As oligarch fortunes soar: The case for expropriating the billionaires
It is impossible to defend democratic rights or any of the social interests of working people without seizing the unearned wealth of the billionaire parasites.
Confiscate all personal wealth over 100million. Break up any company worth over 50billion. Take all institutions of public service out of private equity: utilities, house, prisons, retirement, schools, postal, healthcare and public land management. Reform the legal system to not give the wealthy any advantage. Do not allow elected representatives to own stocks. Do not allow politicians to take private money for political campaigns. Allowing people and corporations to acquire this type of power has been humanity’s whole problem for thousands of years
Get private equity out of hospitals and forbid them land ownership.
The current private equity hospital grift:
Billionaires technically don't have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.
The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don't have much of anything, and the reason why 'declining to take a salary' is typically meaningless.
That feels like an easy loophole to patch- Treat loans as income. Maybe tax it at some separate progressive rate so people using small loans as intended don't get fucked. But if Muskerberg has $100 million in loans taken out against his stock, taxing $90 million of that as income would make a difference. Especially if the top rate is like 90%.
They shouldn't control that much wealth anyway, even if it's not 'real' money
you should run for president
Democrats would say this person is unelectable. After losing to Trump twice...
Unfortunately, I don’t know any billionaires who would be willing to finance my campaign
Do not allow elected representatives
I think I get your general gist, but would you please explain, so I'm not mistaken? Thanks.
Do not allow elected representatives.
Do not allow elected representatives to do what exactly? Trade individual stocks?
Feels like something is missing here.
Yea sorry it was meant to say own stocks. I fixed it
Tax wealth, not work.
And churches.
And money isn’t speech
Fuck Citizens United.
But my tree fiddy has so much to say! /$
Is that Michael Jackson in the picture to the left of pezoz?
I had to take a 2nd look. I think you're right! Tee-hee .
Zuck, Bezos Wife, Bezos, ???, Musk
Is ??? Pinchai of Google?
Sure is.
Expropriate their organs.
Liquidate Musk
Liquefy Musk
This article claims that Bernie Sanders and AOC are intentionally trying to redirect public anger towards useless methods the author views as useless, but where is the evidence for this?
The argument is right there in the article.
But Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez never indict capitalism as a system or call for a struggle against it. And they supported and hailed the Biden administration even as it was presiding over the greatest-ever accumulation of wealth on the part of the financial aristocracy.
For all their fulminations against the oligarchy, they carefully avoid advancing any demand that would deprive the billionaires of their ill-gotten riches. They pretend that society can be changed without a drastic redistribution of wealth, which requires the expropriation of the billionaires.
Tldr: critiquing the system only insofar as to not question capitalism.
US needs to wake up and realise that you're going to continue to get at its kindest a rampant flock of capitalist lip service until you stop exiling and punishing politicians that run on socialist platforms
You get what you vote for
The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.
It's the unearned part that matters most, at least capital investment has some benefit to the economy. Real estate appreciation adds literally zero value to the economy.
Yes, let's be mad at each other instead of the people creating the extractive markets
You got me. My being in debt to a bank for rest of my life is worse than anything Bill Gates has ever done on Epstein's plane. I'm doubly guilty because I have kids, can you imagine how much unrealized wealth they represent?
Today, on lists of things NOBODY said ITT
Capital investment strips wealth out of the worker/consumer economy (where it is traded for goods and services, and becomes someone's paycheck) and transfers it to the securities market (where it is used to convert worker productivity into more capital)
Capital investment is only beneficial to the economy when the working class holds the capital.
Real estate appreciation adds literally zero value to the economy.
It's actually a huge net negative. The housing crisis is the everything crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc
