They could just stop impeding progress and let the working class have things like healthcare and a living wage. Guess that’s too much to ask and they would prefer guillotines?
Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have people who horde so much wealth it negatively affects the economy.
Lmao that’s because we shouldn’t have billionaires
It’s not that we shouldn’t have billionaires. Its that we have billionaires when we have people living on the streets because the rent is so ridiculous. Its that we have people dying on the streets because they cannot afford health insurance. The gravy on the shit-fest is that billionaires are actively bribing the politicians to prevent those policies from being implemented. That is the textbook recipe for guillotines.
All of these are reasons why we shouldn’t have billionaires, though.
I mean, I agree. It’s very bad out there.I think its more a “we shouldn’t have billionaires right now” rather than a blanket prevention of billionaires. They are being a cancer on our politics in the bribery scheme we have from Citizens United in that they are paying politicians to prevent the American people from getting their basic needs met. The existence of billionaires isn’t inherently wrong. Hell, if we ever figure out asteroid mining, there’d be quadrillionaires. But, its the psychotic system we have of having billionaires is by them bribe the politicians to deny the people their basic needs. At this point, such behavior is parasitic.
So what level of wealth inequality are you okay with?
Its not a measure of the level of acceptable inequality by measuring how excessive the top is. The measurement of intolerability is how we treat those on the floor. It’s that we have billionaires AND homeless. It’s that we have billionaires who control Congress for profit at the expense of universal health insurance when all other developed nations have it.
If a Billionaire turned comic book EVIL and decided to go rogue… What exactly would stop him. Most countries don’t have the money or desire to do anything
Yah I don’t think we should either.
He’s right. Let’s see if people could live off 999 million in assets.
A mere 999 million!?! You monsters want these people to starve in the streets…
Even the billionaires would be better off without billinaires. It their relative ranking was the same they would still have more money than they could spend but it would now come with clean air, water, land, better infrastructure, a healthier world, happier people to interact with.
What do the billionaires buy that pollutes nature that much?
The pollution comes from millions of cars, chemicals for products like clothing and intense agriculture so that everybody can eat some form of meat.
Billionaires allow us to feel helpless while we could agree with our neighbors to reduce the ecological footprint of society to a minimum.
Im not saying that. Its the wealth inequality that stunts society. People don’t have the resources to make decisions based on whats best and have to deal with what they can afford. Lack of infrastructure and regulators results in more pollution.
That’s what capitalism is supposed to do. fReE lAbOuR
Here in the UK 78% of people support a 2% wealth tax on net assets worth more than £10 million yet our spineless neoliberal government is more focused on cutting disability benefits and bombing starving children.
Can’t they just get around a tax like that by borrowing cash (for their lifestyle) and using their assets as collateral?
I’m actually against a wealth tax, but think one of the only ways that taking their unrealized assets can work is if we do as you suggest.
If you own stock in something, taxing unrealized gains isn’t good. it’s not like were going to pay them for unrealized losses.
But we MUST stop them from being able to actualize those unrealized gains without taxing them like when they use their unrealized assets as collateral. It’s like a loophole for the ultra wealthy where they can just borrow against their assets for their entire life without paying taxes on it.
And really… who cares if this way might be more expensive to do, they’re rich as fuck, and can pay for it as part of that tax. Also assets can be very nebulous and hard to know what they actually have. But when you see that new house, new yacht, donation to a SPAC or whatever, the IRS can come knocking and be like how’d you pay for that.
Wealth includes assets. If you can borrow against it, it can be taxed.
In fact, taxing the assets makes borrowing against them even more expensive.
It will lead to more dark money. It’s very hard to accurately measure a persons net worth when their financials aren’t just a house and an IRA like the average person. Especially if they don’t want you to see it. You’ll never be able to implement that tax in a consistent way.
Thing is, that ability to evade that is intentionally built in. It has to be. We have KYC laws here and anything over 10K is tracked.
The fact that the ultrawealthy are able to manipulate money in ways so that it’s not tracked and/or not taxed has to be by design.
Yes, that’s the current situation, thanks for pointing that out. I don’t think people understand how much tax evasion they do, for instance as of 2016 there was £36 TRILLION in offshore tax havens, UK GDP is £25 trillion for comparison. Murder in the first degree can get you prison for life, but letting countless people die from poverty related issues at home while getting rich off of starving and killing kids overseas makes you a billionaire. Why do we accept that?
law is inherently flawed and easily manipulated by clever sociopaths. chaotic good FTW. let there be guillotines and morally sound citizens and nothing more.
Huh, curious, I could swear we Germans (and most other countries I’m sure) used to do just that until a glorious neoliberal government came along and abolished the tax.
Billionaire says 'I don’t think we should have Zohran Mamdani ’
Luigi has entered the chat.
This needs to become the mainstream opinion. Billionaires and ultra wealthy shouldn’t exist. There is no trickling down or any of that stolen wealth coming back into the hands of average people.
Greed needs to be treated as an addiction just like alcoholism or gambling.
The rich can do it without civil or criminal consequence?
They will just live in other countries if being a billionaire is illegal.
They can live where ever they want. The assets are here and we can tax them here.
That’s the neat thing, they won’t. It’s pretty easy to apply a high tax on moving away. In fact the USA of all places do just that.
Also, what do rich people possess? Assets. Physical assets. A big part of that is real estate, owned privately or by companies they own. There’s no taking that with you. They can sell their assets and try to take the money with them, but that means the society they leave gets it’s assets back.
Lol, no. This is a strawman argument. Billionaires will absolutely not give up their precious connections and real estate to live on a private island or move away. Even if 50% would do that (lmao never) the tax would still be a huge benefit. Even without the money, not having these greedsacks meddling with local politics and laws would be a dream.
It doesn’t matter where they live. If the US exerts pressure on whatever country the money is in they can and would get that money back. They’re somehow able to freeze the accounts of Russian oligarchs so they’s no reason to believe they couldn’t do it with Bezo as well.
That’s fine, billionaires do not add to an economy, they drain it. So if they leave it will remove a useless burden on the economy and whatever country is dumb enough to take them in can deal with them instead. Meanwhile, if they are pulling money from our country we can find ways to tax it and prevent them from draining our resources (and yes, money is a resource like any other).
As long as they stop siphoning money from us, I’m fine with that
That’s the idea I think.
Hopefully the corrupt ones go to China or Vietnam because they’re not afraid to give corrupt billionaires the death penalty.
This guy sounds pretty based!
I like this guy
Never heard of him. He’s apparently going to be the next Mayor of NYC, if you haven’t either.
For now he’s a candidate from the Democratic party
Ok… so… who here thinks he’ll end up shot sooner or later?
NYC Mayor is his top track, he wasn’t born in the USA so that should limit his exposure nationally. He’s a convenient strawman for the right so I’d say that keeps him safe but there are guns everywhere so who really knows.
The natural-born limitation only applies to the President/VP, there is no such requirement for cabinet positions, Governorship, or Congressional seats.
Now, this guy still has a general election to win, and if he wins, he still has to prove he can do the job. But assuming he does all that, and he’s as capable as he says he is, then maybe in a decade New York will have this guy and AOC in the Senate instead of Chuck and Kirstin…
That’s exactly my point, since he can’t run for President, even if he’s governor of NY he’s still not really a threat to the power structure of the country, even Senator. He’d be Bernie 2.0 but unable to run for President. Not saying he wouldn’t be influencing politics but it’s a massive card off the table if he can’t run himself.
Timing wise odds are he’ll be in NYC long enough for Chuck to be replaced by someone else for 40 years. Kirstin seems firmly in her seat, so I’d say he’s most likely Governor after mayor, just a moonshot guess.
The powerful regard speaking the truth as an existential threat, otherwise they wouldn’t seek to silence him.
It might make some difference that while Bernie represents Vermont, Zohran would represent New York which is like the national headquarters of capitalism
But New York is probably the most world-wide well known city, and he’s running for mayor in it with some rather European-left sentiments. That’s no small thing.
Yeah but he can’t elevate nationally and that really limits his splash. If the right wing media keep hyping him up that increases his profile but ultimately he’s still only the mayor, even if it is NYC, he’s not eligible to run for President and that’s where the real danger would be.
So you’re looking at him maybe turning into Bernie 2.0 is he became a Senator but without the ability to run for President.
I really don’t think a president of the United States is all that powerful. Trump can’t pull off anything if his party is against him, or if he doesn’t have any powerful friends.
I don’t get why people in America hype up the role of president so much.
Well that definitely used to be true. Now though?
The president can break any law he wants to break and cannot be held accountable even laws enshrined in the constitution, and the SCOTUS which is supposed to be a check on his power are enabling him instead.
The other branch of government is controlled by his lackeys who are afraid to defy him.
At this point the POTUS has all the power of a dictator.
In practice, the office is afforded quite a bit of unilateral power. Yes, other parts of the government can counteract, but at least in practice by default the executive branch can do quite a bit.
All these guys just say what the public wants to hear before election.
Behind the scenes, this guy wants to be a billionarie, and the way there is to make a political career, saying whatever is popular with the voters.
There is no risk of being shot because all this guy is doing is trying to get popular, just like every other political guy before him. He wont be able to get rid of billionaries even if he wanted to.
Possible, but we’ll happily take that chance. Candidates like this are rare and you will face the same worry about anyone. I dont think we can just give up. Theres nothing down the road of letting the cynicism win, except maybe fleeing to another country.
Yeah I have given up on the system but you are right, its not much to gain from that attitude. I just cant change it for myself. Too much experience watching these guys.
You make a fair point though.
What can you gain from that attitude?
Low expectations can be helpful.
Yes, but all those other politicians tend to not be so… “extreme” with their crowd-pleasing language.
Possibly, but they are also not getting this kind of publicity. American politics seems to be about being very extreme in your views, and they dont have to be true, just appear to be on the peoples side.
Sanders hardly got any publicity. And like Sanders, I thi i This Guy gets some publicity now, but eventually the media will stop caring.
The only kinds of publicity that keeps going in the American media are extreme “America first! America number one!” type rhetoric, or the kind that’s easily demonised.
Stuff that makes too much sense never lasts long.
This is after he won the election, though
He has not won the election. He won the primary. He now will enter the mayoral race for the general election against the Republican and third party candidates.
He’s got the ‘real’ election ahead of him, and given that it’s likely there are two independents in the race, hard to say what that will be.
That said, being too cynical and just ignoring what he says as lying right off the bat isn’t going to do anyone any favors. Reward the mindset, punish betrayal if it happens. A healthy skepticism is good, but not a completely defeatist outlook.
I thought he was a nominee? Article says that anyway. But still, there is zero chance that any of these guys will make any changes that are helping the ordinary people and hurts billionaries. Its a system where they have money and power and most of the citizens do not.
People are desperate for hope, and thats why his strategy is working. It is simular to Trumps own strategy also. They all come out and act as if they represent the ordinary people, and everyone buys it every time.
Trump is doing exactly what he promised.
What did he promise?
To continue the fear campaign and deportation based on skin color… to hold up the status quo where industry is allowed to bypass all laws. To keep the poor man tricked into paying more taxes. Republican playbook as well as things written between the lines that are coming true. Project 2025…
