Bill O'Reilly so exemplifies the thinking of so many people who believe they are entitled to a free ride on Wall Street that it's worth using him for a teachable moment, should anyone who isn't insane choose to read this post.
O'Reilly is quite upset that Hillary Clinton has included a proposal to tax short term capital gains as ordinary income, sparking his promise not to invest in the stock market if she should succeed with that promise.
O'Reilly justifies this proclamation by saying that Clinton's requirement that stocks be held for three years is just too risky for him, so he just won't invest at all. He tacitly admits that he makes nearly a half-million dollars of ordinary income in a year as well, which is far too much money for one right-wing bloviating talking head to be taking home as salary.
Here's the thing. Stock market investors make money with no effort. They invest, they wait for the market to do its thing, and they divest. Whatever profit is gleaned from that investment is pure, unearned profit.
Why O'Reilly and others like him don't see 60 percent of unearned money as being better than no unearned money, I cannot say. But they don't. The sense of entitlement is so incredibly strong with the investor class that they truly believe they should be entitled to all of their profit merely because they took the risk of investing in the first place.
That's a thought pattern that gets us into trouble over and over and over again. Either hold on for the long ride, folks, or take your 60 percent and call it a day.
But this nonsense from O'Reilly? It's just more entitlement talk from one of the most entitled liars on the planet.
