out of the educated fools that have no clue of how the old tax code worked. You can tell they are clueless when they refer to marginal tax rates which are window dressing and not effective tax rates, which is the reality when you consider the underlying tax law. Look at the effective tax rate for the top 1% (CBO has this data) for 1979 and then again in 1988 after Reagan's big tax change. They are almost the same. LOL
ReplyDeleteThe old tax code had lots of ways for the wealthy to escape those outrageous tax rates, and that becomes fairly clear when you see that the tax distribution under those high marginal tax rate days was more skewed towards the middle than almost entirely at the top as it is today. Under the old tax code, those loopholes usually required you to have capital to exploit, so the average working stiff getting a W-2 had no choice but to pay up, and pay they did. There use to be an old adage that "you'll never get rich working for someone" and that was true since it was extremely difficult to become wealthy working as an employee (this included CEO's, exec's, sales people, engineers, lawyers and other professionals) and taking the full brunt of those high marginal rates. Often times you would turn down a promotion since it meant more work at a lower overall take home wage.
Also never discussed was the fact that tax fraud was huge (at all levels) back in those days and relatively easy to pull off by just about anyone -- and most did! It use to be socially acceptable to talk about how you cheated on your taxes. LOL
It should definitely become socially acceptable again. If I was kidnapped to sit on the jury of an income tax case,etc., I would be willing to be the lone not guilty vote.
DeleteAmericans are criminal thinking that people can't keep their own earned money. Beam me up.
Jesus he's a f'ing idiot or a habitual liar. Maybe both.
ReplyDelete"Can anyone tell me the difference between marginal tax rates and effective tax rates? Anyone? Bueller?" - Ben Stein.
ReplyDeleteMy father (born 1938) once described to me the kinds of tax loopholes and write-offs available to certain types of businesses back in the 1960s and earlier. He worked in his father's book distribution business at the time and he was familiar with some of the tax laws at the time. He described certain (perfectly legal) strategies as practically minting money.
ReplyDeleteStein - Total Putz
ReplyDeleteDown fall of the republicans are owed to Stein
I love how idiots treat the deficit as if it's some sort of plague that just happened upon us, so we all have to dig deep to fix it. It's not that the idiot government spent more than they took in and are trying to stick the rest of us with a bill to fund their slush funds for their buddies.
ReplyDeleteMurray Rothbard put it best... of course I forget exactly what he said and am too lazy to find it.
However; in my defense, yea but still.