For God’s Sake, Do Not Take Financial Advice From Fox News

It has already been well established that Fox News is a round-the-clock lie factory (see Fox Nation vs. Reality), but in case anyone was ever curious about whether that distinction extended to their business channel, the Fox Business Network, you no longer need to wonder. This morning’s interview of FBN reporter Lauren Simonetti on Fox & Friends First has summarily resolved this question.

Fox News

The segment raised the issue of golfer Phil Mickleson’s recent showing at the U.S. Open where he came in second. It was the sixth time Mickleson fell just shy of victory at the event he has never managed to win. As a consolation, Fox News crunched some numbers and concluded that Mickleson was better off placing second because, according to their math, he would be poorer had he won. Here is Simonetti’s brilliant analysis (video):

“Sometimes coming in second pays off in the end. […] We broke down the numbers with the help of some tax gurus, for how much he could save, and the answer is $400,000 on taxes. […] So all in all, he’s $400,000 richer, I guess.”

Guess again. Simonetti’s logic revolved around the fact that had Mickleson won he would have earned an additional $3 million in prize money and bonuses on his sponsorships. The tax bill for that would have been about $400,000. Of course, that would still mean that after taxes Mickleson would be ahead by $2,600,000. But in the Fox universe, being able to avoid a $400k tax bite makes you $400k richer even though in the real world that the rest of us inhabit, you are actually $2.6 million poorer.

I really have to sympathize with the losers who have been duped by Fox into thinking that their business network is a reputable place to get information and advice. The irony is that Fox’s counsel is creating more financially deprived people who will necessarily have to rely on the government services that Fox so viscerally hate.

On the bright side (as Fox would say) is the fact that hardly anyone watches the network. After six years they are still a distant competitor to the business leader CNBC. That should mitigate the effect of the bad financial advice they disseminate along with their climate change denial, tax cut obsession, anti-ObamaCare hype, and general ultra-rightist propaganda. And remember, FBN was launched with a promise by its CEO, Rupert Murdoch, that it would be openly biased in favor of the corporatists saying that…

“…a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly than CNBC.’ That channel ‘leap[s] on every scandal, or what they think is a scandal.”

And Mr. Murdoch knows a thing or two about leaping on every scandal (i.e. Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, NSA, birth certificate, ACORN, etc.). Murdoch’s Fox News leaps on scandals like a horny teenager at whorehouse.

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7 thoughts on “For God’s Sake, Do Not Take Financial Advice From Fox News

  1. As my income tax professor used to say, you’re never worse off by making more money, no matter what the tax rate is.

    • You’re saying we would be better off even if the tax rate is 100% – an extreme case yes, but given your example above it’s an interesting way to look at it.
      We live in the real world and if I’m only keeping 10% of what I earn, why do it – that isn’t happening now, but if we were truly paying for the government we have, it could be close to real.
      And I’m sure Randy below is at least partly right – the title is the real payoff, so the Fox argument is silly.

      • Here’s why do it: For the highest-income earners, the tax rate was 44% in 1941 (up from 19% in 1939), 53% in 1949, 52% in 1968, and 46% from 1981 through 1986. Did any of those high periods of taxes on the rich coincide with a massive drop on GDP or business in America? Did people during those times just give up on being rich? No, the didn’t, and those historic high tax rates coincided with some of the highest periods of industrial growth in America.

        So, what are the tax rates when business slows down? Well, it was 11% when the Great Depression hit in 1929, and there was a flat tax of 13.75% through the rest of it. In 2009, the EFFECTIVE corporate tax rate (what they actually paid on average after finding loopholes and hiding money in the Caymans) was about 25%. Effective tax rate is now 12.3%…the same as companies actually paid during the flat-tax years of the Great Depression, and the lowest effective tax rate since 1973. You know, the year we went into the post-Vietnam recession?

        The data indicates that high taxes don’t KEEP the rich from trying to make money…it forces them to work harder to make MORE money to pay the taxes. That boosts the national economy and creates jobs. Every time effective taxes have dropped, the economy has tanked. That’s just the data.

  2. Mickelson would have probably donated part or all of his earnings to charity anyway. He could care less about the money, all he wanted was the title.

    • That’s exactly what I was thinking as I read the piece.

  3. I’m trying to figure out which one of the two spokes-models is dumber.

  4. Doesn’t FBN stand for Fools, B’stards, and Numbskulls?

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