A socialist guest on Caleb Hammer's show said the top 1% pay zero in income taxes. The actual figure is 40%. She also had no idea the U.S. has the most progressive income tax system in the entire Western world.
Podbit · The Dan Bongino Show
A socialist guest on Caleb Hammer's show said the top 1% pay zero in income taxes. The actual figure is 40%. She also had no idea the U.S. has the most progressive income tax system in the entire Western world.
Where this was said
At 36:30 · chapter starts 34:30
The Caleb Hammer segment is the comedic and intellectual heart of the episode. Hammer asks a basic question to a blue-haired socialist guest: if you want the rich to pay 'more' taxes, what do they pay now? The answer — 'none, I think it's zero' — is both wrong and revealing. Hammer then walks through the actual IRS data: the top 1% pay approximately 40% of all federal income taxes; the top 10% pay 50–60%; the bottom 50% pay just 1%. He also reveals that the U.S. has the most progressive income tax system in the entire Western world. [1] — Dan Bongino "A socialist guest on Caleb Hammer's show said the top 1% pay zero in income taxes. The actual figure is 40%. She also had no idea the U.S. …" 36:30 The guest had no idea. Bongino uses this to make his recurring point: these people want to reshape the economy based on premises they cannot verify and refuse to look up, even though the answer is a 10-second AI query away.
In the Caleb Hammer clip, it was noted the top 10% of earners pay between 50 and 60% of all federal income taxes, with the bottom 50% paying just 1%.
Caleb Hammer's clip asserted that the United States has the most progressive income tax system in the entire Western world, a fact that surprised the liberal guest on the show.
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