This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," October 11, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Are the poor and middle-class Americans getting hosed? This week on PBS, Tavis Smiley running a series that says yes, they are.

First some stats. There are about 46 million Americans living below the poverty line, 15 percent of the population. In 2010, $560 billion, 16 percent of the entire federal budget, was spent trying to help the poor. That's up an astounding 5,400 percent since 1970.

But here's the stat that may provide some perspective on poverty. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, about nine percent of Americans have some kind of substance dependence. Most of those people cannot earn a living.

So let's do the math: 15 percent poor, nine percent addicted. Maybe poverty is not exclusively an economic problem.

Joining us now from Los Angeles are Tavis Smiley and Professor Cornel West, who teaches at Princeton University. So professor, we'll being with you. Where am I going wrong here?

DR. CORNEL WEST, PROFESSOR, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think you're going wrong because I think the lens that you're using still is not acting on fact that one percent of the population on 40 percent of the wealth. We've had 100 percent income growth go to the top 10 percent and one percent of population had 81 percent of the income growth in the last 25 years. What does that mean?

Those brothers and sisters there at the plaza, I was just blessed to be there with them. I'm blessed to be part of their movement. They're not calling for entitlements. They want jobs with a living wage. They know that one out of four corporations do not pay taxes. There's $2.1 trillion of offshore tax havens for the well to do. It's working people who must both pay the taxes and they're also losing jobs. So you have to look at, my dear brother, Bill, from the vantage point of poor and working people and the ways in which the oligarchs and the plutocrats that you tend to want to promote rather intensely not only doing well but been too greedy, much too greedy my brother.

O'REILLY: We're chasing -- if we're chasing Stanley O'Neal down the street, I don't think I'm promoting anybody who is doing untoward things about capitalism. Look -- it's not that the --

(CROSSTALK)

WEST: We're not talking about isolated individuals. We're talking about chronic --

O'REILLY: Wait a minute, professor. No filibustering here. It's not that the message is wrong. It's not that the message is wrong. We do need to tighten up the loopholes. Everybody knows that. Barack Obama has chosen not to do that.

(CROSSTALK)

WEST: What do you -- what do you mean by tighten?

O'REILLY: You have to basically have a flat tax where everybody pays. There aren't these kinds of dodges. You can't park money overseas, that kind of stuff. Yes. But what these -- many of these protesters and maybe you -- but I want to direct my next question to Tavis – want is you want the government to forcibly seize the assets of the oligarchs, as you put it, and then distribute it to other people whom they deem worthy of the money the oligarchs have. That's socialism and that's not going to work here. What do you say, Tavis?

TAVIS SMILEY, PBS BROADCASTER: Three things. No. 1, it wasn't socialism apparently when we bailed out the banks in the first place. That pretty much fits a textbook definition of socialism what we did for the banks that you don't want to acknowledge, no. 1.

No. 2, you're right about the fact that Stanley O'Neal respectfully should have been chased down the sidewalk. He should be asked to account which raises a couple of questions.

No. 1, I know you did not mean --

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: What do you mean I lied about it? Wait a minute, Tavis. Don't call me a liar on this program. What did I lie about?

SMILEY: Bill, I said you were right, r-i-g-h-t, you were right about.

O'REILLY: Oh I was right about. I apologize.

SMILEY: Yes, calm down. Calm down.

O'REILLY: We have a remote here in Faneuil Hall. I'm calm.

(CROSSTALK)

WEST: Everybody lies. Bill, you lie, too, brother.

O'REILLY: I don't lie, professor. So there you go.

WEST: Oh I don't know about that.

O'REILLY: All right. I'm right about -- I'm right about O'Neal. But I had to correct the professor who is saying that I'm promoting that and I'm not promoting it.

(CROSSTALK)

SMILEY: You're right about --

O'REILLY: Wait, wait, stop.

SMILEY: I haven't answered your question yet, Bill.

O'REILLY: All right, let's get down about what --

SMILEY: I haven't answered your question yet.

O'REILLY: -- what these protesters want. And President Obama himself --

(CROSSTALK)