On Thursday night, Jon Stewart used Warren Buffett's "Stop Coddling the Super Rich" op-ed as a springboard for a light-hearted lecture on income inequality. Namely, he seconded the suggestion that increasing the tax rate on the rich would be a better solution to cutting the national debt than broadening the tax base to lower income families. But the idea of raising tax rates on the top 2 percent of earners was decried as socialism and class warfare on Fox News for, among other things, according to numbers Stewart quoted, raising a mere $700 billion in revenue over the next ten years. The Daily Show host then pointed to this chart that Business Insider posted showing that the bottom 50 percent of the country only controls 2.5 percent of U.S. wealth. Stewart quipped: "So raising the income tax rate on the top 2 percent of earners would raise $700 billion dollars, but taking half of everything the bottom 50 percent have in this country would do the same. I see the problem here: we need to take all of what the bottom 50 percent have."
Part two:
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Erik Hayden



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