Cavuto Uses Cherry-Picked IRS Stats Showing There are Fewer Rich People in the U.S. as Excuse Not to Raise Their Taxes
Click here to view this media If Jon Stewart and his staff need more material for segments like the one he did this week — slamming Fox for attacking Warren Buffett for saying the rich should pay more in taxes and attacking the poor as a bunch of freeloaders who just want to suck off the government teet and for daring to have things like refrigerators and air conditioning — you need not look any further than their “business block” that airs on Fox “News” every Saturday morning. Here’s how Cavuto opened up the segment in the clip above: CAVUTO: Sock it to the rich! But what if I told you there aren’t as many rich folks to sock? Oh my god! We can’t have that now can we? Naturally that means we can never raise taxes on anyone that’s still in those upper income brackets. Cavuto goes on to quote some statistics from the IRS showing that there were 13% fewer people earning $200,000 and above from 2007-2009 and 55% less making $10 million and above during that same period and tells Ben Stein that that’s not a good trend. Ben Stein was actually the voice of reason here with his response to Cavuto and pointing out that that doesn’t mean there still aren’t plenty of rich people around and it wouldn’t kill them to pay more in taxes. Cavuto responds by asking him if he thinks those making over $200.000 are rich and out there buying jet airplanes. Stein got a pretty good shot in on Cavuto by telling him, no, he was talking about people like him, who have incomes of $10 million a year or more. Cavuto and his panel end up spending the rest of the segment pretending that the poor don’t pay any taxes because many of them don’t pay federal income tax and having another pity party for the rich if anyone like Warren Buffett dares to say they should pay higher taxes. UPDATE: And surprise, surprise, it appears those stats are cherry-picked to suit their new meme over at the Wall Street Journal and now Fox “News.” Here’s more from Media Matters breaking that down — “Millionaires Go Missing?” WSJ And Fox Cherry-Pick Stats To Claim Number Of Millionaires Shrinking . (Post title updated as well.)
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on August 22, 2011. Filed under