Here we have Bill Maher kvetching about people who say that the rich don’t pay taxes, and about “progressives” who say that multimillionaires and billionaires should be taxed much more heavily. In this tirade against “progressives,” Maher also argues that the U.S., despite the plaints of Bernie Sanders and his ilk, already has a lot of socialism, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment compensation, and so on.
His point is a bit obscure to me, but seems to be that there’s too much income inequality in America, so that a few people make a lot, while many make bupkes. And prices continue to rise, putting stuff like concerts and Disneyland, not to mention Lego kits, out of reach of the middle class. And don’t even mention healthcare! So what’s new?
The guests last week were Governor Wes Moore (Democratic Governor of Maryland), Chris Cuomo (NewsNation Host), and Sarah Isgur (ABC News Analyst and Contributing Editor at The Dispatch). Cuomo and Isgur show up in this clip.
All in all, Maher seems to be complaining both about the super-rich and their failure to help the poor (beyond paying taxes), and also about income inequality. What is he asking for?
Out of curiosity, I asked Grok what Maher’s net worth is. The answer is below: he’s about one-seventh of a billionaire:
Bill Maher’s net worth is estimated at $140 million.
This figure is consistently reported across reliable sources as of late 2025 and into 2026, including Celebrity Net Worth (the primary reference used by most outlets) and recent articles from TV Insider, Yahoo Entertainment, and others.
A big part of his wealth comes from his long-running HBO gig: he reportedly earns about $10 million per year as host of Real Time with Bill Maher (which he’s done since 2003, after earlier runs hosting Politically Incorrect).
Another major boost was a smart 2012 investment: he bought a minority stake (roughly 4%) in the New York Mets for around $20 million and sold it in 2020 when the team changed hands, netting an estimated $80 million profit.
His earnings also include stand-up tours, comedy specials, acting roles, producing projects (like the documentary Religulous and the series Vice), and his podcast Club Random. He’s known for being relatively frugal with his spending despite the high income.
Keep in mind that celebrity net worth estimates are approximate—they’re based on public data about salaries, investments, real estate, and other assets, minus expenses and taxes—but $140 million has been the stable consensus for several years with no major contradictory reports.
Yeah, he seemed a bit all over the place in this one. I appreciated some of his points, and some were funny, but there wasn’t a very coherent thesis. Or so it seems to me.
I am pretty tired of the claim that 10% of the wealthiest americans pay more than 70% of the tax burden already… so we shouldn’t tax them more. I’m with Bernie, tax the rich more and have them pay their fair share.
Data shows that the top 10 percent of wealth owning americans actually own over 70% of the actual ownable wealth in this country. I have scene one figure claiming closer to 80%.
Using one criteria… if that much wealth is owned by so few (the upper 10%), then they need to pay at least that much for their share of the government protection of their wealth and property. And that protection will often include all the military men and women (citizens) recruited from the ranks of the middle and working class (the remaining 90%), as there are few to none of the 10% doing that sort of service.
Another fine data point that demonstrates wealth inequality include that corporate income rates were only 20 to 30 times higher than that of middle and slightly higher income workers back in the 50’s and 60’s. Today it is 200 to 300 times greater.
Two solutions…
tax the rich at higher rates somewhere between what they were back in the 50’s and 60’s and what they are today. That’s a big span… meaning a rate somewhere between 30% and 90%
Reduce the disparity in wealth by increasing wages.
The issue is always defining “fair share.” If I earn $1,000,000 should I be taxed at 90%–so, I keep $100,000? If I earn $10,000,000, should I be taxed at 99%–so I keep $100,000? So, somebody decides that $100K Is the “fair share ” of after-tax income. But should a single person keep $100K as well as a family of five?
I think you have it backwards, Susan. The correct formulation is, “If I earn $1 million a year, should I permit the government to tax me to the tune of $200,000, or should I lobby harder to keep the tax down to $100,000? And if I earn $10 million, what tax planning is available to me to keep the immediate tax under $500,000? Or should I just emigrate to a tax haven (and for U.S. citizens, renounce my citizenship)?”
In principle those who have money will never agree to someone else “deciding” that there is some “fair” amount of their own money they should be allowed to keep, and must hand over the rest. Won’t happen, so you don’t even need to think about how to define it.
ISTM a very big problem with this is that the rich believe in it — that because they can avoid taxes they should; that they are, in the pejorative sense, entitled to do so. (Not by divine right or good breeding or whatever past rationales were used to affirm nobility, but by more modern ones.)
An apparent result of this is a firm unwillingness to allow their richness be stolen in in any amount by the lower classes, even when it might be in their own enlightened self interest. Those with power are seldom interested in enlightenment — they’re already superior.
In particular, something like UBI is viewed as an anathema, even though it is one of the few plausible ways for them to avoid severe social dislocation which would adversely affect even them.
I don’t hate or envy the 1% or 10%, but I do have serious reservations about their wealth fetishes.
If Maher is going to label Medicare and Social Security as socialism, he could trouble himself to mention that people pay into those programs. (Yes there are the disabled and others unable to work who receive SSDI. Outrageous altruism.) Would he prefer a la Dubya that Social Security be privatized and managed by private investment houses? Also, why should investment income (“unearned” income, right?) be taxed at a lower rate than labor? To incentivize American patriots not to invest outside the U.S.?
I think that on the tax return there should be a line for “voluntary taxation” in addition to whatever one officially owes. Every time that there is a tax story in the headlines I see some random ultra-wealthy person quoted as saying “we would be happy to pay more”. And now they can. There can be a line where people can add on however much they want for the IRS to absorb. Not as a write off or as a itemization. Just money given for the sake of bragging rights.
It’s yet another collective action problem. One billionaire plus or minus won’t make a noticeable difference.
Discussions about solving income inequality with confiscatory taxation are sterile because tax policy is not made by people who covet the wealth of others. Rather, tax policy is made by people who have wealth and use it to influence legislators against trying to win votes with redistribution. In truth, the rich decide how much of their wealth they are willing to let the government have. You hoi polloi have no say in it.
(The United States never had top marginal tax rates on income of 90%. There was a time when top marginal rates were that high on wage and salary income. But profits, dividends, interest, and capital gains were taxed at much lower rates — around 5 – 10% — than they are today. Anyone who was seriously successful would be paid in dividends from business profits, not as a wage slave or salaried drone.)
For fun, let’s imagine that you did extract enough money from the top earners to give every American who now earns less than some “fair, adequate” salary an extra $100,000 per year. This would immediately produce class warfare as those at the bottom, the resentful “deserving poor”, would want to grab the $100k from the barely comfortable, now that everything’s up for grabs.
But let’s imagine after the dust has settled and the blood in the streets dried, everyone deserving is getting $100,000 more, on average, every year. (The pillaged wealthy we have to imagine will keep generating the money every year it takes to fund this.) Great! Now I can finally afford to buy a house. But the quantity of houses, nor cars nor steaks, doesn’t rise just because there is more cash in poor people’s pockets. There might even be fewer of those goods produced because the workers who used to make them now work less, to enjoy their windfall. So the price of all those goods has to rise. All we see is that it now costs the average American $(x + 100k) to buy the basket of produced goods he used to be able to buy for $x, where x = the average income under l’ancien regime.
Unless the redistribution to abolish income inequality raises the production of goods and services — it won’t, because it destroys capital — it is merely inflationary. More money, as higher wages or a UBI, buys no more goods. They just cost more.
Just to point out that American GDP divided by number of people comes to about $90,000, so an equal distribution (even assuming that the redistribution did no harm to the economy, which it obviously would) would not give people more than that per year.
Thanks Coel. The 100K was just a guess for illustration of what the envious might well demand given how obscenely rich they see their betters are….but not so far off as it turned out. In my mind (I think) I was imagining that the transfer payments would go to every employed adult of working age, since the “cure” for income inequality is often imagined to be higher wages….which obviously go only to those serfs toiling away for less than “decent” wages now. $100,000 p.a. might well be do-able provided the goose kept laying those golden eggs forever….and provided those receiving only social benefits and no wages didn’t agitate for their “share” of the largesse. Which she wouldn’t but they would.
Your point does show the limits of redistribution. While some people do earn very high incomes, there are not nearly enough of them that looting them would return very much per capita to the legions of the covetous. Even though the top 1% fund the government, they can’t fund the other 99%. Regardless, any wage hike, even $20, that isn’t a reward for increased production is inflationary.
For Frank, I reviewed this several years ago. My recollection is that dividends were then (and still are) taxed less than salary. The reason is that corporate profits are already taxed (in the U.S. since 1909) before dividends are distributed. Dividends received by individual investors get a tax credit for the tax the corporation already paid on the same profits. From the point of view of the individual taxpayer, his dividends attract less income tax than his salary does.
You also pointed out that inequality is now back at 1920s levels. This shows that efforts to rig the labour market and the tax system to “fix” inequality are unsustainable in the face of eternal pressure to restore it, and are doomed to fail.
I hope to be excused for over-commenting on this thread: Coel and Frank made good replies that I thought deserved acknowledging. I’ll stop now.
I think you are wrong about dividends and interest in the 1950s (they were treated as ordinary income) and right about capital gains (they were not treated as ordinary income). The effective tax rate (on the top 0.1%) was much lower than the 90%+ theoretical rate. Most of the folks paying the theoretical rate were Hollywood stars and sports figures (which explains much of the opposition). The effective tax rate was apparently around 50%.
The history of inequality in the USA can be divided into several periods. Pre-1940 America had high inequality. The election of FDR in 1932 had little, if any, impact on inequality (FDR may have made changes that took effect later). U.S. inequality crashed around 1940 (because of the war) and stayed low till Reagan took office. Inequality rose under Reagan till the early 90s. Roughly inequality has stayed high since then. These days. U.S. inequality is comparable to the 1920s.
I’ve long held that view–a line for voluntary taxation. Should there be a few lines, such as voluntary taxation for Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security? (to earmark the money).