Machine Head Frontman: Tax the NFL, Tax Amazon,”Tax All These F*cking Billionaires”
Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn was our guest on the most recent episode of The MetalSucks Quarantinecast, in which we’ve been speaking to metal musicians from their homes to check in on how they’re coping with the pandemic personally and how it’s affected their bands.
Flynn has been quite vocal on issues surrounding the coronavirus pandemic of late, saying recently that he doesn’t expect “normal life” to return until at least 2022, and that there likely won’t be any Machine Head shows until then at the earliest.
Our chat turned to the recent $2.2 trillion federal stimulus program, which saw $349 billion earmarked to help “small businesses” run out within days while several large industries received bailouts amidst record levels of unemployment. The program was rife with problems, with thousands of businesses unable to even submit applications before big national chains like Shake Shack exploited loopholes in the bill’s wording and used backdoor connections to secure large, most forgivable loans through the program.
Robb sees the failure of that stimulus program as emblematic of a major problem in the United States, arguing that our government only serves the interests of the very rich:
“Churches ain’t paying fucking taxes, but I gotta pay 35%. Airlines ain’t paying taxes, the goddamn cruise industry just got $50 billion in fuckin’ bailouts after just getting a multi-billion dollar tax cut two years ago. But they’re all registered in the Cayman Islands, they’re all registered in the Bahamas, and they don’t pay any fuckin’ taxes but we gotta bail them out for $50 billion. Motherfucker, give us that $50 billion! Give all those people that just filed for unemployment that fucking $50 billion!
“We suddenly came out, $2 trillion of OUR tax money. That money that came out of the Federal Reserve, that wasn’t out of Donald Trump’s pocket or anything, that was our tax money that we’ve been paying for fucking decades now. And they’re just fuckin’ giving it back to help, you know, bail out the fuckin’ airline industry? And then of course the airline industry JUST fired a bunch of people even though they just got bailed out.”
He elaborated on how that money could have been better spent by putting it directly into the pockets of individuals, thereby both taking care of their most-pressing financial needs and staving off the coronavirus in one fell swoop:
“You know what, here’s some real simple fuckin’ math: We’ve got 350 million people in America, 190 million people are of working age, 18 to 64. Let’s just say we wanna do it like Canada or Denmark, like all these countries are doing, paying 80% to 90% of peoples’ wages. Or like Canada’s doing, $2,000 a month for four months. Let’s say $2,000 a month for six months, that’s $12,000, times the people that are of working age, 18-64, there’s 190 million of them. That’s $2.3 trillion dollars [The same amount as the recent federal stimulus package. -Ed.]. Round that up to $2.5 just to figure for whatever fuckin’ bullshit there needs to be. That just gave every single person in America the ability to stay at home, fight this pandemic safely, flatten the curve, not worry about fuckin’ protesting cause you need to go back to fuckin’ work because, we get it, you’re fuckin’ poor. And that gives you $2,000 a month for six months straight and that’s our tax money. That’s our tax money coming back to us. That my grandfather and your grandfather and my father and your father and all the people that came before us put into a fuckin’ system.”
“While we’re at in and we’re in a giant pandemic, hitting this reset button here: tax the fuckin’ NFL, tax the fuckin’ churches, tax fuckin’ Jeff Bezos’ Amazon company whose making BILLIONS of dollars and paying zero taxes. Tax all these fucking billionaires, get rid of this fuckin’ Fine Art loophole that all these fuckin’ multi-billionaires are using because they’re buying “fine art” and fucking restart this shit. Rant over.”
Elsewhere in the Quarantinecast chat, we discussed how Flynn plans to stay financially solvent during this time, if he thinks music industry folks will need to find new careers, the economics of what really happens when a tour is postponed, why so many bands are bothering to reschedule tours to later this year when those dates very obviously won’t happen either, and more. You can listen or watch below.
