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Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Taxes

Season 7, Episode 7, Aired Aug 06, 2009

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7.4

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A visit to the halls of Congress in search of a legislator willing to discuss America's complex, unfair tax system yields interesting results.

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Could have been a forceful episode about the immorality of many aspects of taxation and the tax code, but comes across as weak, unsure of itself and uncourageous when dealing with the emotional arguments of the pro-(unequal-)taxation camp.moreless

6.0

"Fair"

By Trident, Jul 18, 2010

With Penn & Teller being libertarians, it was a matter of time that the issue of "taxes" would be dealt with and i was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately i found the episode to be a fairly weak one. While Penn started out saying that the issue would be dealt with in a "moral" fashion as well, virtually none of it was present. Most of the time was spent harping about the complexity of the tax code, about the amount of taxes and so on, and very little about what taxes is meant for if necessary at all. Those pro-taxes representatives that were willing to speak (several refused to take a moment) spouted off (nervously) about either why equal taxes were unfair (the Marxian doctrine) or that otherwise the government couldn't spend, but aside from a quick one-liner about government having less to spend not necessarily being a bad thing, the morality of playing philanthropist with money earned by, and stolen from others was not even really responded to, which is even worse because it essentially states that there is a ideological (socialist) reason for taxation, rather than a practical one (government needs to spend to make society function). So i'm disappointed that P&T did not seem to really have the guts to respond to the appeal-to-pity (and self-enrichment) based robbery of the citizenry by the government. Especially since a majority seems to agree that robbery borne from feelings of pity is justifiable it would have made sense for P&T to delve into the what this means when it comes to robbery in general. Liberals and big-government conservatives will not see any forceful reasoning to the contrary of their already established beliefs about the morality of restribution if P&T are not courageous enough to touch the subject matter with a ten-foot pole. Which defeats the purpose of even dealing with "taxes" as a subject matter for Bullsh!t.moreless
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find this show unlike most of your shows,most are funny, with some education involved. this has very little of the real humor.

3.0

"Bad"

By darrylplmb, Aug 09, 2009

love most of the bull sh1t shows,but this one was more of a propaganda based.most people pay a lot less than what you try to pa-trey in this show, not that the tax code is not fuced up. this show was all most as bad as watching sicko or other propaganda based "documentary" shows. i understand that it is hard to remain unbiased towards taxes when you are rich or poor.you being on the rich side see the higher side of taxes, and find that unfair, the poor see that you get all these deductions, and find them unfair.i float from poor to middle class. and see the unfairness of the system. would love to get to see the rich side, but hey, can't have every thing.now i wish i knew a tax system that would work better.flat taxes could work, but has it's own pitfalls too. a sales tax would be a disaster, lets give incentive for people to spend the lest they can would kill economy. and think what it would do to poor-middle class for buying houses and cars.not to mention the unfairness of taxing the spending of people when the rich spend a much lower % of there income than the poor. ie: poor spend near 100% compared to middle class that might be able to save some, and rich that would save a lot ,especially with tax incentive to save.with flat tax, do you tax interest and capital gains, or are many of the larger incomes immune.
well in closing, hope yall keep up the good workmoreless
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