Looks like everything is working as it has for the last 40 years. Capital concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.
"But...but...but taxing the rich is just a redistribution of wealth!"
Uh, so is unfettered capitalism, just via a different mechanism. And if (when) governmental regulation (or deregulation) happens to favor the capitalists...
Yes. We should take money from people who have too much of it, and give it to people who don't have enough of it. Everyone who is rich has stolen it from people who aren't, and everyone who is poor is absolutely great with money, and is only poor because of the rich people who stole it from them. The best way to fix this is for the government to take the money from the wealthy thieves and then do something with it. anything is fine, so long as it isn't in the hands of the wealthy.
Then, once all the wealthy people are gone, and it is impossible for anyone to become wealthy no matter how hard they work, there won't be any more problems.
Nothing could possibly go wrong.
evenyoubernie?
Only Siths and dumbasses deal in absolutes.
Right, because raising taxes on the uber wealthy will turn us into Venezuela.
People can still be stupid rich while paying more in taxes. There are plenty of billionaires in Europe and Asia, and they pay a fuck of a lot higher taxes than they would here.
The Walton family having more wealth than the bottom half of Americans is fucked up. It's wrong and immoral.
Bezos too. Gates, Zuckerberg, all of them should be paying way more.
Reset all the taxes back to 1958. To make America Great Again.
I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but your mindset is not what I'm addressing. If you've spent more than 5 seconds wandering into the political side of Twitter you'd know that many, and I mean a majority, of the Bernie crowd thinks that anyone who has anything resembling wealth (i.e. a positive net worth) owes it to everyone to give them some of their money.
Cool. Then save it for Twitter.
Ok, maybe you could say that to the person I responded to as well?
He was following the thread of the discussion. You were not.
Twitter is not reality. Something like 2% of its users make 98% of posts.
Are there some actual commies on there and in this country? Sure, but not nearly as many as reading Twitter would have you believe. Mostly paid posters, shills, bots, and people trolling.
So, twitter is essentially the wealth gap?
April 10th, 2020 at 10:47 PM ^
Can confirm.
April 10th, 2020 at 11:49 PM ^
I think angry mobs should surround Jack Dorsey's house with far and feathers. Two reasons. First, he's RICH! I mean REALLY RICH. Second he invented Twitter.
A Twitter aside. So, I'm listening to this public service commercial asking us to help feed the health care workers on the COVID frontlines. It ended with this "hashtag we're in this together." What??!!? Now Twitterspeak has become the actual language? I agree, "we're in this together." We are not in this together with hashtag, whoever or whatever that is.
The majority of Bernie supporters simply want public healthcare and free public college or trade school tuition...Both of which poll over 50% with democratic, republicans, and independent voters. And that's why the democratic establishment which is heavily funded by private healthcare companies rallied around to destroy his campaign.
Funny. Bernie quits when socialism is in place. Goes to show socialism doesn’t work.
ps- a joke
Oh so that is who stopped Bernie...not his shit support of anyone over 22...oh and the democratic establishment who will do anything but have his as their candidate. Keep telling yourself it was them who stopped Bernie.
April 10th, 2020 at 10:23 PM ^
Bernie never wanted to be president. He just did it to make millions of dollars. Smart man.
Bullshit
Everyone looks back with nostalgia at the explosive growth and "glory days" of the American economy in the 50s and 60s... yet top marginal tax rate was 90% at the time. And fortunes were still being made somehow.
And one person working a job requiring almost no education could support an entire family.
We traded all that awesomeness for what exactly? Higher quarterly profits and wealth beyond the dreams of Avarice for a tiny segment of the population.
Love ya Hatter but waxing poetically on how things were in the 50s isn’t going to make anything better today.
What it takes to be “middle class” has changed, and will never go back to what it was. We have to change with it.
The only constants are death, taxes, and change. The US would not be a world power today by sticking to 1950s economic policies.
The US economy would be MUCH stronger if we had the manufacturing capability now that we did in the 50s.
No. We wouldn’t. That’s a ridiculous statement and a tired lazy argument.
There is zero fucking companies could pay a living wage in the US for all manufacturing jobs while keeping the end item they are manufacturing affordable.
if we were a manufacturing powerhouse, and were paying all those manufacturers a “living wage” ($50,000 a year?) the company making those things would have to charge an insane amount to make a tiny profit and keep the doors open.
China is a manufacturing powerhouse because they can pay people $4 a day to stamp out parts. Which keeps the items being made remotely affordable.
Hear me out on this: we could pay people a lot more if CEOs and hedge fund managers weren't making tens or hundreds of millions off the efforts of minimum wage workers.
The lengths people will go to justify the existence of billionaires will never cease to amaze me.
It will also never cease to amaze me how capitalism is worshipped here while at the same time, companies and organizations that are failing from mismanagement are all of a sudden worthy of tax breaks to keep them afloat. (But when someone who can't afford healthcare breaks their arm and incurs a hospital bill for tens of thousands of dollars: tough shit, shoulda been a better person so you could have afforded insurance!)
Omg just stop with the CEOs mAkE tOo MuCh MoNeY. They are paid by privately owned companies with private funds. If it's such a problem then investors can vote them out. Government telling private businesses how to operate and how much to pay anyone is a horrendously slippery slope.
And nobody "worships" capitalism. The idea of a free market is that two parties can consensually agree to an exchange of goods or services without government control or interference. Targeting the super wealthy and blaming them for the existence of poverty is irrational. Of course everyone should pay their fair share of taxes. Nobody will disagree with that. But income inequality is not solved by punishing people for being rich.
Bahaha, taxing billionaires is not *punishing* people for being too rich! Oh no, the billionaires, how will they *ever* survive on mere TENS of MILLIONS
The problem is that the free market *can't* consensually agree to an exchange of goods or services in an equitable way when some people need whatever few dollars they can get to afford to feed their kids, while the people paying them could just build a new warehouse/distribution center/restaurant/whatever a few towns over if those folks are a little more desperate.
April 10th, 2020 at 10:15 PM ^
you’re pushing the idea of govt enforced distribution of “those with” to “those without” simply because it’s “unfair”
Utopia is that way ——->
April 10th, 2020 at 10:31 PM ^
NYTimes on the growing income disparity.
A Living wage and forcing corporations and the wealthy to pay taxes are not crazy idealistic utopian ideas. To the Mad Hatters point there were wealthy people in the 50’s and in Europe.
power and wealthy accumulate. We got rid of monarchs and most dictators. We busted up monopolies, but power keeps accumulating. Investors don’t vote anyone out because everyone sits on everyone else’s boards and they all circle jerk each other. The only reason it isn’t criminal is that they’ve bought off the judges and legislators. (...and I’m a moderate who voted for Perot.)
Some folks on here don't understand the difference between taxation and expropriation. Taxes on the uber wealthy will still leave them...uber wealthy. It's a tax - not a seizure of property.
Also - a lot of people on here overlook the fact that there has been a redistribution of wealth upwards in this country for 40 years now. And unless I'm mistaken - Amazon had a negative rate in 2018 - something to the tune of $129 million which basically means U.S. taxpayers PAID THEM $129 MILLION DOLLARS. And don't forget - that's one of the most profitable companies in the world. Doesn't seem like a good idea.
I have no problem "redistributing" some of Amazon's profits (esp. since a lot of it will find its way back to them anyway).
Read Sapiens and maybe you’ll realize that capitalism is as much a religion as Christianity.
If the millionaire CEO of my company gave $1M to the employees, I’d get $10, but keep yelling at the clouds.
I love that this comment got negged. It's like, the math and facts if someone's statement don't matter if they disprove the narrative.
April 10th, 2020 at 10:25 PM ^
The problem is, it's a false analogy. Redistributing the wealth of millionaires isn't the point. Today a millionaire barely ranks in the top 20%.
There's about $100 trillion of wealth in this country, and the top 20% of people own 70% of it. If we were to take, say, 50% of that, or $35 trillion, and distribute it over the remaining 240 million people, it would be something like $140,000 each. That would double the wealth of almost half the people. It would make a huge difference.
It is more about using money to by back stock, if they reinvested in the company instead you’d have a lot more than $10. Having a “private” company that float on tax-payer infrastructure should mean employees should get a some amount more
April 11th, 2020 at 12:01 AM ^
This problem goes back to monetary policy from the government.
The Fed forced interest rates so artificially low that companies were borrowing money to buy back stock - so they could increase their stock price.
Economist Richard Duncan notes that since the West left the gold standard debt has exploded across the world. We can create money out of thin air and we make borrowing money so easy and so cheap. It is all a debt satured bubble.
Then I'm not talking about your company... Is your company failing and taking government bailouts? Is your CEO/owner a billionaire while employees are denied bathroom breaks in warehouse jobs in the name of productivity?
1. Bailouts are stupid.
2. Show me a company where the CEO's income is causing most of its workers to have to work in slave-like conditions.
April 11th, 2020 at 12:21 AM ^
You don’t make a billion, you take a billion. Love that quote.
The "you don't make a billion you take a billion" quote is arguing from a zero sum game perspective. That, because Bezos has a billion that means people like me have less. That because I buy something from him, he wins the dollar and I lose the dollar.
Zero sum game is a child's view of the economy. The size of wealth can grow with new products and technology and the size of wealth can shrink with destructive wars and hurricanes.
If you truly believe that wealth isn't created or destroyed it is simply transferred between people then you would think that 2000 years ago the world's population of about 150 million people had the same wealth to split as today with a world's population of 7,800 million people. So that they would have been much wealthier than us today...we all know that isn't true, because labor creates new wealth. On the other end, didn't WWII destroy a lot of wealth? Homes destroyed, businesses destroyed, infrastructure destroyed, precious art lost or destroyed, etc...
Bezos earned billions, because people vote with their wallets to use Amazon for its cheap prices and good service. He should treat his workers better, but he isn't taking or stealing the money from his customers who can freely choose to shop at any number of other places.
People willingly give Bezos money, because they believe Amazon, Amazon Prime, firestick, and Alexa makes their life better. Both sides are winning from Amazon or customers would simply stop using it.
How is it that the Germans manage to have a robust manufacturing sector then? Because people in Germany are willing to pay a little more for an item made in Germany as opposed to elsewhere.
We on the other hand want gigantic televisions for less than the price we paid 40 years ago for one 1/4 the size.
I had a mailroom job about 25 years ago. It paid about $19 per hour with health insurance included at no cost to me. That same job pays $13 per hour today and you're paying out the ass for insurance coverage.
The company's share price and quarterly dividend is higher now though. So yay I guess.
April 10th, 2020 at 10:28 PM ^
Germany’s poverty level is at its highest since 1991. The same year the Cold War ended. And these two different germanies (East and west) merged.
All that “locally made badass German manufactured shit” is bought by wealthy people, most of whom don’t live in Germany. Most Germans are like us ... they buy the cheap Chinese shit
Investing heavily in an economy built on manufacturing hasn’t helped them as much as you think it has
April 10th, 2020 at 10:59 PM ^
Germany's net exports are 41% of their GDP, and half of that is cars.
April 10th, 2020 at 10:52 PM ^
"the only constants are death, taxes, and change."
And debt. You forgot debt.
You have no idea what you're talking about. There are about nine things wrong with this argument. Maybe more.
Most of them are likely to be off-topic for the board, but to start with, "one person working a job requiring almost no education could support an entire family" is an idealized view that wasn't really shared by many families, particularly if they didn't happen to be white and suburban.
There are two rather obvious reasons that wages haven't risen as fast as profits: an increase in the labor supply, by opening jobs up to people who were excluded before, and a decrease in the demand for labor, by increasing productivity with technology.
Unfortunately, that American dream really only applied for white men. You had the poll tax until 64’ and obviously minorities had fewer rights.
For the record I’m not judging, I don’t have the answers.
Samuel Johnson. Nice. Later the title of a book by Michigan's own Russell Kirk.
Studies show that marginal rates were higher on the rich in the 1950s, but that effective tax rates were not significantly higher than today. There were more loopholes of significance back then. For example, I think rental income from real estate wouldn't be taxed as income back then.
With that said I do think taxes on the rich could be raised, just pointing out the misnomer between marginal rates and real effective rates after loopholes.
Um technology fundamentally changed the economy. That's what is different. It's not the Illuminati plot to hoard all the world's wealth.
April 10th, 2020 at 11:04 PM ^
Those benefits came later. Postwar US economic expansion was due to the lack of any global competition.