On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that “government tries to do too much,” and taxing the rich doesn’t appear to actually help people who are struggling economically.
While speaking with Washington Post columnist George Will, Maher said, “I keep hearing tax the rich. I understand that. But they do. The rich do pay a lot, I know, because I’m rich, and I pay a lot, like, over half.”
Will responded, “You’re among the 1% who pays 40% in this country, the top 1%, 40% of the income tax.”
Maher then stated, “And I wouldn’t mind doing it, except it doesn’t seem to solve the problem.”
Maher added, “I just want to know where the money goes, because I keep reading things like half the country cannot survive like a $400 disaster in their life, like, they don’t have $400 in the bank if something — if the car breaks or something, and the other half are buying Taylor Swift and Beyoncé tickets for $1,800. … I pay, every year, more than half, the government takes more than half. Where does it go? If it’s not helping in fixing the people who are one paycheck away from disaster, where is this money going?”
Will responded that he doubts the legitimacy of the statistic about how many people can’t survive a small financial shock.
Later, Maher said to Will that Will is someone who spent his “whole life talking about how government tries to do too much, which it does.”
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