Joe Rogan Asks What Happens When You Tax Rich People. 'Are The Poor People Going To Get That Money? No, You're Just Going To Get More Government'

Joe Rogan Asks What Happens When You Tax Rich People. 'Are The Poor People Going To Get That Money? No, You're Just Going To Get More Government'

Adrian Volenik

Tue, December 16, 2025 at 12:00 AM UTC

3 min read

Joe Rogan is raising some big questions about where tax money really goes. In an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he took aim at what he sees as government waste and called out the idea that simply taxing the rich will fix everything.

Government Waste At The Center Of Debate

“Figure out what to do with the money they already get from everybody,” Rogan said in the May episode with fellow comedian Jimmy Carr. “And you're not doing a good job with it. That's the problem. The problem isn't that the rich people aren't paying their taxes.”

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Rogan questioned whether increased taxes on wealthy individuals would actually help struggling Americans. “Are the poor people going to get that money? No. Are their services going to improve? No, you're just going to get more government,” he said.

Carr, who once faced public backlash over a tax scandal in the UK, added humor to the topic, saying, “It was tax avoidance, not tax evasion. There’s a difference, and the difference is about 18 months in prison.”

Rogan pushed back on the idea that simply collecting more from the wealthy would improve anything for regular people. “What are you going to do? You’re going to enrich [the government],” he said. “They’re just going to get bigger and stronger and have even more power… It’s not going to help you if they tax rich people.”

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Carr pointed to countries like Norway and Denmark, where high taxes result in actual public services that people seem to appreciate. Rogan responded that those systems work because those societies are small and manageable. “When you scale that to like hundreds of millions of people, things get really weird,” he said.

Profit Over People

Rogan often voices his opinions about the role of money in today’s society. In a recent conversation on his podcast with comedian Ian Edwards, he warned that when money becomes the only goal, rich people lose their connection to others. “They don't give a f**k about you. They're just trying to make more numbers,” Rogan said about ultra-wealthy individuals focused solely on profit.

He also slammed how the pandemic pushed massive wealth into corporate hands while small businesses were left behind. “You can only go to Target during a pandemic… You can't go [to a small business], it's a pandemic,” he said. That shift, he argued, legally funneled money away from local economies.

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This article Joe Rogan Asks What Happens When You Tax Rich People. 'Are The Poor People Going To Get That Money? No, You're Just Going To Get More Government' originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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