Joe Rogan Jabs AOC’s ‘Weird’ Anti-Billionaire Crusade, Says They Pay Their Fair Share in Taxes
Joe Rogan said he is baffled by the anti-billionaire crusade that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other Democrats are on, with the podcast star scoffing at the claim billionaires don’t pay their “fair share” in taxes.
Rogan talked about politicians bashing billionaires with his guest, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, on the Tuesday episode of his show. Andreessen co-founded Andreessen Horowitz, the Bay Area firm that has invested in companies like Facebook, Instagram, Lyft, and Reddit; his net worth is $1.9 billion, for what it’s worth.
“This idea that it’s easy to become a billionaire and that these billionaires somehow or another are the problem because they’re not paying their fair share is so weird,” Rogan said. “That that’s a narrative that actually gets pushed through when you look at the actual numbers of the tax base and how much they contribute and how many jobs they provide.”
He continued, “Yeah, they make more money than everybody else. Right. You could do that too. This is one of the things that America is really good at — you can come from nothing and become incredibly wealthy.”
Rogan then called out AOC for her disdain for billionaires:
We just assume that everybody who makes an incredible amount of money stole it. That they robbed someone.
This is a narrative that gets pushed along [by] democratic socialists, that no on achieves that — I think I literally heard AOC say this recently — that no one achieves substantial wealth without somehow or another victimizing other people.
He was referring to comments AOC made on a podcast earlier this month, where she said it’s impossible to become a billionaire by acting morally.
“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” the New York lawmaker said. “You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth.”
“But you can’t earn that, right? And so you have to create a myth… You have to create a myth of earning it,” she added.
Ocasio-Cortez has ripped the rich several other times as well, like when she wore her “Tax the Rich” dress to the Met Gala in 2021. Tickets to the swanky annual event hit $100,000 this year, if you were wondering.
She is not the only liberal who has argued billionaires need to pay more in taxes, though — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and ex-President Joe Biden (D) have all made similar claims in recent years.
Andreessen told Rogan that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was the “obvious counter example” to AOC’s complaints. He said that’s evident every time an Amazon customer buys something and it is “delivered to you two hours later at the cheapest possible price, saving you and your family a lot of time and money.”
Watch above via YouTube.
New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!
Comments
↓ Scroll down for comments ↓