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Bill Maher, Jay Leno, and the State of Moral Reasoning in America, Part 1
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, December 10, 2008
A couple of weeks ago I tuned in to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. (One of the happy benefits of living in the Central Time Zone is that most television programs come on an hour earlier than on the east and west coasts. So I can catch a little bit of Leno before bed and still be asleep by 11:15. On this particular night, Jay’s guests included singer/actress Kristen Chenoweth (always fun!) and political comedian Bill Maher (always obnoxious!). You can watch the recording on Hulu, if you’re so inclined.
Bill Maher is a clever, cynical, critical man who gets attention by saying outlandish things. Maher, as you may recall, recently released the film Religulous, that made fun of religion and religious people, mostly with a series of cheap shots. Thus it came as no surprise to me when, in a conversation with Jay Leno about homosexuality, Maher wondered if Jesus had been gay. “It wouldn’t make him any worse!” Maher explained, assuming that Jesus was already bad enough. Maher’s evidence for Jesus’ gayness? He was “a gentle guy” who “never got married” and ended every prayer with “Ah . . . men!” See what I mean by cheap shots?
Maher did have a few funny lines. On the election of Obama, he said, “It’s a new chapter in America. Unfortunately, it’s Chapter 11.” But his making fun of Sarah Palin was lowball even for Maher. His sexual innuendos were both offensive and unbelievably sexist for someone who claims to be a an enlightened human being.
I could waste the rest of this blog post picking on Maher. But I want to take seriously something he said about taxation, of all things. I want to analyze his ideas and examine his moral reasoning because I think it’s instructive and, to an extent, representative. You hear this kind of argument, not just from eccentric comedians like Maher, but from much more mainstream leaders and lots of regular Americans.
Maher’s comments came while he was giving advice to the Republican Party as it considers its future. He condemned Republicans as the people who are against estate taxes. Maher explained further:
“The estate tax is the perfect tax. I mean, we gotta tax somebody, right? This is a tax on rich dead people: people who literally have estates, otherwise known as not you. People who don’t need money, on account of that whole being dead thing.”
Now I realize Maher was exaggerating to be funny. But he wasn’t just telling jokes. He was also advocating a position that, I’m quite sure, he actually holds. (This is ironic because Maher claims to be a libertarian. It’s hard to imagine a true libertarian thinking that the government should take money from people just because they died.)
Maher is partly right, partly wrong, in what he claims. I’m no expert on estate taxes, but I’m pretty sure that in the U.S. today, the first two million dollars of one’s estate are exempt from the estate tax. So the only people who would pay estate taxes are those who have more than two million in net worth and who are dead. Of course, in a sense the estate tax is actually a tax on the heirs of the deceased. They’re the ones who will have less money in the end. So it’s not just a tax on dead people, as if the money the government takes would otherwise be buried in the ground along with the deceased.
I find most interesting Maher’s statement that an estate tax is a tax on “people who literally have estates, otherwise known as not you.” This is an open argument from self-interest. We should support the estate tax, he says, because other people will have to pay, not us. Now that’s an argument I could get behind, given my natural instinct towards selfishness! But should I?
Maher offers some justification for making others pay, namely: they “don’t need the money, on account of the whole being dead thing.” Yes, of course. But the money is really coming from the heirs, who, presumably, don’t need it.
I wonder if Maher would be willing to argue the general principle: It is right for the government to take from people whatever money they don’t need. That would sure open up a can of worms, wouldn’t it? Who gets to decide what somebody needs? Suppose the government decided that nobody needs more than $250,000 a year. Would it be right for the government to take whatever extra somebody makes? I’ll bet Bill Maher makes a whole lot more than this. Does he need all he makes? Would he be happy to let the government take every thing he doesn’t need? (At this point I’d love to see Maher’s tax return, not only to see how much he makes, but also to see how much he gives away to charity.)
Tomorrow I’ll finish up my critique for Bill Maher’s moral reasoning before moving on to Jay Leno.
Topics: Moral Reasoning |
6 Responses to “Bill Maher, Jay Leno, and the State of Moral Reasoning in America, Part 1”
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December 10th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Insightful, interesting. Kudos!
December 10th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Coveting comes in many forms. Some people like to say that others have “too much” and that the government should take it. They actually seem to think they are being charitable when they say it, as if requesting that the government take other people’s money at the point of a gun to give to your pet causes is somehow generosity on your part.
Estate taxes are ghoulish. The government (and anyone else, for that matter) should not profit when you die.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Mark, Thank you so very much!! Loved your common sense approach , wisdom & critique of modern day television. There’s plenty of wisdom in the good book-especially proverbs. Wonder if the celebs would benefit greatly from its wisdom & insights. I’m guessing a lot less tranquilizers & antidepressants would be needed & sold. Forgive me if any typos. Have a wonderful upcoming Christmas. Love, Peace & Prayers J & Family Thanks again for your terrific photography & any insights provided by the family
December 10th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I want to push back just a little at the following statement:
The government (and anyone else, for that matter) should not profit when you die.
I honestly don’t think the idea of “profit” from someone’s death is the real question here. That is to say, when someone dies, whatever money was “theirs” at the time of death doesn’t just disappear (as Mark Roberts rightly points out). Rather, someone gets it. So, unless we do “[bury it] in the ground along with the deceased,” someone will “profit,” although I expect that they’d never use that word (THAT would be “ghoulish”!).
So, the question becomes, “who should get that money?” It is a good and natural thing to say “the family and/or other heirs of the deceased,” especially when a will (or some other clear statement of the deceased’s intent) is present.
But do we then go to say that no amount as “tax” to the government is fair? In at least one sense, that inherited money is income, and most Americans agree (if begrudgingly) that some amount of taxation on income is both desirable and necessary (for the smooth running of needed government functions, many of which most citizens use in some form or another). If the inherited money was simply “added on” to the amount of the recipient’s reported income for that year, I expect that most people would be paying even more money than is the case under the current estate tax laws (which, as has again already been noted, exempt the first two million dollars of inherited income entirely)!
I won’t try to say that the current law is the fairest, let alone most faithful, way of doing things. But it strikes me as better than some other options that very well might be considered….
December 10th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Mark: I agree that inherited money is rather like income. But if I get a pay check tomorrow and I die tomorrow night, it seems like a real stretch to say that if my son gets my paycheck, that’s income for him. Isn’t the government taxing people twice in this case?
I realize that the government does this in a way right now. If I give my son $12,000 tomorrow, this is not counted as income for him and is not taxed. But if I give him $24,000, the government considers the second $12,000 to be taxable income to my son, even though I paid Federal tax on the money when I earned it in the first place. I’m having a very hard time wrapping my head around the morality of this.
December 11th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Isn’t the government taxing people twice in this case?
A fair counter-argument (and I again wish to state I’m not really defending the estate tax, as it stands. Just pushing against the notion that, as “profit” for the government, it’s therefore wrong). It seems that money is actually taxed several times, anyway. When you earn it, when you spend it, when that store reports it as income, when they pay their own employees out of those profits, etc. It’s really a never-ending cycle if you think about it.
What’s moral? I don’t pretend to know in this case. At best, I think we can work toward the “best” option to ensure that the needs of many people as possible are met as well as possible.