Ben Stein tells audience "Raise Taxes for Rich" and "Don't feel sympathy for the unemployed..."

I don't agree with taxing the rich. They pay far more than they should have to. One of the incentives for earning more money is that some taxes are capped at certain thresholds. This means that if you earn more money than that it's not taxed. This is meant to encourage people to succeed and make a larger income. It's not a bad thing. But I do agree that unemployment benefits should be reduced. Why? Because I think a lot of people on unemployment aren't accepting jobs that they think they're too good for. Or they think they're too old (not true). There're all sorts of excuses people have. In tough times, you make tough choices.

People don't want to make tough choices. They want things to be the way they've always been. They want the bad economy to go away. And when it doesn't, they just blame someone.

They blame the government or they blame the rich or they blame the banksters. They got a long list of people they blame and they're ready to whip it out if asked or pressed.

But you know what? The culprits can't fix this. It's too big. Only the people can.

Don't be fooled by the clever BS theories.

We should be blaming ourselves. The responsibility is our own.

We have to crawl out of this bad economy with the strength of spirit our grandfathers had.

No excuses.

reply to post by BadNinja68


Good for you BadNinja, and not in any sarcastic sense. I too own and operate a very small business (it's not my main source of income by any means, but I'm working on it. It is profitable but not ready to sustain me completely yet.)

$500 a week is plenty in probably 30/50 states. Maybe more. You can make $500 a week working as a waiter/waitress. Easily. Or as a pizza delivery person. Or as a customer service rep.. All of these jobs are plentiful and common.

I don't think all who receive unemployment are lazy, or even a majority of them. There are definitely people who milk it for as long as they can, however. I have seen and known these people first hand.

None of this changes the fact that Ben Stein is a total douche. He's blindly far-right. I'm not saying the left if the place to be, but too far on either side of the spectrum is bad. Ben Stein is almost off the charts.

reply to post by TinkerHaus

$500 a week is more than many people make in a whole year. There're people who slave away for 350+ days a year for less. Nobody in america, that I know of, can say the same. In addition, they do that in the midst of dirty rivers, dirty air, high population concentration, and so on.

We're buried in luxury in this country.

Consider Israel. Over 6 million people live there on a landmass comparable in size to the state of New Jersey or a single county in one of the larger US states. Think about that. Oregon, for example, has about 3.5 million people. Israel would fit inside Lake County. It would, in fact, fit inside 3 of Oregon's larger counties. Oregon has 36 counties, btw! Yet, the country of Israel has nearly double the population of the entire state. America is huge and has plentiful resources; rich greenery, coal deposits, etc. We make immeasurable amounts of money. We just waste so much of it that we take it all for granted. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that we don't travel to these other places to see what it's like. If we did that more often, we'd appreciate what we have.

I will get flack for this, but the poor in our country live like kings, retrospectively. They get clean water, clean air, food and many times shelter. Sure, they're not as well off as somebody who has an income, but compared to people in other countries, they're royalty and living the high life.

America, overall, just doesn't know much about the rest of the world.

Originally posted by the owlbear
I wonder how much Gulf Power gets in subsidies every year while turning a profit.
How bout we end corporate welfare first. They're obviously not using that extra cash to create new jobs.

:

Anyone find those numbers, yet? I don't have the time, but They are a division of the Southern Company. A huge power conglomerate that gets a massive load of cash in subsidies (subsidies are what the new conservatives call "entitlements", if it were money given to an individual, but hey, this money is going to millionaires so its about creating jobs.

Here it is:

Every evening, the same 10 friends eat dinner together, family style, at the same restaurant. The bill for all 10 comes to $100. They always pay it the way we pay taxes:
• The first four are poor and pay nothing.
• The fifth pays $1.
• The sixth pays $3.
• The seventh, $7
• The eighth, $12.
• The ninth, $18.
• The 10th, (the most well-to-do) pays $59.

One night the restaurant owner announces that because they're such good customers, he's dropping their group dinner bill to $80. Let's call that a tax cut. They want to continue paying their bill as we pay taxes. So the four poorest men still eat free. But if the other six split the $20 tax cut evenly, each would save $3.33. That means the fifth and sixth men would end up being paid to eat. The restaurant owner works out a plan: The fifth man eats free; the sixth pays $2; the seventh, $5; the eighth, $9; the ninth, $12; and the 10th guy pays $52. All six are better off than before, and the four poor guys still eat for nothing. The trouble starts when they leave the restaurant and begin to compare what they reaped from the $20 cut. "I only got a dollar of it," says the sixth man, "but he (pointing at No. 10) got $7." The fifth guy, who also saved a dollar by getting his meal free, agrees that it's not fair for the richest to get seven times the savings as he. No. 7, grousing that the wealthy get all the breaks, points out that he only got two bucks. "Wait a minute," the first four poor guys yell in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men jump the 10th and administer a severe beating. The next night he doesn't come for dinner. They shrug it off and eat without him. The customary $80 bill comes. Surprise! They're $52 short.

Yes, those who pay the most taxes get the most back from tax reductions. But tax them too much — punish them for the wealth they may have — and they just might stop bringing their money to the table.

I guess this is why American businesses have about $10 trillion in offshore deposits. You can’t blame them. After all, they got tired of getting beat up to forfeit their “fair share.”


ben stein needs to think real hard about that because alot of them has stopped coming to the dinner table.

Originally posted by jonnywhite
reply to post by TinkerHaus

 

Consider Israel. Over 6 million people live there on a landmass comparable in size to the state of New Jersey or a single county in one of the larger US states.

Wellll, 9 million people live in New Jersey in a state the size of, uh, New Jersey.

Just sayin'.

Hopefully Ben Stein misspoke. The guy is smart and I would be surprised he made such a comment. However, he is Jewish is and is probably out of touch with the gentile plight. No, I'm not being disparaging. The truth hurts. Jewish people by far have more money than the average world occupier. Guess I'll be banned here shortly.

Not everyone can own a country, a business, a way of life beyond our means. Guess Ben can if true. Not everyone has an I.Q. above 130. Some of us have to clean motel and hotel rooms to make a living due to our limited intelligence.

reply to post by neo96


Your little story here doesn't work. It is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Because the restaurant owner while capable of reducing the cost of the meal is incapable of giving you a "taxcut". Because the price of the meal is irrelevant to the percentage each of them are paying for the meal. The tax cut analogy only applies if you are changing the pay structure used to pay for the meal not the cost of the meal itself. You are using the cost of the meal to justify changing the structure of paying for the meal when it does not have to be changed at all

Because if they start out paying for the reduced cost meal using the structural percentage they are already paying each of them are saving proportionally to the cost of the meal that they had previously paid $100 for. So there is no reason for any of them to argue about any savings because they have all participated in an equal saving.