Wealth Gap: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

our main story tonight is income inequality a good way to figure out which side of it you're on is whether you're currently paying for HBO or stealing it lost last December some of you laughed a little too hard at that last December the president made it clear that income inequality was going to be a big priority the combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility posed a fundamental threat to the American Dream our way of life and what we stand for around the globe I believe this is the defining challenge of our time yes the defining challenge of our time well one of the two defining challenges of our time the other being candy crush level 97 that is hard I've got a lollipop hammer and I still can't but the point is that the president said the word inequality 26 times in that speech which everyone took to mean one thing income inequality is going to be the thrust one of the major themes in 2016 members the Senate Democratic leadership team that's Harry Reid on down are clear got literally going after this income inequality issued for Democrats it's an all-out assault on the issue of income inequality an all-out assault you better watch your ass income inequality cuz you're about to get violently ameliorated or you would have been if they hadn't almost immediately backs down a new article says President Obama appears to be shifting strategy on tackling income inequality the Washington Post reveals Democrats are split on the issue leading President Obama to shift talke away from the subject so basically income inequality has become just another topic of conversation we prefer to avoid in America like Japanese internment camps all that time that we gave Roberto Benigni an Academy Award you know national tragedies equally wrong oh there is there is a key reason why no politician wants to talk about it and that's because every time someone tries to this happens this says Obama engaging in class warfare last warfare class warfare the politics of class warfare trying to drive a class warfare argument use that hashtag class warfare okay okay that all sounds silly but the phrase class warfare is so toxic the president actually had to stop talking about the thing he describes as a fundamental threat to the American Dream and this was so predictable that three years ago he actually gathered a group of historians and told them what you could do for me is to help find a way to discuss the issue of inequality in our society without being accused of class warfare to which they presumably said yeah we can't really help you with that although we can tell you what warren g harding named his penis it's not what you're thinking but but just because politicians can't talk about income inequality doesn't mean we shouldn't and before we do let me just say no one is arguing for complete perfect equality we are not going to live in a world where we pretend that all baldwin's are equally talented there's Billy and there's everyone else that's a fact inequality is a bit like cinnamon you definitely want to have a little of it to spice life up a bit but too much of it can be very dangerous and make no mistake we are at cinnamon dangerous levels right now the wealth gap is getting worse a new analysis shows the richest Americans the top 1% made nearly 20% of all the available income in America last year that's the widest income gap since the roaring 20s okay nothing ominous there then the roaring 20s were famously the party that never ended that's what made the 30 so great just more 20s and and the thing is income inequality affects everyone it can actually hinder overall growth and just to be clear income inequality is by no means just an American problem globalization and technology means that the gap is rising all over the developed world it's just rising faster here in fact in the United States the income ratio between our richest and poorest 10% is now 16 to 1 at this point the rich are just running up the score if our economy was a little league game someone would have called it by now but but what sets America apart is that in this time we have actively introduced policies disproportionately benefiting the wealthy like cutting income tax and capital gains tax rates for the richest in half as well as our that weird tax rebate for orgies with fancy Eyes Wide Shut masks the password is Fidelio you would think you would think in a democracy policies that benefit very few people at the expense of very many would not be able to succeed but they have and I think the reason for that may lie somewhere in America's greatest quality optimism it's basically in how susceptible Americans are to this we have never been a nation of haves and have-nots we are a nation of haves and soon to haves of people who have made it and people who will make it yes I mean no no hold on that sounds great the problem is it makes no sense economically mathematically or even grammatically and yet we believe him we believe him and there's a poll that I think explains why a few months ago pew research revealed that 65% of Americans believe the wealth gap is increasing and 60% believe our system unfairly favors the wealthy but and here's the key 60 percent also believe that most people who work hard enough can make it or in other words yeah I can clearly see this game is rigged which is what's going to make it so sweet when I win this thing good thing that that optimism is one of the things I love the most about this country I love that you line up around the block for TV talent shows for talents you objectively don't have and everyone feels bad when a person who is inevitably and revealingly British does this to you it sounded like two three year olds who've got flu trying to sing I didn't find it funny and I like to laugh and that wasn't funny to me I don't know what that style was it started off like bad food poisoning without any doubt the worst date I'd probably ever seen you may want to be smart and start acting like an arrogant your mashed potatoes are behind Wow Wow a British person just told you your mashed potatoes were bland that has got to hurt the reason a British person has to do that is that we raised in a rigid class system where we have all hope beaten out of us and your optimism is overwhelmingly positive except except when it leads you to act against your own best interests look at the federal estate tax that's the tax that gets paid on inherited wealth it helps to limit the terrible possibility of the permanent landed gentry the idea that a house can be passed down through the generations until some blows the fortune on a Canadian railway company Youth King Laura how could you do that Lord Grantham the family was counting on you how could you and yet the estate tax here is routinely on the verge of being abolished politicians call it the death tax and get applause for saying things like this my own view is we ought to kill the death tax you paid for that farm one student should have to pay for it again except it's almost impossible that a farmer would ever have to do that the federal estate tax does not apply to ninety nine point four percent of all farm estates it also doesn't apply to ninety nine point eight six percent of anyone's estates basically if you're not comfortable calling your accumulation of and estate the estate tax probably doesn't appointing and yet I think it a man worth a quarter of a billion dollars gets applause for saying let's get rid of it under current federal law as don't have to pay taxes on the first 5.3 million that you leave them meaning that you and your wife can leave your kid more than 10 million dollars tax-free and relax that is more than enough to turn Chelsea into the world's biggest piece of huge up see no 16 year old has a destination birthday party the tax on estates over five million dollars applies to almost nobody but one reason it's constantly threatened is that people assume that it will one day apply to them I don't have a five million dollar state I'd like to someday but if I work all my life and I pay my taxes on my income and then I die and I want to pass on what would be great if it were a five million dollar estate to my kids why should I pay the government again but you won't be paying it you'll be gone in fact this is the practical embodiment of everything you want this is the government literally taking your money over your dead body and also awesome let's be clear let's be clear the existence of an estate tax has not prevented Americans from passing on a load of wealth of the billionaires on the Forbes 471 inherited their fortune and another 56 inherited at least a portion of it that's nearly a third of the list and our habit of handing money down from generations generation perpetuates another disparity perhaps explaining why of the Forbes 400 only 0.25 percent are african-american and to answer your question yes its Oprah Oprah is the person you'll run to a guess good guess America now has a system where wealth is essentially dispersed as a lottery of birth and maybe the reason we seem to accept that is that even though we know the odds are stacked against us we all think we're going to win the lottery experts even appear on TV advising us how to handle our future winnings I think the first things to create a plan set up a trials probably hire a couple of security guards do you take the lump sum payment or the 29-year annuity payment over time I would take the one-time cash drop because it allows you to do a whole bunch of things that you might want to do in your life if you win that kind of money you still have young children make sure you put it in a trust oh absolutely because it is never too early to start protecting your imaginary lottery winnings from crippling estate taxes you might as well do an eight-minute segment on how to handle being attacked by a shark while scoring the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl or things to say on your third date with Beyonce and what watch how it would be great that would be great oh there's a chance technically there's a chance and watch how depressed we get for useful practical advice would you tell people maybe take your five dollars you're gonna spend on the jackpot and put it elsewhere if you can invest that money twenty thirty years down the road that is gonna be a much better there would be much better odds of having a secure retirement than hoping on the lottery it's not nearly as fantasy though no it's not so much more practical please please don't mess up this financial segment with practical advice we're dream weavers here at News team twelve take that over the news team five look look the whole point is if American wealth is a lottery we are increasingly playing two different games in fact I'll show you who wants to play America ball as always we have two drawings first up the draw for people with inherited wealth you should all have a ticket at home with a number between 1 and 3 on it so let's pick 2 balls let's pick two balls fire it up here we go 3 the first number is 3 let's pick another ball 1 congratulations to almost everyone at home ok so now now the lottery for those who were born poor ok tank hello to all of you watching at home or through a Best Buy window you should you should all have a card with a number between one and three and a half million on it and you probably notice that a disproportionate percentage of these balls are black and brown ignore that it's illustrative of nothing I can't stress that enough it's now right tank yeah that's right yeah now as you can see for the third consecutive week this machine is still broken so I can't currently get a ball out of there for you but let's all agree that technically you did all have the hypothetical chance to win so this is depressing um hey remember how much fun we were having over there just one more hold up if you get inside you just think you'll this the one way remember when it comes to the wealth lottery America is a nation of winners and soon to winners

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 17,140,904

Rating: 4.8206434 out of 5

Keywords: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (TV Program), John Oliver (TV Writer), HBO (TV Network), wealth gap, income inequality, estate tax, mitt romney

Id: LfgSEwjAeno

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 13 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/WILL_GIF_YOUR_TITS]

Looks like we've finally exported someone who's not an utter bellend. We're still sorry about Piers Morgan.

[u/Face_Roll]

Yeah...

This video

[u/rbenayad]

I would like to thank whoever keeps posting these videos because as someone who doesn't have cable... I forget I missed something so awesome.

[u/the_ugly_judge]

Every John Oliver segment that gets posted, I've enjoyed it. The man is incredibly talented. Adept discussion* of fairly dry subject matter in such an entertaining way is no mean feat, long may his show continue!
* It's been pointed out and accepted that no direct discussion is going on in Oliver's show (or most shows like this really)

[u/gophillies17]

Very good segment. The part showing the segments on news channels about what to do with lottery winnings was pretty sad though.

[u/[deleted]]

This show really needs a full hour every week. I like that it dedicates 15 minutes or more to an important topic, but then everything else is rushed and they miss other events that are going on.

[u/catfishcatfish]

I used to to wonder why I would want to watch John Oliver when Jon Stewart is making a pretty much identical show. I think I want to watch John Oliver now.

[u/heyitserica]

I'm psyched that John Oliver's show is causing so much of a stir. It's exciting to be able to watch a satirical show on worldwide news, and even more exciting to see that people are taking that content and developing opinions that they might not have before.

I guess that's the point of the news... but still! Yay John Oliver- also The Bugle is hilarious

[u/[deleted]]

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ---Steinbeck