As Lenin said - steal the stolen
and in a few years, people started to starve to death.
Abolish Billionaires
61–70 of 76 posts
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it hard to believe this curt post portrays your real intellectual opinion, as opposed to your emotional feelings. It just seems like shit stirring.
It is pretty clear that new wave Democrats (e.g., Justice Democrats, or the like) are more than willing to consider any billionaire immoral because they are billionaires. At least that is what their most prominent pols say.
That's... The opposite of clear. It's not Billionaires that are on trial, it's the system. Billionaires are the symptom.
You may not agree with that, but that's what's going around.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#63Can we start maybe with the basic stuff?
Tax profits and capital gains as much as we tax income. If there are 3 dominant companies dont allow 2 of them to merge. U know, the basic stuff.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#64I feel this abolish billionaires movement needs some tweaking. History has many examples of people changing the world for the better and getting filthy rich doing so. If we start wealth taxing these people to limit their resources you are limiting their ability to push boundaries and hopefully advance society. Where I feel the issue sits is with dynastic wealth. Just because grandpa did something, great grandchildren…
Carnegie wrote about this 100 years ago in the Gospel of wealth and that’s why we had estate taxes and a high top marginal tax rate.
... and no wealth tax.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#65Re: Abolish Billionaires
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt anyone who doesn't immediately dismiss this as nonsense is capable of being persuaded by any kind of rational argument.
This kind of black and white vitriol actively drives people away from what you're saying.
This article is a troll. It is not a good faith argument. It's an attempt to gain attention by saying something outlandish. The proper response to a troll is to ignore it.
There are real discussions to be had about how to best redistribute wealth to benefit society. This isn't it. Thy picked an arbitrary number and declared people with more money than that "bad" and "immoral". There is zero mention of what mechanism would be implemented to stop people from attaining more money than the arbitrary "bad person" number, so there is nothing to discuss in terms of whether this would be helpful.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#67In 2019 the US federal budget is $4.407 trillion. [1] The combined wealth of America's top 400 billionaires in 2017 was 2.7 trillion. If the social democrats got their dream and took all of their money we could fund the government for only about seven months. When will D.C. and the American people realize that tax rates aren't the problem?! It's the spending stupid! Edit: Yep, keep downvoting facts people. That will…
Pointing out how high the base-line level of incompetence of the government seems ineffective. I think the line of reasoning is something like this: > "The rich" are bad, we need the government to save us from them. The government is underfunded, so when it takes money from the rich, it'll be funded enough to become competent. The federal debt is $20 trillion. The 400 billionaires and their 2.7 trillion is about 15%…
Who else would enact this change?
Bottom up does not have enough direct power. Billionaires won't banish themselves. The problem of government is that many members are rich to filthy rich themselves.
Legislation is government too.
About the only other force that could enact it is a widely accepted religion and there is none anymore.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#68I don't think this should be flagged. Individual comments, yes, but the post itself, no. This is a discussion our society needs to have - we need to weight the pros and cons of allowing unlimited accumulation of wealth and power by individuals.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#69Real question: If I start a business and people love my product so much so that I become a billionaire. Am I a bad person?
No, not in the least. But you do then question the context which allows a few to accumulate so much wealth while simultaneously observing a significant proportion of the population with stagnant levels of wealth.
Well, they got the widgets the new billionaire sold. They wouldn't have bought them if they didn't find it advantageous. Win win.
Re: Abolish Billionaires
#70Real question: If I start a business and people love my product so much so that I become a billionaire. Am I a bad person?
No, but you shouldn't even be able to become a billionaire in the first place. That capital should be reinvested into society, not held by an individual.
They reinvest it. They don't swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.