Finland has been at the top of the worldwide happiness scale for nine years.....
They have six or seven billionaires. I'll bet they are happy too. Their tax system includes: progressive income tax up to 52%, flat 20% corporate tax, VAT of 25.5%, and capital income tax of 30%.
The Finnish get all the goodies THEY decide they want to be happy. We deserve to do the same. Bezos is scum. Thanks for the lessons, Professor Hartmann. See you in the streets.
Denmark also. Though the combined tax rates are about 50%, no one dies for lack of food, housing and medical care. Everyone has 1st class medical care, and no annual official prayer breakfasts either.
There are about 6,000 homeless at any one time broken down as follows
Demographics: The majority of homeless individuals in Denmark are men, though the number of women and young people has fluctuated. A large portion of this population also deals with compounding issues like mental illness or substance abuse.Migrants:
A notable percentage of visibly homeless individuals in Copenhagen and other cities are migrant workers or foreign nationals who lack access to local social safety nets.
That;s quite different than here in Great America, where people live on the streets, because they lost their homes because they lost their jobs, or went bankrupt over medical bills.
Perfect, Gordon!!! but I'd add, remember the Epstein class -- that means trump, hegseth, bezos, musk etc etc and yes, VOTE! VOTE!! VOTE!!! And vote at your county elections!!! Vote at your state election!! vote for your state Supremes; vote at every election in your state that you are eligible to vote!! help your neighbors get to the voting booths if they aren't able!! In November we have a change to begin change. Don't pass any opportunity to speak up.
Mind boggling. Is that what American capitalism did? turn us from the German guy who doesn't want to be a rich guy in a poor country to Bezos, trump, musk et al who all just want to be the richest guy in the world/country w/no concern who gets hurt in the process. No empathy for the mom w/no money for food for her kids; no empathy for the college grad who can't find a job say nothing about not ever being able to afford a house. So now we're ready for a DEM in the White House who will try to increase taxes on the wealthy to pay down the debt and they will run $$million ads about how all DEMs do is 'tax and spend'. How can we get the language changed?
I think not so much american capitalism as neoliberalism , which came in vogue in the seventies and eighties. Thom has quite a good book on that if you can take the time to find it.. Trickle down was the initial farce game. It never does trickle down. It just lands in permanent bank accounts of the wealthy, often offshore, or holding that artificially jacked up national debt that we always pay first, before dealing with anything for human needs. And once you gut the social system enough , even folks who would be better inclined become hoarders, because they know that only their own bank accounts stand between them and disaster.
I got that Patricia. So you're saying the rich want to create surfdom for the rest of us and then start the hunger games for their entertainment. I can fully visualize that.
How is this scam gong to work without Bezo's breaking the law.
When you are hired, you complete a W-4 form, and on it you indicated your dependents, and their SSAN, The employer is then required to deduct taxes, taking into account your deductions and then remit the taxes in your name to the IRS. Failure to do any of the above is crime
s Bezo's not going to have his employees fill out a W-4 form, is not going to withhold taxes. If he doesn't withhold taxes, then the employees take home pay is suddenly increased and he will find it difficult to reduce their salary by the amount previously withheld for taxes.
William, this is the tRUmp nightmare not the government of the United states. Jefeee, as long as he kisses butt, properly can do what he wants when he wants. If there is an issue tRumps personal lawyer at thr DOJ or most any criminal working for the mafia boss can handle it. Most of all Bezos can depend on the traitorous, insurectionist and criminal Supreme Court 6.
Blame Reagan if you will. Blame Bush and tRump if you must. What you really need to get your head around is the partisan criminality of 6 catholics on the highest court in the land. The court rulings of the Roberts court have been nothong short of regressive. Citizens United to tje latest voting rights dismissal are only a few of the sins of these partisan hacks of the Heritage foundation the Federalist Society and other confederat fascists.
The fact is if we carefully consider who is leading this war against our democracy, who is behind fascist and dictators leading the way to social catastrophe we find the evil 6 of the so called supreme court. Of course even if we now rid ourselves of these traitors we still have to deal with the utter mess they have created and that mess easily says FU to decisions by the courts they won't abide.
I have been calling Trump "Don Dementiano" for quite a while. He is a classic mob boss who uses extortion to get his own way. That is his one and only leadership skill. "Do what I say or I will F you up." Just ask Cassidy and Massie.
Trump ran with the mafia in NYC, if you are in real estate, as he was, working with the mafia is inevitable.
For purposes of exposition, Mafia is a generic term for organized crime, There was the Italian mafia, the Irish Mafia, the Russian mafia, the Jewish mafia, the Albanian mafia, the Armenian mafia, etc.
I am sure you know of Whitey Bulger of the Irish mob in Boston, he was an informant for the FBI and used his position to put away the competition, and thus Guiliani.
Rudy came down on the Italians, but "All of the Italians,or just selected Italians" if all of the Italians then whose pocket was he in. Considering his close connection to Trump and Trump is obviously in with a mafia, I would love to do a murder board and using stickpins and string to connect the players.
Let's take a look at the Trump crime family, his daughter married a scion of a connected criminal, and you don't become wealthy and influential in NY unless you are connected.
Therefore Jared Kiushner is connected to a mob, and in fact the whole Trump apparatus is a crime family
I am pretty sure Roy Cohn was his first tie to a mob.
Totally believeable, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and he is destroying this country and it's reputation, nationally and internationally, aided and a betted by little fools with an inferiority complex that need to bolster their own sad ego's, by owning the libs.
S Howard, you just stirred a thought in my head when you said the 6 Catholics on SCOTUS in the same paragraph as fascists.
Italy under Mussolini, a Catholic country and fascist, and today there is a resurgence of fascism under Meloni. Spain a very Catholic country and fascist.
Hitler was a good Catholic boy, and Pius XII made an accord with the NAZI's and provided a "rat line" after WWII that enabled them to escape to Spain and South America.
Now the Federalist Society, Heritage foundation, Opus Dei, People of Prayer, ScOTUS and about 1,500 federal judges appointed by Trump
As regards the government of the United States. The job of a government is to govern.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, the GCC, Russia, China, N. Korea don't have a government, they have a regime. And under MAGA there is no governing, only the rule of man, a regime of violence, repression, corruption, threats, fear.
Bill Kristal penned a charmingly hopeful Substack this morning comparing today’s circumstances to the Axis threats of WWII. He failed to mention the insidious impact of concentrated wealth in today’s world. Corporations, morbidly wealthy individuals, dark money special interest PACS, etc., own all three branches of government, the MSM that once reported on them, and the consultants who call the shots come election time. Ironically, it may well take a Steyer or a Pritzker to steer us out of this ongoing catastrophe. Like the Kennedys and FDR, they know the ground.
Then why did you cheerlead for the privatization of our health care system under Obama's Affordable Care Act? I can't help but notice that every Democrat in my lifetime has promised to raise taxes on billionaires, and none have done so in any substantial manner. Even Mamdani in New York had to compromise with neoliberal Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul to limit taxation of the wealthy to their second homes or apartments which will raise a paltry $500 million. Of course you never ever mention Mamdani in your Substack because he makes Democrats look bad like Bernie Sanders used to. Of course Bezos is a greedy sociopath like all multi-billionaires and anything he does is indeed a scam, yet I bet every single person condemning him (likely including you) is loading their foyers with junk they order from Amazon. So once again while your assessment of Bezos is accurate your assertion that "no income tax" is a hard-right fantasy belies the fact that the wealthy bilking us by paying little to no federal income tax is the result of bipartisan subservience to the ruling class. As we speak local Democratic administrations in Illinois are defying the public and giving the green light to massive data centers that will serve Bezos and his surveillance colleagues.
I don’t understand the thinking of these billionaires. When is enough? I knew enough enriched individuals when I lived in Bozeman and besides their money making them arrogant it also made them paranoid. Always worried that someone would try to take a part of their wealth. The accumulation of money is destructive and there should be a cap on how much one person can have.
You are right Chris. Greed should be listed in DSM V but it is not. However, with greed comes other personality disorders that apply to these folks. "To be a mental illness the condition must impair their daily functioning, which greed does not inherently do. " According to the dsm. I TOTALY DISAGREE. How much more impaired must one be? Look at Musk. Bozos, Teil, and others. They are drunk on their mental view of themselves.
If we all got a big tax cut, as Thom noted, employers would simply reduce pay to make up for it, or at least freeze pay until inflation caught up. So Tax increases force pay increases. That nicely sums up our rigged economic system in America.
It should remind us that nobody "needs" a billion dollars, much less a trillion dollars. For the 10% or so of America's "havenuf" class, a wealth of even $5 million dollars or an income of $200 thousand a year is enough for a family of three to live comfortably forever. Havenufs can live in a large luxury house (just short of being a mansion), with a swimming pool out back, drive one or two luxury cars, pay all the bills, and still have money left over to invest for the future, take a few luxury trips, etc. A havenuf family of 6 can live in a mansion, drive 3 cars, pay all the bills, etc., on an income of $700 thousand dollars or wealth of 10-15 million (the minimum wealth of the top 1% in America). At least that describes most of my well-off friends and associates.
So who "needs" 1,000 times the wealth of a havenuf? The answer is obviously nobody. Those people are in the "gottahave more" class. Those bastards will disparagingly call me a communist (or at least a socialist) for suggesting that we tax their asses off, at least for a while, to zero that national debt. Call it a "Save America Wealth Tax" and apply it only to the morbidly rich, say the top .03% of wealthy Americans. After all, it was they who engineered this mess.
That reminds me of one of the crazy stories we hear about the rich. We are told they deserve their wealth because they are smart and they worked for their money. Does anyone agree with that? I agree with that statement
They are smat and they did work for it.
Here is the problem with that thiking though. These fat cats did NOT work for it themselves.
In most cases there were a lot of people that helped create that success. Why are they not rich as well? Did Musk make it on his own? Did he come up with all the ideas? Did he do the engineering? Did he make his satellites and his teslas and.twitter et al? Did he pay for thr infrastructure for these people to come do work for him? No he did not. Had not a large team not created all that with him he would be back in South Africa hunting muskrats right now. Are all the people that helped Musk (WORTH ALMOST 1 TRILLION) millionairs right now? NO,NO AND NO. Most of the people who helped him are middle class or lower class. Why is that? Think about that. Why are they not at least remotely wealthy? GREED. The greed of the rich.
"If I can take advantage of you so you make me a billionaire by paying you 50 per hour then that is all I owe you." If i made 2.billion becaue of what you did for me then i win. I keep listening to hear the na.na, na na na na. The more for me the less for you. Musk is a bully and has greed derangement syndrome and so do the rest of his class.
There is a difference between being smart and being ruthless. All the billionaires I know are more ruthless than they are smart. If they were really smart, they would never pursue being a billionaire or a trillionaire in the first place.
As I have posted before here, first they lose their anonymity, which forces them into elite social bubbles. Then they lose their capacity for intimacy because that requires trust. The longer they live in those bubbles, the more people want to exploit them - make deals, get loans/investments, just be seen publicly with them. That persistent exploitation causes them to lose trust in relationships and eventually family too.
Many are on their 3rd spouse by age 45, and most, like Trump, have offspring and relatives who despise them. So, they keep marrying and buying stuff like estates, bigger and bigger yachts and airplanes, hoping it will make them happy - some also climb Mt Everest, and other pricey he-man shit too - a few run for emperor, like Trump Orban, Erdogan...
BTW, one thing you overlooked is the role played by the government. Nearly all of Musk's businesses succeeded because of federal loans and tax incentives.
This article points up a critical weakness of capitalism, in that the business owners have the power to determine not only their own remuneration, but that of their employees as well, thus cementing in place the class system. Unions are a way of correcting this flaw, but of course the ownership class is vigorously opposed to that. And many government programs only exist to compensate the working class for opportunities they would not otherwise receive, due to the predatory nature of capitalist oligarchs.
Putin’s crackdown on comedy in the early 2000s primarily targeted the hit political satire show Kukly ("Puppets"), which aired on the independent NTV network This campaign systematically eliminated independent television and established state-controlled media by transforming political parody into a criminalized offense During the 1990s, it ruthlessly mocked politicians, most notably portraying former President Boris Yeltsin as a stumbling drunk
When Putin became acting president in 2000, Kukly turned its focus to him. The show famously depicted him as a stiff judo master, a muttering, grotesque baby gnome, and a fairy-tale character who only appears attractive to those under a spell Because direct threats did not immediately stop the satire, the Putin administration used financial leverage to silence the network. Between 2000 and 2001, the Russian government orchestrated a hostile takeover of NTV through the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom. NTV’s critical journalists were fired, and the network was brought into complete alignment with the state
Without independent ownership, Kukly lost its biting political edge. The show was formally canceled in 2002 This aggressive suffocation of the show marked a historical turning point in Russia: it sent a clear message that ridiculing the ruler was no longer tolerated, laying the groundwork for the strict media censorship that defines the modern Russian state
Nothing that this moron Cheeto does is original What kind of advice do you think Putin gives his crony when they are on the phone for 2h? Authoritarians don’t die in the dark Putin is being exposed by Ukrainian war failures and his time is short Cheeto’s deranged mental psychosis is being exposed by Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon, and Myers and his time is short
The Republican tax cuts (Reagan, Bush and Trump) all have been deficit financed. They have accelerated a redistribution of wealth from the lower 90% of the population to the top 1% and have created an even greater concentration at the top .01%, the billionaire class. This great wealth inequality has created a new Gilded Age. The richest man, Elon Musk, wants to have 1,000,000 times more wealth than a middle class person who has $1 million in an IRA and home equity.
The current Republican solution is to take healthcare and food from the poorest Americans to continue giving tax cuts to the richest. I propose the opposite solution to this debt crisis. Since the rich gained the most from these deficits they should have to pay off the National debt.
I propose a National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax (NDEWT), which tax revenue can only be used to finance the deficit or purchase the National Debt. This would be a progressive tax structure. The first $10 million of wealth would be exempted. Between $10 to $100 Million would have a 2% rate, with a maximum tax of $1.8 Million.
$100 Million to-$1 Billion 3% rate, max tax $27 Million.
$1-$100 Billion 4% tax rate , max tax $4 Billion
Over $100 Billion 5% tax rate.
The tax would be paid by purchasing special National Debt bonds that would pay zero interest. The bonds will only be used to finance the deficit and once a surplus has been reached to retire national debt. The bonds could not be cashed in or traded. At the time of the bond holders death the bonds would be returned to the government to eliminate that amount of national debt. The bonds are just a holding mechanism to pay the tax and limit where the funds are directed. This is an inheritance tax that is paid throughout your life if you have over $10 million in wealth. The alternative is to pay off the debt per capita(everyone pays the same) or as a fixed percentage of everyones wealth which is totally unfair.
Wealth would be determined by stock value at end of year, property value would be appraised, insured or purchase price, whichever is most current. Billionaires that have a trust to give all or most of their wealth away would not be taxed on that wealth given away since they are already helping the less fortunate. The National Debt should be paid off as a percentage of private wealth, not as currently calculated per capita.
I do not understand. Why is there no serious discussion - especially here - about examining what must be done to reduce the fanatic and irrational devotion in this country to the religion (ism) of capitalism? The problems and the conflicts with democratic governance are that the worship of capital, the discounting of labor, the rejection of fairness and equality, the acceptance of power and influence wielded by the "upper class", and the indoctrination of youth into this perverted and sclerotic paradigm which runs on authority rather than on authentic consent all derive from the ability of capital to rule arbitrarily. Of course, billionaires are running rampant and running roughshod over the rest of us. We have never been willing to effectively address the root causes and to inject the idea into the national dialogue that capitalism is not the final answer and panacea and that the people with the money are not our masters or our gods. Maybe we could have an article along those lines.
Commun-ism, social-ism, capital-ism, etc., all have one thing in common. They are ideological and they are followed by radical zealots who have blinders on and who reject any deviation. We do not have to choose between capitalism and democracy. We do not have to choose between some iteration of socialism or even communism and democracy. But democracy should not serve capitalism or Christian nationalism, or racism and white supremacy or any ism or system. The economic and social structures and institutions must serve democracy first and must serve the best interests of the country and the people. It has been bass-akwards for three centuries, despite the revolution and the good intentions of the founders. Capital is just property or power in the form of money or currency. It is a tool to be utilized for good or ill. It is being used much more for ill than for good under the current paradigm. Too much of a good thing is toxic.
Jeff Bezos and the rest of them are all going to die someday just like everyone else. Is he going to die happier because he didn’t pay his fair share of taxes. I don’t think so
A week or two ago I read an article described how Dr. Oz is freezing Medicaid and Medicare payments due to concerns about fraud in the hospice and home care industry.
I assume it is the latest try to privatize Medicaid and Medicare.
But what struck me is the cruelty multiplied: even at death's doors, this regime will make sure that you, your family, your caregivers suffer, financially, emotionally and physically
Finland has been at the top of the worldwide happiness scale for nine years.....
They have six or seven billionaires. I'll bet they are happy too. Their tax system includes: progressive income tax up to 52%, flat 20% corporate tax, VAT of 25.5%, and capital income tax of 30%.
The Finnish get all the goodies THEY decide they want to be happy. We deserve to do the same. Bezos is scum. Thanks for the lessons, Professor Hartmann. See you in the streets.
Denmark also. Though the combined tax rates are about 50%, no one dies for lack of food, housing and medical care. Everyone has 1st class medical care, and no annual official prayer breakfasts either.
There are about 6,000 homeless at any one time broken down as follows
Demographics: The majority of homeless individuals in Denmark are men, though the number of women and young people has fluctuated. A large portion of this population also deals with compounding issues like mental illness or substance abuse.Migrants:
A notable percentage of visibly homeless individuals in Copenhagen and other cities are migrant workers or foreign nationals who lack access to local social safety nets.
That;s quite different than here in Great America, where people live on the streets, because they lost their homes because they lost their jobs, or went bankrupt over medical bills.
Bezos just wants to keep all his money and make even more - that's the mantra of all these billionaires and Trump.
They now see the blowup coming from the working classes and the lower middle classes as even they see the comparisons.
"A plague on all their houses"
It's just an attempt to delay the breakup and the fight for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Remember "the Epstein class" and Vote , vote vote - as many times as possible and even more...
We need to take over ALL election places and offices - to ensure an honest counting of real votes/paper ballots.
Perfect, Gordon!!! but I'd add, remember the Epstein class -- that means trump, hegseth, bezos, musk etc etc and yes, VOTE! VOTE!! VOTE!!! And vote at your county elections!!! Vote at your state election!! vote for your state Supremes; vote at every election in your state that you are eligible to vote!! help your neighbors get to the voting booths if they aren't able!! In November we have a change to begin change. Don't pass any opportunity to speak up.
Mind boggling. Is that what American capitalism did? turn us from the German guy who doesn't want to be a rich guy in a poor country to Bezos, trump, musk et al who all just want to be the richest guy in the world/country w/no concern who gets hurt in the process. No empathy for the mom w/no money for food for her kids; no empathy for the college grad who can't find a job say nothing about not ever being able to afford a house. So now we're ready for a DEM in the White House who will try to increase taxes on the wealthy to pay down the debt and they will run $$million ads about how all DEMs do is 'tax and spend'. How can we get the language changed?
Better to be a tax and spend liberal than a borrow and spend Trumpite.
I think not so much american capitalism as neoliberalism , which came in vogue in the seventies and eighties. Thom has quite a good book on that if you can take the time to find it.. Trickle down was the initial farce game. It never does trickle down. It just lands in permanent bank accounts of the wealthy, often offshore, or holding that artificially jacked up national debt that we always pay first, before dealing with anything for human needs. And once you gut the social system enough , even folks who would be better inclined become hoarders, because they know that only their own bank accounts stand between them and disaster.
you're right - way back even when I was a kid, 'trickle down' sounded like a bunch of hooey.
Reagan started this corrupt “ no taxes for wealthy people” scam and since then it has morphed into “ the greedy take all”.
It has also impacted our education programs and all services that reasonable governments can expect to provide.
It is a rampant disease this game the government is playing with its wealthiest citizens.
It is immoral, in that it nullifies the worth of anyone who is not wealthy.
If the wealthiest among us are criminals , their encounters with the law result in few consequences , if any.
If a working class person has a similar encounter with the law, their consequences are much more severe.
The illustration of this has never been clearer than it is now with this corrupt regime of Trumps.
The plan is to make it so difficult for working class people they will be unable to live with any degree of comfort.
This results in a shorter life span .
When basic needs aren’t met, despair, hunger, poor or no education keep this vicious circle going.
I read today that RFK wants to eliminate COVID vaccines. Now who is that going to kill? Poor and working class people.
We need to fight these corrupt politicians and their supporters with the real truth and further expose their inhumane dealings.
The disease of grift is progressive and will ultimately kill its victims.
I got that Patricia. So you're saying the rich want to create surfdom for the rest of us and then start the hunger games for their entertainment. I can fully visualize that.
serfdom
How is this scam gong to work without Bezo's breaking the law.
When you are hired, you complete a W-4 form, and on it you indicated your dependents, and their SSAN, The employer is then required to deduct taxes, taking into account your deductions and then remit the taxes in your name to the IRS. Failure to do any of the above is crime
s Bezo's not going to have his employees fill out a W-4 form, is not going to withhold taxes. If he doesn't withhold taxes, then the employees take home pay is suddenly increased and he will find it difficult to reduce their salary by the amount previously withheld for taxes.
Bezos' buddy, Trump, has influence with the IRS.
And there is that.
William, this is the tRUmp nightmare not the government of the United states. Jefeee, as long as he kisses butt, properly can do what he wants when he wants. If there is an issue tRumps personal lawyer at thr DOJ or most any criminal working for the mafia boss can handle it. Most of all Bezos can depend on the traitorous, insurectionist and criminal Supreme Court 6.
Blame Reagan if you will. Blame Bush and tRump if you must. What you really need to get your head around is the partisan criminality of 6 catholics on the highest court in the land. The court rulings of the Roberts court have been nothong short of regressive. Citizens United to tje latest voting rights dismissal are only a few of the sins of these partisan hacks of the Heritage foundation the Federalist Society and other confederat fascists.
The fact is if we carefully consider who is leading this war against our democracy, who is behind fascist and dictators leading the way to social catastrophe we find the evil 6 of the so called supreme court. Of course even if we now rid ourselves of these traitors we still have to deal with the utter mess they have created and that mess easily says FU to decisions by the courts they won't abide.
I have been calling Trump "Don Dementiano" for quite a while. He is a classic mob boss who uses extortion to get his own way. That is his one and only leadership skill. "Do what I say or I will F you up." Just ask Cassidy and Massie.
Trump ran with the mafia in NYC, if you are in real estate, as he was, working with the mafia is inevitable.
For purposes of exposition, Mafia is a generic term for organized crime, There was the Italian mafia, the Irish Mafia, the Russian mafia, the Jewish mafia, the Albanian mafia, the Armenian mafia, etc.
I am sure you know of Whitey Bulger of the Irish mob in Boston, he was an informant for the FBI and used his position to put away the competition, and thus Guiliani.
Rudy came down on the Italians, but "All of the Italians,or just selected Italians" if all of the Italians then whose pocket was he in. Considering his close connection to Trump and Trump is obviously in with a mafia, I would love to do a murder board and using stickpins and string to connect the players.
Let's take a look at the Trump crime family, his daughter married a scion of a connected criminal, and you don't become wealthy and influential in NY unless you are connected.
Therefore Jared Kiushner is connected to a mob, and in fact the whole Trump apparatus is a crime family
I am pretty sure Roy Cohn was his first tie to a mob.
It was the RU mob. How do you think Putin got control of Trump. I know a lot more about this fiasco, but I am not allowed to say more.
More than this by Sotkin, Trump is a KGB agent since his Marriage to Ivana, a daughter of a Czech KGB official. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-u4d6Zwdns&t=5s
Totally believeable, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and he is destroying this country and it's reputation, nationally and internationally, aided and a betted by little fools with an inferiority complex that need to bolster their own sad ego's, by owning the libs.
S Howard, you just stirred a thought in my head when you said the 6 Catholics on SCOTUS in the same paragraph as fascists.
Italy under Mussolini, a Catholic country and fascist, and today there is a resurgence of fascism under Meloni. Spain a very Catholic country and fascist.
Hitler was a good Catholic boy, and Pius XII made an accord with the NAZI's and provided a "rat line" after WWII that enabled them to escape to Spain and South America.
Now the Federalist Society, Heritage foundation, Opus Dei, People of Prayer, ScOTUS and about 1,500 federal judges appointed by Trump
As regards the government of the United States. The job of a government is to govern.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, the GCC, Russia, China, N. Korea don't have a government, they have a regime. And under MAGA there is no governing, only the rule of man, a regime of violence, repression, corruption, threats, fear.
Bill Kristal penned a charmingly hopeful Substack this morning comparing today’s circumstances to the Axis threats of WWII. He failed to mention the insidious impact of concentrated wealth in today’s world. Corporations, morbidly wealthy individuals, dark money special interest PACS, etc., own all three branches of government, the MSM that once reported on them, and the consultants who call the shots come election time. Ironically, it may well take a Steyer or a Pritzker to steer us out of this ongoing catastrophe. Like the Kennedys and FDR, they know the ground.
Then why did you cheerlead for the privatization of our health care system under Obama's Affordable Care Act? I can't help but notice that every Democrat in my lifetime has promised to raise taxes on billionaires, and none have done so in any substantial manner. Even Mamdani in New York had to compromise with neoliberal Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul to limit taxation of the wealthy to their second homes or apartments which will raise a paltry $500 million. Of course you never ever mention Mamdani in your Substack because he makes Democrats look bad like Bernie Sanders used to. Of course Bezos is a greedy sociopath like all multi-billionaires and anything he does is indeed a scam, yet I bet every single person condemning him (likely including you) is loading their foyers with junk they order from Amazon. So once again while your assessment of Bezos is accurate your assertion that "no income tax" is a hard-right fantasy belies the fact that the wealthy bilking us by paying little to no federal income tax is the result of bipartisan subservience to the ruling class. As we speak local Democratic administrations in Illinois are defying the public and giving the green light to massive data centers that will serve Bezos and his surveillance colleagues.
I don’t understand the thinking of these billionaires. When is enough? I knew enough enriched individuals when I lived in Bozeman and besides their money making them arrogant it also made them paranoid. Always worried that someone would try to take a part of their wealth. The accumulation of money is destructive and there should be a cap on how much one person can have.
You are right Chris. Greed should be listed in DSM V but it is not. However, with greed comes other personality disorders that apply to these folks. "To be a mental illness the condition must impair their daily functioning, which greed does not inherently do. " According to the dsm. I TOTALY DISAGREE. How much more impaired must one be? Look at Musk. Bozos, Teil, and others. They are drunk on their mental view of themselves.
If we all got a big tax cut, as Thom noted, employers would simply reduce pay to make up for it, or at least freeze pay until inflation caught up. So Tax increases force pay increases. That nicely sums up our rigged economic system in America.
It should remind us that nobody "needs" a billion dollars, much less a trillion dollars. For the 10% or so of America's "havenuf" class, a wealth of even $5 million dollars or an income of $200 thousand a year is enough for a family of three to live comfortably forever. Havenufs can live in a large luxury house (just short of being a mansion), with a swimming pool out back, drive one or two luxury cars, pay all the bills, and still have money left over to invest for the future, take a few luxury trips, etc. A havenuf family of 6 can live in a mansion, drive 3 cars, pay all the bills, etc., on an income of $700 thousand dollars or wealth of 10-15 million (the minimum wealth of the top 1% in America). At least that describes most of my well-off friends and associates.
So who "needs" 1,000 times the wealth of a havenuf? The answer is obviously nobody. Those people are in the "gottahave more" class. Those bastards will disparagingly call me a communist (or at least a socialist) for suggesting that we tax their asses off, at least for a while, to zero that national debt. Call it a "Save America Wealth Tax" and apply it only to the morbidly rich, say the top .03% of wealthy Americans. After all, it was they who engineered this mess.
That reminds me of one of the crazy stories we hear about the rich. We are told they deserve their wealth because they are smart and they worked for their money. Does anyone agree with that? I agree with that statement
They are smat and they did work for it.
Here is the problem with that thiking though. These fat cats did NOT work for it themselves.
In most cases there were a lot of people that helped create that success. Why are they not rich as well? Did Musk make it on his own? Did he come up with all the ideas? Did he do the engineering? Did he make his satellites and his teslas and.twitter et al? Did he pay for thr infrastructure for these people to come do work for him? No he did not. Had not a large team not created all that with him he would be back in South Africa hunting muskrats right now. Are all the people that helped Musk (WORTH ALMOST 1 TRILLION) millionairs right now? NO,NO AND NO. Most of the people who helped him are middle class or lower class. Why is that? Think about that. Why are they not at least remotely wealthy? GREED. The greed of the rich.
"If I can take advantage of you so you make me a billionaire by paying you 50 per hour then that is all I owe you." If i made 2.billion becaue of what you did for me then i win. I keep listening to hear the na.na, na na na na. The more for me the less for you. Musk is a bully and has greed derangement syndrome and so do the rest of his class.
There is a difference between being smart and being ruthless. All the billionaires I know are more ruthless than they are smart. If they were really smart, they would never pursue being a billionaire or a trillionaire in the first place.
As I have posted before here, first they lose their anonymity, which forces them into elite social bubbles. Then they lose their capacity for intimacy because that requires trust. The longer they live in those bubbles, the more people want to exploit them - make deals, get loans/investments, just be seen publicly with them. That persistent exploitation causes them to lose trust in relationships and eventually family too.
Many are on their 3rd spouse by age 45, and most, like Trump, have offspring and relatives who despise them. So, they keep marrying and buying stuff like estates, bigger and bigger yachts and airplanes, hoping it will make them happy - some also climb Mt Everest, and other pricey he-man shit too - a few run for emperor, like Trump Orban, Erdogan...
BTW, one thing you overlooked is the role played by the government. Nearly all of Musk's businesses succeeded because of federal loans and tax incentives.
This article points up a critical weakness of capitalism, in that the business owners have the power to determine not only their own remuneration, but that of their employees as well, thus cementing in place the class system. Unions are a way of correcting this flaw, but of course the ownership class is vigorously opposed to that. And many government programs only exist to compensate the working class for opportunities they would not otherwise receive, due to the predatory nature of capitalist oligarchs.
Cheeto Just Follows What Putin Does
Putin’s crackdown on comedy in the early 2000s primarily targeted the hit political satire show Kukly ("Puppets"), which aired on the independent NTV network This campaign systematically eliminated independent television and established state-controlled media by transforming political parody into a criminalized offense During the 1990s, it ruthlessly mocked politicians, most notably portraying former President Boris Yeltsin as a stumbling drunk
When Putin became acting president in 2000, Kukly turned its focus to him. The show famously depicted him as a stiff judo master, a muttering, grotesque baby gnome, and a fairy-tale character who only appears attractive to those under a spell Because direct threats did not immediately stop the satire, the Putin administration used financial leverage to silence the network. Between 2000 and 2001, the Russian government orchestrated a hostile takeover of NTV through the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom. NTV’s critical journalists were fired, and the network was brought into complete alignment with the state
Without independent ownership, Kukly lost its biting political edge. The show was formally canceled in 2002 This aggressive suffocation of the show marked a historical turning point in Russia: it sent a clear message that ridiculing the ruler was no longer tolerated, laying the groundwork for the strict media censorship that defines the modern Russian state
Nothing that this moron Cheeto does is original What kind of advice do you think Putin gives his crony when they are on the phone for 2h? Authoritarians don’t die in the dark Putin is being exposed by Ukrainian war failures and his time is short Cheeto’s deranged mental psychosis is being exposed by Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon, and Myers and his time is short
National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax
The Republican tax cuts (Reagan, Bush and Trump) all have been deficit financed. They have accelerated a redistribution of wealth from the lower 90% of the population to the top 1% and have created an even greater concentration at the top .01%, the billionaire class. This great wealth inequality has created a new Gilded Age. The richest man, Elon Musk, wants to have 1,000,000 times more wealth than a middle class person who has $1 million in an IRA and home equity.
The current Republican solution is to take healthcare and food from the poorest Americans to continue giving tax cuts to the richest. I propose the opposite solution to this debt crisis. Since the rich gained the most from these deficits they should have to pay off the National debt.
I propose a National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax (NDEWT), which tax revenue can only be used to finance the deficit or purchase the National Debt. This would be a progressive tax structure. The first $10 million of wealth would be exempted. Between $10 to $100 Million would have a 2% rate, with a maximum tax of $1.8 Million.
$100 Million to-$1 Billion 3% rate, max tax $27 Million.
$1-$100 Billion 4% tax rate , max tax $4 Billion
Over $100 Billion 5% tax rate.
The tax would be paid by purchasing special National Debt bonds that would pay zero interest. The bonds will only be used to finance the deficit and once a surplus has been reached to retire national debt. The bonds could not be cashed in or traded. At the time of the bond holders death the bonds would be returned to the government to eliminate that amount of national debt. The bonds are just a holding mechanism to pay the tax and limit where the funds are directed. This is an inheritance tax that is paid throughout your life if you have over $10 million in wealth. The alternative is to pay off the debt per capita(everyone pays the same) or as a fixed percentage of everyones wealth which is totally unfair.
Wealth would be determined by stock value at end of year, property value would be appraised, insured or purchase price, whichever is most current. Billionaires that have a trust to give all or most of their wealth away would not be taxed on that wealth given away since they are already helping the less fortunate. The National Debt should be paid off as a percentage of private wealth, not as currently calculated per capita.
I do not understand. Why is there no serious discussion - especially here - about examining what must be done to reduce the fanatic and irrational devotion in this country to the religion (ism) of capitalism? The problems and the conflicts with democratic governance are that the worship of capital, the discounting of labor, the rejection of fairness and equality, the acceptance of power and influence wielded by the "upper class", and the indoctrination of youth into this perverted and sclerotic paradigm which runs on authority rather than on authentic consent all derive from the ability of capital to rule arbitrarily. Of course, billionaires are running rampant and running roughshod over the rest of us. We have never been willing to effectively address the root causes and to inject the idea into the national dialogue that capitalism is not the final answer and panacea and that the people with the money are not our masters or our gods. Maybe we could have an article along those lines.
Didn't this country have a stint of - if you're not a capitalist you must be a communist and therefore must be dealt with accordingly?
Commun-ism, social-ism, capital-ism, etc., all have one thing in common. They are ideological and they are followed by radical zealots who have blinders on and who reject any deviation. We do not have to choose between capitalism and democracy. We do not have to choose between some iteration of socialism or even communism and democracy. But democracy should not serve capitalism or Christian nationalism, or racism and white supremacy or any ism or system. The economic and social structures and institutions must serve democracy first and must serve the best interests of the country and the people. It has been bass-akwards for three centuries, despite the revolution and the good intentions of the founders. Capital is just property or power in the form of money or currency. It is a tool to be utilized for good or ill. It is being used much more for ill than for good under the current paradigm. Too much of a good thing is toxic.
What you describe is called greed
Jeff Bezos and the rest of them are all going to die someday just like everyone else. Is he going to die happier because he didn’t pay his fair share of taxes. I don’t think so
A week or two ago I read an article described how Dr. Oz is freezing Medicaid and Medicare payments due to concerns about fraud in the hospice and home care industry.
I assume it is the latest try to privatize Medicaid and Medicare.
But what struck me is the cruelty multiplied: even at death's doors, this regime will make sure that you, your family, your caregivers suffer, financially, emotionally and physically
If only there was a way to get thru the fog of the MAGAts who absolutely refuse to see the truth!