Tax Day: Exposing the Lies of the Rich
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode Walter Smolarek and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the extreme injustices of the U.S. tax system. Monday was Tax Day — no cause for celebration for millions of ordinary people. But for the ultra rich, it wasn’t so bad. Many of the wealthiest people on the planet actually pay a tax rate that is lower than a typical worker — how do they get away with this scam?
Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Monday was tax day. No cause for celebration for millions of ordinary people, but for the ultra-rich, |
| 0:07.4 | it wasn't so bad. Many of the wealthiest people on the planet actually pay a tax rate that is |
| 0:12.8 | lower than a typical worker. How do they get away with this scam? |
| 0:18.8 | We need a new system. We need a new system. |
| 0:21.0 | We need a new society. |
| 0:22.9 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not |
| 0:28.1 | only realizable, but an imperative necessity. We are very excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us for a regular weekly segment, |
| 0:58.3 | where we discuss the biggest stories relating to the economy, the state of the working class, |
| 1:02.6 | and the crimes of big business. |
| 1:04.8 | I'm Walter Smilerick, filling in for Brian Beck. |
| 1:07.4 | The Socialist Program brings you content three days a week, thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash the Socialist Program. |
| 1:15.1 | We appreciate all of your support and encourage you to become a patron today if you enjoy listening to the show. |
| 1:21.8 | Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization, Democracy at Work, and the author of many books, the latest being The Sickness is the System. |
| 1:30.0 | When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself, |
| 1:34.6 | you can check out all of his work at r.D.Wolf.com. |
| 1:40.4 | Professor Wolfe, Tax Day, as I said, was Monday. |
| 1:44.0 | Not something that a lot of people look forward to. |
| 1:46.5 | But you shared a graphic recently on social media that we found very illuminating. |
| 1:52.9 | It lists some of the wealthiest people on the planet, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, who's the co-founder of Oracle. And it shows their |
| 2:02.9 | average annual income over a number of years. The range was 2013 to 2018. And the average |
| 2:09.8 | effective tax rate that they pay, what percent of that income do they pay in taxes? For Bill Gates, |
| 2:16.3 | his real tax rate was 18.4%. For Larry Ellison, |
... |
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