'The Five’: Jeff Bezos and Joe Rogan fire back after AOC villainizes billionaires…

[0:00] Jeff Bezos seems to be done being a punching bag for the likes of AOC and Bernie Sanders, [0:04] the Amazon founder giving this reality check on their socialist wish list. [0:09] Politicians are using the kind of age-old technique. So there's this tale of two economies [0:15] and they're using this age-old technique of, you know, picking a villain and pointing fingers. [0:22] But the problem is that doesn't solve anything. People sometimes say that, you know, [0:29] I don't pay taxes. It's not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. [0:33] You could double the taxes I pay and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. [0:39] Andrea Rogan is calling out AOC for saying you can't earn a billion dollars legally. [0:45] This idea that it's easy to become a billionaire and that these billionaires somehow or another [0:51] are the problem because they're not paying their fair share is so weird. [0:56] We just assume that everybody who makes an incredible amount of money stole it. [1:01] I think I literally heard AOC say this recently, that no one achieves substantial wealth without [1:07] somehow or another victimizing other people. [1:10] Right. And not just illegally. [1:11] I'm for unleashing the billionaires. Let them finally fight back. You have [1:15] Ken Griffin finally saying enough is enough. Is it time for the billionaires to punch? [1:21] Well, the billionaires need better PR, and this is a step in the right direction. [1:26] It is a company that employs a million people, a million Americans, and they make great salaries, [1:34] $50,000 to be a driver. And if you're corporate, you make six figures easy. [1:39] It's a great company to start out at. Stock price. [1:43] 10 years ago, stock price at Amazon was $50 a share. Today, it's like $250. [1:49] The guy is a multi-billionaire because he owns a lot of the company. And you know how much a salary [1:55] is? Salary is $81,000 a year because that's what he paid himself in like 1998, and it's kept that way. [2:03] Now, he doesn't pay a lot of income tax on $81,000 a year because you can't tax wealth. [2:11] All of his wealth is tied up in Amazon stock. He sold it once. He sold about $4 billion in stock [2:18] a couple years back and paid about a billion dollars in taxes. And he basically lives off [2:24] that or he borrows from whatever the assets are. And if you want to go start grabbing his wealth and [2:31] grabbing his company, it's illegal. Think about what this company does. You can get whatever you [2:36] want, a slip and slide, sneakers, the Torah, at the click of a button. This has changed the world. [2:42] We used to have to trade Indians for stuff. We used to forage in the forest. We have to build [2:46] things. We have to elbow people out of the way on Black Friday. We don't have to do that anymore. [2:51] This guy solved every single problem in commercial capitalism, and you guys want to put him in [2:57] prison. No good. Earlier today, Kaylee, Zoram Amdani pushed back against Bezos and said, [3:04] I think there are a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ. But the thing about this is [3:09] that if you promise a teacher in Queens that she's just one paycheck, one higher tax rate away from [3:16] on somebody else for all of her dreams to come true, and then you never deliver on that. And [3:22] education of the kids doesn't get better. And then people start to get resentful. Like, [3:25] what are we paying these higher taxes for? That's right. What Zoram Amdani is asking is for you to [3:30] take the money and throw it into a pit of government ruin. And he asked this for Ken [3:34] Griffin. Throw the money at his ideals of free grocery stores, right? Well, wrong. They don't [3:41] work. We've tried free grocery stores, Kansas City, Missouri. It failed. We tried this in Baldwin, [3:47] Florida. It failed. In Erie, Kansas, it was sold to a private company. It failed. The Soviet Union, [3:52] Venezuela, it failed. So what he's asking billionaires to do, give me your money so I can throw it at a [3:58] grand experiment, except it's not a grand experiment. It is a proven failure everywhere it has been [4:03] tried. Instead, let the Ken Griffins of the world give $650 million to charity, which is what he's done [4:08] that benefits New York residents. Create jobs. That is the proven experiment that has worked. [4:14] Entrepreneurship, conservatism, not socialism. Jessica, I'll obviously talk about it wherever you [4:20] want, but I was thinking about how this idea that the accomplishment is raising the taxes. [4:26] Like, they don't say what they want to do with raising the taxes. They just, like, [4:31] by raising the taxes, it's like, check the box. I accomplished something. [4:35] Well, they want to—for Mom Donnie, and listen, I'm not in—we're not going to have free buses or [4:40] the grocery stores. He can't freeze all of the rents. But he can get universal child care, [4:45] and he can get universal 3K. And those have been the policies that he's talking about where he says [4:49] that money would go towards it. And Bezos likes his pied-à-terre tax. Actually, he says, [4:54] yeah, if someone doesn't live there and they have a house—an apartment that's valued at over [4:59] $5 million, you could pay a bit more for that. Otherwise, unleash it back into the ecosystem and [5:04] let someone who actually is in New York and contributing to the economy there every day [5:08] use it. 61 percent of Americans—and that's inclusive of Republicans in there—think that [5:15] the wealthy don't pay enough in taxes. That's just a fact. So if you— [5:19] Yeah, why did they think that? Well, that's also what Donald Trump [5:23] told them in the 2016 election. Remember, he and Bernie Sanders sounded a lot alike in 2016. [5:28] Hillary Clinton was the one who sounded more hawkish or whatever you want to say on this. [5:33] So the idea of unleashing the billionaires and that you're going to have, you know, [5:36] a surrogacy class of Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin for an election that is all about the little guy [5:41] versus the Epstein class, as John Ossoff puts it, is not a good recipe for this. What I was [5:46] interested in, though, is Bezos said that the bottom half of earners in the country shouldn't [5:50] pay income taxes. He was talking about that nurse, and he said if she makes $75,000 a year and she [5:55] pays $12,000 in taxes, that's wrong. She shouldn't be giving up that money. It shouldn't be going to [5:59] Washington. [6:00] It makes sense to me. [6:01] Yeah. [6:01] Well, I'm saying that— [6:03] That part, I thought— [6:04] And then this reduces spending and do the regulations and all of those things. [6:06] One thing I want to point out, the Seattle mayor, you know, that socialist lady out there, [6:12] she's regretting what she said about telling billionaires to leave. [6:16] Yeah, she should. You know, what is greedier, getting rich from hard work or taking from the [6:21] rich who got there through hard work? The people who are talking, these agents of envy, [6:27] are the greediest people you will ever meet. We have to lose the fear of defending success. [6:34] No one's going to make me feel guilty for being rich because I've been poor. I've been poor. [6:41] I've been rich. I like being rich. I want you to be rich. I want you to be really rich, [6:47] richer than me, but I don't want you to take it from me. I don't want you to cheat. I don't want [6:51] you to steal. I want you to work hard for it, work hard the way I did, and then you're really [6:56] going to like it. And do not listen to these agents of envy. Our defense against them has [7:03] always been handicapped by fear. There's nothing worse than a wealthy person who has worked five [7:09] decades to get there will just sit there and take arrogant, self-indulgent attacks from some failed [7:16] 27-year-old who took a class, who's never done anything in their life, telling you you're greedy. [7:22] Screw you. There is no stigma to success. I don't know where we got this idea that you have to feel [7:29] guilty about being rich. It's so funny. You pointed this out before. It used to be the millionaires. [7:36] Now, because they all became millionaires, including Bernie Sanders, they talk about billionaires. [7:40] What is there, like 2,000 of them, 4,000 of them? This is so stupid. There's only been one way [7:49] to increase economic, I mean, to lift people out of poverty, and it ain't taxes. It's never been taxes. [7:57] It's been economic growth. Raises your overall income, increases productivity, jobs, and lowers the [8:03] cost of goods. Who gets the ball rolling in that? Jeff Bezos. These wealthy mofos. [8:10] They're the ones that put out the money that get the ball rolling. Economic growth caused the largest [8:17] reduction in poverty in history. It wasn't taxes. It wasn't equity or social justice, which is a lie, [8:27] a complete lie. Anytime the government intervenes in an industry, that industry gets worse. Sure, [8:32] healthcare wasn't perfect before Obamacare. Oh, but you wish you could go back to those days, don't you? [8:38] Don't you? Anyway. It's interesting to have, to watch the young mayors of Seattle and New York City, [8:47] the on-the-job training. Obviously, they run out of other people's money faster than they thought. [8:52] Coming up next, Democrats just released another social media video. 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