4 ms·
"Its a big club and you ain't in it" - George Carlin Politicians + Government Lackeys, Media Hacks + Corrupt Wall Street + Think Tanks + 'not for profits' htt
by fireeyed 6y ago
"Its a big club and you ain't in it" - George Carlin
Politicians + Government Lackeys, Media Hacks + Corrupt Wall Street + Think Tanks + 'not for profits'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU
- zouhair 6y agoI like the guy but I disagree with his fatalism. If we managed as human beings to curtail what was considered normal for millennia, to wit slave trade, we can also make things way better. We need to start by making it illegal to be a billionaire.
- SllX 6y ago> We need to start by making it illegal to be a billionaire. I’m listening. What does this law look like?
- zouhair 6y agoTaxes. I think most human beings can survive with 100 millions of dollars of wealth (it's more than one can spend in multiple lifetimes). Anything over that can just be taxed. The problem of letting any private entities get that rich is they start to take control of everything. One such example is The East India Company having at one point a bigger private army than the British Army[0]. As things go we will soon be at that point again. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_armies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_armies
- SllX 6y agoSo you’re not making it illegal to be a billionaire, you’re just taking it in the form of raising revenue for the government. Except government revenue serves a purpose: paying for government services and salaries. What do you do with the surplus cash? What about when someone does not have a billion dollars in cash, but has billions in assets? Flesh this out for me please.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dstola 6y ago> Anything over that can just be taxed. Except the politicians will take that extra tax money and use it to bail out banks and wall street and spend it on shit that no one needs and impose policies that no one cares about and continue the corruption cycle, only now with a lot more money than they had before. We should trust the government a lot less, not more, with our hard earned dollars. Greed is part of the human nature, and people in the government are no exception.
- imglorp 6y agoSomeone on /r/latestagecapitalism pointed out if you seized everyone's excess billions above $1B, you could end world hunger for 216 years, end climate change by 2030, etc etc. Around 7.5 billion people on earth would probably agree to those benefits.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoSomeone should have pointed out that they were wrongly assuming people could eat paper.
- zouhair 6y agoSo then the billionaires could easily part from said paper.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoOf course they could, but it wouldn’t help people so why bother?
- SllX 6y agoSounds like something /r/latestagecapitalism would say and this wouldn’t be the first time they were wrong. Show me the work.
- ncallaway 6y ago2% annual wealth tax on wealth over 200M. 70% top marginal tax rate on incoming over $10M in a year. Then it wouldn't be illegal to be a billionaire, but it would be much harder, and would mean you were constantly contributing a significant amount back to society if you're able to maintain that level of wealth.
- malwrar 6y agoHow would this work for someone who is a billionaire by means of illiquid assets like stock in the company they founded?
- zouhair 6y agoThey will have to sell to pay taxes.
- ncallaway 6y agoThey would have a couple of options: They could sell stock—maintaining the total size of the company but losing some control over it, in order to pay taxes. Alternatively, they could reduce the size of the company by having the company issue dividends on the stock to shareholders, in an amount enough to cover taxes.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> contributing a significant amount back to society You misspelled “the oligarchs who run the government” as “society”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- syril 6y agoAnti capitalism isn't marxism.