Math and the Million Student March: Cavuto guest is incoherent when he asks her this one question

Math and the Million Student March: Cavuto guest is incoherent when he asks her this one question

This would be sad if it weren’t so funny.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Fox Business host Neil Cavuto featured student activist Keeley Mullen on Thursday, discussing the “Million Student March‘s” demand for three things:

1. Free college.

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2. Forgiveness of all student debt.

3. A minimum wage of $15 an hour for everyone working on a college campus.

(The last demand could sound like an attempt at solidarity with laborers whose careers are in theoretical wage slavery on campus.  But it would also apply, of course, to the campus jobs held by students.  If students wanted to work at “jobs,” that is, once they had “free college.”)

Cavuto’s stumper of a question:

How’s that going to be paid?

Ms. Mullen never gives a realistic answer.  She does try — and you won’t be surprised that her solution is to make “the 1%” pay their fair share.  The top 1%, in her view, are “hoarding the wealth,” and furthermore are “sort of causing a catastrophe we’re facing.”

Cavuto presents her with the example of Greece, where they’ve run out of money, but she’s having none of that.  Says Mullen: “Well, they have a top 1% in Greece!” Cavuto points out that the top 1% are good at moving their wealth around to keep it from the taxman, but I’d point out that there’s always a top 1%, everywhere.  There’s a top 1% in every village in Africa.  There’s a top 1% in every public-housing project.  There’s a top 1% in her parents’ working class neighborhood.  Should they all be taxed to pay for everyone else’s stuff, because they’re the top 1%?

Cavuto doesn’t put it in quite these terms, but he does ask her if her own family should pay more in taxes in order to fund the benefits she demands.  Mullen demurs on that one.  “My family is very blue-collar working class,” she says.  They’re really sacrificing already to get her through school.

But, says Cavuto, the top 1% in the U.S. could have everything taken from them, and it wouldn’t even fund Medicare fully for the next three years.  What then?

Ms. Mullen’s answer is totally brilliant: “Yeah, I don’t believe that…Yeah, I’m sorry, I just don’t.  That sounds completely ludicrous to me.”

And, really, how can you argue against that?  All Cavuto has is actual figures on the wealth of the 1%, and the amount it would take to fund Medicare, or pay off student loan debt, or fund college for the next generation.  Mere numbers have no chance against Mullen’s religious certainty, instilled in her by her trusted instructors — probably since her middle school days.

We could parse this six ways to Sunday, but Cavuto does a pretty good job dissecting it, so don’t miss the video of the exchange (h/t: Michael Dorstewitz at BizPac).

Expressions on her face when Cavuto really stumps her: priceless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Zmji36q8E4o

 

 

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

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