Last night New York Mayor Bill De Blasio did an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. There aren't many ways to describe it, other than this- It was absolutely disgusting.
De Blasio defended his plans for gun control, higher taxes, "meatless Mondays," and battling climate change.
Here are the notes from our podcast episode. )
Gun Rights
It's pretty clear that De Blasio does not think you have a right to defend yourself. Hannity pressed him several times on that issue, and he had a tough time answering the question. What he did say is that you have a right to be "safe."
What does it mean to have a right to be "safe?"
This is absolutely no knock on law enforcement, but they rarely keep you safe from home invasions. Actually, it would be near impossible for them to do so. The simple question needs to be asked.. If someone breaks into your house, do you have the right to defend yourself? De Blasio's answer on this question is an obvious "no."
CEO Pay
The "left" often uses CEO pay when talking about the failures of our free market system.
What is the point in making this comparison? "The CEO makes 1-2-400X more than the average worker."
The point of this statement is to insinuate that people are struggling in todays society because of Greed. If the CEO wasn't making so much money, the workers at the company would be able to be paid more, right?
Wrong. Let's take one of the most hated CEO's in the world, Doug McMillon (WALMART), for example. He makes $22 million per year. Workers at Walmart start out at $11 per hour. Walmart has 2.2 million employees. Each employee is paying $10 per year to the CEO. In hours? That's roughly $.01 per hour worked (at 25 hours per week on average).
So what if we decide to pay the CEO the same as everyone else in the company? If they are all at $11 per hour, evening out the payment between everyone would raise their pay to...wait for it...$11.01 per hour.
CEO pay is a non-issue, no matter how unfair it may seem. It is absolutely not a factor when discussing the pay of the average employees.
We need to go back to the 1950's tax rates
Ah, the good ole days. It is true that in the 1950's, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. That rate was on income above the $200,000 mark ($2 Million in todays money).
The catch? Only 10,000 households) qualified for that tax. In the 1950's, the effective tax rate was actually only 42%. Today it's 37%, with a MUCH lower marginal rate. Meaning that the top tax rate does not matter. Most of the rich are rich because they are smart. They'll find a way to get around it. They are smarter than the government, a low bar, indeed.
The "rich" 1% are still paying nearly half of all the taxes in the US. Yes, even though they only account for 1% of the workers, they pay half the taxes. That number, by the way, has gone up- not down, since the lowering of the tax rates.
"You didn't build that."
Perhaps the most infuriating part of De Blasio's interview with Hannity came at the 16:00 mark, when he stated that the workers are the ones that created the wealth, not the business owner.
This is pure socialism, and it's absolutely wrong.
If you'd like, trace back the origins of any business. Did it start by 600,000 people banding together, pooling their resources, to form Amazon.com? No, it started with Jeff Bezos packing books into boxes on his floor in his house.
The workers have a job because the owner started the business. Risked the capital. Put in 100 hours a week for years on end while only losing money in the process.
If socialists want to start a business, they are absolutely free to do --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningliberty/support)
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