Liquidate Musk
Liquefy Musk
Expropriate their organs.
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.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are plants. It could be that they actually believe social democracy can work or that they think they can’t get support while opposing capitalism explicitly.
Would useful idiots be more appropriate then?
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. 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
Do not allow elected representatives.
Do not allow elected representatives to do what exactly? Trade individual stocks?
Feels like something is missing here.
Do not allow elected representatives
I think I get your general gist, but would you please explain, so I’m not mistaken? Thanks.
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.
They shouldn’t control that much wealth anyway, even if it’s not ‘real’ money
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%.
So a loan of $10 million has like $5mil taxed right away? You get $5mil to spend, and still owe the bank like $12mil? Those interest rates are insane, and will definitely affect the working class more than the ultra-wealthy. Specifically businesses, which will increase giants’ monopolies. And you can’t make businesses an exception, because then the ultra-wealthy will borrow through those.
The money is not the problem. Money isn’t real, it’s just a tool that represents power and resources. There’s nothing you can do to tax or control money itself because what wealthy people have is all the resources, and they can leverage them with or without money.
You can’t tax your way out of hierarchal Capitalism. The rich are paying as much tax as the current system legally asks of them - which is very little, when your wealth is in resources and not money.
The poor and workers are more affected by taxes and costs because most of our worth is in money. Once you have enough to start investing and have resources, your worth can grow rapidly.
Buy borrow die
It does have a notable Achilles heel though, which is that the underlying portfolio has to keep appreciating in value.
Well if it doesn’t, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The ‘loss’ of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.
you should run for president
Unfortunately, I don’t know any billionaires who would be willing to finance my campaign
Democrats would say this person is unelectable. After losing to Trump twice…
Get private equity out of hospitals and forbid them land ownership.
The current private equity hospital grift:
- Buy a non profit hospital and ruthlessly expand it, putting all other competition out of business.
- Become the hospital’s own 3rd party billing center (same name)
- Become the hospitals own 3rd party collection service, a law firm.
- Collect millions per year from the government to pay off unpaid hospital bills.
- Collect those bills with the third party collections by any means, garnishment, denials of service. 6. 6. Get the local courts dependent upon the court fees involved.
- Collect legal fees on top of the actual medical bills, thus “triple dipping” and getting paid three times … all for services that were mostly paid for by insurance already.
Tax wealth, not work.
And churches.
And money isn’t speech
Fuck Citizens United.
But my tree fiddy has so much to say! /$
The article nicely makes the case for defenestrating billionaires as well
Why waste perfectly tasty billionaires?
The meat is rancid but these cats are so fat we could make lots of soap to clean up their mess.
there’s only one thing that they’re good for
I’ll take one bite now and come back for more
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.
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.
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
Yes, let’s be mad at each other instead of the people creating the extractive markets
WE ARE THE PEOPLE CREATING THE EXTRACTIVE MARKETS
By Purchasing up and holding the supply empty, artificially creating the housing crisis by lobbying against affordable housing construction and exploiting the rent economy of our cities. The rich are outcompeting us for resources.
What do regular home owners have to do with it? Most regular home owners only own one home.
No one mentioned regular home owners. Why are you making devisive comments not related to any point that were made?
The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.
Yes they did.
You’ll notice it wasn’t me though, so why am I being asked what somebody I’m actively disagreeing with means by “regular homeowners”?
Bollocks, billionaire propaganda. Less that 3,000 people collectively control more than 90% of the World’s wealth. It doesn’t pale in comparison to anything. You’re just a bootlicker, or contrarian, makes no difference. You’re still wrong.
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
Reading comprehension is not your strong suit. Practice more.
I’ve made a million dollars in appreciation on my home in the last 15 years.
Are you telling me just because I own one home, that I’m not part of the problem?
You’re not really even in the same category as the idle rich. Like sure, you can sell your house and get a profit but you have to live somewhere. If you bought again a similar house in the same area you’d break even.
I’ve got a quarter million dollars in appreciated wealth from my home in five years, but that’s only useful to me if I want to take out a HELOC (with shitty ass rates) or move to someplace that sucks a lot worse.
Every other option would require me to become a landlord, in which case I would be part of the problem.
I’m looking to buy a better place and sure my place went up in value, but unless I want to also change locales I’m gonna have to fork over another wad of bills to get one.
It’s definitely not as bad as being a new market entrant with no capital and no existing investment, but it certainly isn’t the lighting up cigars with hundreds type of wealth you’re pretending it is.
No, you’re not the problem there. The problem in your scenario is the landlords buying up all available real estate and leasing it back. Not you.
That million dollar gain has no actual value to you. You can’t get that money out of the house, because you’ll need to spend it to acquire new housing.
And in the meantime, your tax payments are going to increase: you’re a victim of corporate investment in the housing market, not a perpetrator.
Why do people keep saying that I can’t get that money out of the house?
- I can use the equity as an asset to borrow money at low interest rates compared to unsecured loans.
- I can sell the property and move to a lower cost of living location, or even just a smaller home if I wanted.
- I can rent part of the property out at a rate commensurate with it’s current value.
And, to top off your stupid assumptions, you say my tax payments will increase. That’s not how property tax is calculated at all. People see “Taxes per 100k” and assume that if your house price goes up, so do the taxes. Instead, municipalities set a total budget, and just divide it by the total value of all the homes in the area to come up with something called the “Mill rate.” If the municipal budget doesn’t change year to year, and all the house prices go up evenly, the mill rate simply goes down.
Why do people keep saying that I can’t get that money out of the house?
I can use the equity as an asset to borrow money at low interest rates compared to unsecured loans.
In which case, you owe more than you borrowed. The net result of your borrowing is handing money to oligarchs. That makes them the problem, not you.
I can sell the property and move to a lower cost of living location, or even just a smaller home if I wanted.
Proportionally, you are not making any gains when you do that. That smaller home’s value increased at the same time your own home did.
I can rent part of the property out at a rate commensurate with it’s current value.
In which case, you would then be leveraging your wealth to strip others of wealth generated through labor. You would become part of the problem class with this approach.
Your ownership of an appreciating asset is not the problem.
People see “Taxes per 100k” and assume that if your house price goes up, so do the taxes
Because they do. Not immediately, but they are periodically reassessed, based on prevailing market value.
Instead, municipalities set a total budget,
They set their total budget largely based on what they can collect in taxes.
If the municipal budget doesn’t change year to year
That possibility doesn’t merit consideration.
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Correct. I’m telling you that individuals owning a single home aren’t part of the problem.
Individuals voting to keep the value of their home from dropping down to reasonable levels ARE the problem. That’s almost all home owners.
Alright, I’m done indulging your stupidity.
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.
Are you 13 years old?
Two kinds of people on the internet are interested in knowing whether someone is 13-years-old. Are you an FBI agent, or the other kind?
13 years old it is!
So, the other kind. Got it.
That’s observablt false. Capitalism has lead to a massive improvement in living conditions for countries that have implemented it
Yes it also has downsides, but pretending it doesn’t do anything good is rediculous.
Your observation is only true where the working class controls the capital. Your point would be well taken if we all had significant shares providing passive income. Buy not even the wealthiest of the working class controls a share of capital proportionate to their productive output.
The worst injustices injustices in history have been perpetrated by oligarchs of some shape or another. We are in the middle of such an era now.
And the word is “ridiculous”.
You sound like Marx just before he recommends transitioning to socialism as the next logical stage of human development.
Marx was a genocidal maniac. You shouldn’t read much into his lunacy.
How was Marx genocidal?
Literally his manifesto.
Where?
If purity is your jam, Jesus said some radical things about rich people.
Jesus is a myth.
Reading fiction has helped me be a better person, I wish the same for you.
I still think that regulated capitalism works best for certain industries, and socialism works best for others.
It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing choice.
And how do we know which industries would benefit most from capitalism or socialism? All industries experience diminishing returns of capital investment after a certain point, and that is how Marx made the distinction about which mode of production is “best” for which industry. It isn’t inherent that one industry should be socialist and another capitalist, it is relative to how big the industry is and whether there is room for continued expansion.
One of the easiest ways is to determine which industries are most prone to the failures of the market.
Things that are inherently monopolies like roads, or power lines or things that don’t allow reasonable consumer information/choice like healthcare, etc.
That’s dangerously close to Reaganomics friend and we live in a post-capitalism world.
