Bill Maher may be lost by liberals.
On his last HBO show (3/15/13), Bill Maher complained about how much he and his wealthy cohort pay in taxes: “You know what? Rich people—I’m sure you’d agree with this—actually do pay the freight in this country.”
Maher added that wealthy Californians pay nearly 40 percent to the federal government and nearly 15 percent to the state: “I just want to say liberals: You could actually lose me. It’s outrageous what we’re paying—over 50 percent. I’m willing to pay my share, but yeah, it’s ridiculous.”
If Maher, who once understood marginal tax rates, is really paying near those percentages, he is making so many millions a year that it’s hard to see him garnering a lot of sympathy for his put-upon routine. He certainly wouldn’t get any from the 2010 Bill Maher, who had some harsh words for wealthy people whining about a modest hike in the marginal tax rate, in a piece headlined “New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified” (Huffington Post, 9/24/10):
I’ve done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6 percent tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole. And let’s be clear: That’s 3.6 percent only on income above 250 grand—your first 250, that’s still on the house.
Hey, we’re not calling any names.
It would seem that Mr. Maher’s money
Steers well clear of his mouth
Once most people’s income drastically outpaces their actual costs of living, they exercise all sorts of psychological contortions to continue justifying it. Their wealth was provided by either via exploitation, service or entertainment, all existing only within a larger society that they themselves are responsible for contributing to. Such arrogance and greed to think their success somehow reduces this.
Bill was always for the 3.6% increase in the federal income tax. He is complaining here about the additional excessive CA tax (which IS too high). He is NOT contradicting himself.
Bill was always for the 3.6% increase in the federal income tax. He is complaining here about the additional excessive CA tax (which IS too high). He is NOT contradicting himself…..
Maher added that wealthy Californians pay nearly 40 percent to the federal government and nearly 15 percent to the state:
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Excuse me? 15% to the state is outrageous? If that’s all I had to pay, I would be happy. Sorry, his own words, it was not Calif he was complaining about.
After that bit on his last show I found myself wondering what he was saying. After reading the comments here, I know I am not alone. Frankly, I’ve seen some degradation in other aspects of his show recently also; his New Rules don’t sound so much like his old routine, but more like a series of cheap shots. If he keeps this up, I may stop watching him.
Maher is just another entertainer masquerading as someone who actually cares.
I call Bill Maher an urban rube. It’s offensive and ignorant that he thinks Americans are stupid, after we reelected Obama. Those who aren’t bicoastal are ignorant “rubes” and “red necks”. There is much he doesn’t know. The derivation of “red neck” goes back to West Va. coal mine strikers who wore red kerchiefs as they marched towards the National Guard that shot them down for trying to unionize. And if red necks are rural people, the assumption is they’re ignorant, which seems ignorant to me. Unless, of course, they’re yuppy urbanites moved out to raise sustainable pigs to slaughter “humanely”. In eastern NC I’ve gone into filing station restaurants where MLK’s dream is taking place. Black and white farmers eat together at tables joking and laughing. Not in a field. MLK, a city guy, didn’t seem to think of chiggers when he gave that speech. Where we sat in at the main drags in Chapel Hill, now is half MLK Blvd. Does the media cover thing like those. Occupy Savannah, according to a friend from NYC who drove down that way, was entirely integrated, with beautiful biracial couples holding hands. I told ever medium I knew. No one went to check it out. To “diversify” Zuccotti Park required a movement from the Bronx, since Harlem has been yuppified. I had to point out to the Public Editor when the new census came out that Manhattan is lily white. I have land in Ashe Co, NC. The guy who runs his cattle on my land says, with no Southern accent, (sadly, TV and radio are eliminating regional accents), “Of course there’s climate change.” While Bill Maher flies or drives around the country to tell people about climate change, releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere? Regarding hate, I suggest he look up his home state, NJ, on the Southern Poverty Law Center Hate Map. He’s admitted hearing people there use the N word. On the map, it’s hard to make out the state, it swarms with so many hate groups. California has the highest number of Hate sites. Interesting to look at that map. Detroit is the most segregated city in the country, Milwaukee second, NYC third. They couldn’t be racist; they’re in the North. A friend in Detroit who’s white in the circle of white suburbs says her neighbors are vocally racist. As my New England in laws were, assuming, when they moved to Asheville, NC, that they weren’t racist because they were from Springfield Mass, and Providence, RI. I grew up in Chapel Hill, NC, and, along with white southerners from EVERY Southern state, including Ala and Miss, was in the civil rights movement. I’m proposing to American Experience that they cover us before we all die. Most of my friends already have. My in laws moved South for my father in law to do corporate work into a segregated and restricted suburb founded by the Vanderbilts of NYC, as a village to Biltmore House. I’d never met a Republican before going there. My mother was born in 1910 in Concord, NC, after her family left Charleston where they’d owned ships, docks, and slaves. I’m not famous enough to be on Henry Louis Gates, but when I meet an African American from Charleston I call him or her “cousin”. My mother tried to join the Communist party. There plenty of communists in CH. My dream is that one black history month, someone shows the MNN documentary from Riverside Church here in segregated NYC, with racist cops. In that documentary, prisoners riot for pay, and are shot down. But the most disturbing scene is a KKK guy in full white regalia and a New Yawk accent, torturing a black man on a gurney. It’s deplorable. But would the networks cover it? No. Why not? It’s not Fair.
Maher has always been a nasty, snotty, libertarian know nothing. His whole “philosophy” is to put bits and pieces of the things being talked about in the MSM news into a, is-it-good-for-bill matrix , rant about how Christians and fat people are eating his food, and invite his asshole celebrity friends on to laugh at poor people and Mexicans. Maher is a dick, hes always been a dick and nothing is really changed except that his audience has been leaving him – hes a soon to be, loud mouthed talk show wash out and we know where all loudmouthed washouts wind up – (just ask dennis miller) – they wind up doing paid propaganda loud mouthing work for the kock bros and cato institute and, or something that involves complaining about about the black quarterbacks in the NFL. – a master washout such as rush Limbaugh can do both at the same time.
There is truth to what Maher says. The 1% is taxed at an astonishing rate. Except, they don’t feel it where it really counts, like the rest of us. The point is, we must all cultivate The Commons, because that is what keeps the whole boat afloat–not the tax revenues 1%.
What everyone seems to miss – who pays the full tax rate? Especially at his income. Once he finishes with deductions and loopholes in the tax code he probably pays 20% – 30% while folks who depend on standard deductions, if their lucky are paying a higher effective rate.
That’sright, @ Doug L. (What’s with the purloined handle?) Maher’s a fraud, a crappy, fourth-rate stand-up who hit the jackpot with his schtick. His success, like the re-born-as-a-concerned-liberal Chris Matthews, is baffling and bad and outrageous, all at once.
When these poor put -upon rich people get even a tiny bit close to living like the rest of us, they just might get it. Until then their whinny selves can take a trip out on their yachts where they should toast their good fortune. Don’t they know what they look like when they cry about tax rates while being able to do anything they want and buy anything they want? Their behavior only goes to show what greed does to a person’s character.
However I believe Maher would be arrogant lying in a ditch.
Tim
“[P]urloined handle”?
Expliquez-vous, mon ami, s’il vous plait.
(Two years of junior college French.
I can count to twenty and order a beer.)
Suppose Bill Gates pays a 5% tax rate on a 10 Billion Dollar income. He then walk into the a stadium of 100,000 fans who average paying $5,000.00 per year in taxes. Bill thus pays 500 million in taxes, the same amount as all the fans. But, the fact that Gates, easily in the top 1/1000 of the 1%, pays 50% of all the taxes, does not make his 5% tax rate fair.
The average effective federal income tax rate on the top 1% of income earners in the US is 24%, according to IRS statistics. The top marginal rate of 39.6% is a mirage, just as is the 35% top corporate rate, as US corporations pay an average effective tax rate of about 19%, with many of the biggest corporations, like GE, paying absolutely no corporate taxes to the US.
The paradox of the rich paying lower rates while paying a higher share of collected taxes is easily resolved if we look at the stagnant wages of the bottom 70%. This segment has, for 30 years, seen its earnings rise much more slowly than the rate of inflation; thus, this segment’s relative contribution to the income tax pie has declined.
Bill would still have considerably more of his money if he hadn’t given a cool million to re-elect Obummer. Multi-millionaires have tax attorneys and business managers whose job it is to find every possible shelter and loophole. Somehow I seriously doubt he’s paying the rates he claims he is.
once pot is legal and available for purchase online maher wont feel any “common cause” with “liberals” at all…maybe hes rehearsing for that day, or maybe hes just being offered money..errrr… encouraged to shake up his “beliefs” to attract pac money errr…a wider advertiser base errrrr …. fan base.
Doug, I’m thinking “@Doug Latimer” and “Doug Latimer” are two different people, no? If they are both you, I apologize for the confusion.
@ tim N …yes they are two different people the “@” signifies it is a response to someone else’s comment, when there is no reply feature available
No worries, Tim.
Thanks to our anonymous commenter for the clarification.
No way Bill Maher pays a 39.6% federal tax rate on his gross income — or a 15% state tax. I make like a millionth of what he does, or less, have no tax advisors or accountants, and do my own taxes. I don’t pay close to the marginal tax rate on my pitiful income even when I rely solely on the standard deduction.
The top 1% of income earners should pay ~75% tax rates, and off-shore accounts need to be criminalized, imho. Go bitch about your missing fortune in your vacation home, asshole
Maher is daring to suggest that a reasonable, sensible alternative to “tax-loving liberals” and “tax-hating conservatives” exists–and he is correct about that. These two terms are ridiculously simplistic, and the more common-sense Americans realize we are not forced to choose one or the other, the better off we all will be.
Please do not misinterpret this comment to be suggesting that greedy or ignorant “conservatives” are no more threat to the nation and world than unrealistic “liberals”–it’s the con’s who have been wrecking the world’s economy and environment. But, in my view, the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives–the leaders of both major parties–basically share the same agenda, and rich bastards actually think they deserve all the money they “earn”. At least Maher does more good than harm.
honestly i have not followed Bill too closely since in only discovered him towards the end of my days of heavy torrent downloading and he is too inaccessible in other forms. BUT I loved everything I have seen of him.
I’m surprised at what he said, but more surprised at the instant vilification here. maybe he’s having a bad day. Some times i bitch about my commute, which is silly – thank god i make enough money to be worth a long drive to work. Hell, screw me for not being grateful that I have a car!
Dude is a pot head, right? maybe he really is too lazy to take care of his money. I know for me it is harder to get my bills in the mail than it is for me to actually pay them.
I dunno, maybe this IS becoming a pattern for him, but if this is just one comment, from a comedian, after years of arguing the contrary, give him a break.
For once – Maher is absolutely correct!
Wow.. and have always thought of him as a complete liberal a-hole.