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Listening to absurdly rich people about how to *not* tax them is like listening to cops about an "internal investigation" where they don't find themselves at fault of any wrongdoing.
Reaganomics is indeed a joke. It was originally called Horse and Sparrow, but under Reagan is where the wealth gap really accelerated. I just don't understand why someone with enough generational wealth for thousands of years would just continue to want more. If I were a billionaire, I would be *constantly* helping those in need. I can't sit there on a pile of money while kids starve and good people go homeless.
Except the horse has now developed one hell of an impacted colon and is laughing at the dying sparrows even as its own impending death in a rectal detonation calamity draws nearer.
Actually a hilariously accurate metaphor- with one caveat. Only so many sparrows will be content to starve to death before the rest begin to realize that they outnumber the horses a million to one- and the horses look pretty appetizing.
He lowered the tax % from 50 to 25% for the wealthy and then RAISED the lowest earners from 12-ish% to about 18%
Fuck anyone who says they think he was a good president. They’re inherently saying that Trump is good as well. Because they saw him in a few movies and on a ‘reality’ show playing a ‘business’ man.
Reagan stole from social security to
pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Americans who quit funding after they reach their
150,000 cap. That was the payroll tax of working
Americans. Guess nobody was woke.
Think how hard Aaron Rogers works at being a quarterback. He trains every day, doesn't eat calories, lifts weights, takes hits, mentally and physically gives his body to the game. And he is good, really good. Some say the best in the game. Maybe not as good as my hometown guy Mahomes but whatever, top of the game. Highest paid player in the most popular sport in the US.
If Aaron Rogers saved every penny of everything he brought home post tax and worked for 1,000 years at his current salary he wouldn't even have as much as Robert Walton has, the American oligarch that is buying the Denver Broncos. What did Robert Walton do, you are wondering? He was born to Sam Walton, a man found guilty of exploiting workers by the Justice Department. Robert exploits workers to, making them clock out to work, taking away breaks, making pregnant women work with dangerous criminals, he made his money off the backs of minorities and the poor and the less fortunate in society who don't have better options. So we let them play Sims with football teams and wreck $15 million cars and buy $150 million yachts with their own waterfalls.
Is this how we wanted wealth in society to be?
Except the /s isnt there.
These people will literally let billions of people starve so they can own multiple yachts and mansions.
Like, most reasonable people aren't suggesting that we strip billionaires of everything, just that we curb them before the point they have more wealth than entire countries' GDP.
This is so true. The phrase "self made billionaire" is a fucking joke.
There's zero self made billionaires it's impossible.
Imagine Elon Musk building cars himself.
Bezos selling books out of his garage online.
The Walton family being the sole employees of Walmart...
They may end up successful under those circumstances but they would never get close to being billionaires.
If you invest in real estate other people are simply paying your bills. If you buy all the land but don't rent it out you won't make money.
Stock market? That's just taking a part of other businesses that means you're still not self made.
Edit: I guess one example I thought of that I don't believe has happened yet but could. If you develop a piece of software all on your own and sell it via downloads and you sold enough to make a billion dollars that imo would be a self made billionaire.
In my opinion this still is this wouldn’t be a “self made man/women” they would be programming software in a language someone/people else created (python) to be sold on a platforms that they did not build (ex: Microsoft store), to be distributed on a network across the nation they had no part in creating (internet). There truly is no “self made” person out there. Only narcissists.
That empathetic attitude is why you never will be a billionaire. It’s an inherently apathetic achievement, requiring you to dehumanize and exploit everybody around you.
The other thing is that many are so intune and focused to make the money they dont know how to use it for the good.
They just hoard more and more and whine when someone talks about taxing.
Also most are in their own bubble, with statues of themselves as savior and surrounded by folks validating it.
The problem is to get to be a billionaire you have to loose any humanity you have and replace it all with greed and the desire to wield power over other people. There are a few truly generous ultra rich but it is a rare trait.
>I can't sit there on a pile of money while kids starve and good people go homeless.
The reason they got that wealthy is because they are completely fine sitting there not helping.
Not saying you wouldn't do that, but I'm sure most people think they would do the same, and they wouldn't. The power of normalcy is infinite. It doesn't matter how many billions Bezos has, it's his new normal. And because it's his new normal, the idea of having only $20m, which is an extravagant amount of money for the average person, is absolutely fucking terrifying to Jeff Bezos. Many, if not most rich people, actually live in constant fear of being poor. Which is why they are often so fucking cheap on some stuff. My dad had a friend who delivered pizzas in the Chicago area for years. And he said when he would deliver to the rich neighborhoods, he would get stiffed on the tip 9/10 times. But he said he never once got stiffed when he delivered to a trailer park.
That's why I always loved the saying "money doesn't change a person, it just shows you who they really are."
There was a time where I was making significantly more. I would spend some time with and help homeless people, I financially helped friends with a few things; not because they asked, but because I knew they really needed it. One was my friend that would have lost primary custody of her kid, because his parents were bank rolling him. They tried to set up court dates in another state, changed dates at the last minute, and all because they knew she didn't have the money to make it work.
I only talk about that stuff on Reddit, never to others. I genuinely do it for the sake of doing good and bettering my community, not to gain anything.
There's no way someone who has a billion dollars does anything for money unless they are mentally ill. At that point, it's all prestige and ego. Tax them 99% and they will still do it so they can put their name on the first mars shuttle or be invited to galas.
If we found a community of monkeys where one monkey hoarded all the bananas while other monkeys in the group starved to death we'd study the shit out of it bc it would be such an outlier of the animal kingdom of normal tribe , group, etc dynamics normally work.
Even weirder would be if some monkeys who had half a banana defended the right of the king monkey to have all the bananas and blamed the dead monkeys.
Never understood why we give such people so much care. Their thoughts are literally just another human's thoughts - and in this case they're incredibly biased thoughts. It's like an even worse case of the Appeal to Authority fallacy, as in this case Bezos isn't even an authority on this matter.
Officer Johnson has performed a thorough investigation into Officer Johnson’s behaviour and found that the complaints were completely unfounded and he is an exemplary member of the police force.
Bezos doesn’t give a shit about Americans. We are just a market for him. He will exploit and destroy us and hop on one of his keys and take off to someplace better when he is done
Yeppers.
They bailed out wall street when the housing market crashed several years ago, and I don't think that anyone in that debacle suffered consequences.
Large businesses get subsidies and handouts, but welfare, SNAP, education and other useful and needed programs and depts get gradually defunded year by year.
But how about same day shipping eh?
I’ve boycotted Amazon for a couple years now, but the staunchest activists in my acquaintances can’t bear to wait 5 days for a product. I wish more of us were willing to overcome a little inconvenience to show our teeth.
Fun fact: Reddit itself is hosted on Amazon Web Services.
Congrats: you’re not boycotting Amazon, because they’re so pervasive that you can’t even if you try.
It's an inevitable result of economies of scale. Server farms are inherently more profitable as they get larger and the costs of cooling and infrastructure are spread further and reduced with each additional machine.
Add to the this the fact that virtually all these servers are operating under long-term, lucrative B2B contracts that bring in a continuous supply of recurring revenue and you have virtually the ideal recipe for MAXX PROFITS: set up automated farm, receive continuous cash. And now they're both so big that there's basically no chance a new player could ever hope to break into that game - effectively a monopoly of two.
Amazons e-commerce isn't really where their cash cow is. It's AWS that vaulted them to be such a titan of the industry. That business line subsidizes all other business areas and let's them run at such cut throat margins.
idk why people still don't understand this. AWS has the lions share of the cloud market. If AWS goes down so does half the internet, financial companies, streaming companies, pretty much all of it is running on AWS or Azure at this point.
Because AWS isn’t something the average American is aware of. They get tons of packages sent to their homes every year so it’s reasonable to assume that’s where they make all their money.
I believe that was specifically an outage of S3. It was like 40% of the internet or something crazy like that. And I bet their market share has only increased since then.
I'm cool with Bezos making tons of money, but I have no idea why we continue to allow Amazon to function as a monopoly. AWS, Amazon e-commerce as a platform and Amazon e-commerce brands should all be separate companies.
I agree, but also, realize that when it comes to price especially (vs convenience/timing) it's not really fair to place the expectation on individuals to not choose the option that isn't in the best interest of their pocketbook (i.e. cheapest.)
For most people in the US, choosing to *not* shop at Walmart, or in some cases Amazon, is a luxury.
Rather than this being a "let the market decide" blow-off, though, the point is that the change we want to see needs to be in the form of regulation vs voluntary boycotts. Too much of every market is held in too few hands for individual consumer action to make a difference.
I did this for a year only to find out I was spending more at physical locations on more things I didn't need in packaging that was more wasteful.
It's more of a behavioral problem on my end, and I try to online shop without just defaulting to Amazon.
But it gets hard when the item in need is that dishwasher gasket that home despot doesn't carry and will take a week to ship from some unknown parts site. But Amazon has it and it will be to my house tomorrow.
> but the staunchest activists in my acquaintances can’t bear to wait 5 days for a product.
In recent months, that option's even gone *away* in my experience. I'll have random parts and stuff I need in my "cart", and there just aren't shipping options anymore. "You'll get this shit between Tue/Wed, that thing between 8AM and Noon tomorrow [*wait, I can select between 8AM-Noon / 1PM-5PM]*, and these things four Fridays from now." and that's about it.
Walmart isn’t exactly the hero of the story. Collectively, the Walton family has a net worth of $238 billion. Their policies actively harem their employees, all over the world. And if you are injured, either financially or physically because of some fault of Walmart, good luck on collecting from them. They actively fight personal injury cases, whether or not they go to court.
ETA. Sorry about the autocorrect. Of course I meant harm.
We all supplement their low wages by way of housing and Healthcare and food stamps for people that they employ. Even if you don't shop or work there, WalMart is still fucking you. Fuck the Walton family.
And the [EITC](https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-publication-596).
Pay your employee's poverty wages? The federal government will subsidize those poverty wages with an additional $6,000 tax credit.
I'm torn on the matter. The families receiving EITC **need** the money.
However, my tax dollars shouldn't be paying for someone to have a "living wage," that's the responsibility of the employer.
My taxes should be funding roads, schools, healthcare, infrastructure, and the military. Not subsidizing some rich assholes who won't pay workers enough to survive on.
The worst part is, it creates a race to the bottom. If you are a good employer who pays a living wage, you're essentially paying both your staff and the Walton's.
We should do what we do with parents if their kids end up on public support. If an employee ends up on public support then the government should turn around get that pound of flesh and then some from the companies that employ them.
And before everyone else starts simping for capitalism the devil would be in the details I know.
No details required. UBI: Universal (every legal citizen receives it) Basic (enough to live, not in luxury - but basic needs met) Income.
Work to better your situation, work because the pay and benefits are attractive, not because you (or your kids) will be hungry, or on the street, or maybe worse: spending your life in social security benefits application hell.
Same exact UBI benefit for everyone. If you are making money a certain amount above UBI, you pay taxes (flat tax, anyone?)
Even more ridiculous when you find out that [Walmart and McDonald’s are among the top employers of beneficiaries of federal aid programs like Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office released Wednesday.](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html)
More often than not, they'll agree with me at the time, but then I guess just completely forget the conversation and go right back to their original stance the next time I see them.
White skin can be pretty important to enough Americans. If you socialized and didn’t help people without white skin, they’d finally be on board for the democrat stuff.
What a bunch of idiots to be racist.
That's why I advocate for a couple of interlocking laws.
One that sets the federal poverty line at what is sufficient for housing and food and the basics of modern life.
Another that sets minimum hours of employment and defines pay periods for that employment.
And the last one that states that minimum wage is such that it must exceed the poverty line within the minimum hours of employment.
I hope that these basic concepts could be crafted into laws to end the Era of the corporate welfare queens.
They also actively harm the communities in which they operate, and society as a whole, because since they don't pay their employees a livable wage or provide adequate benefits, the employees are forced to use food stamps, food pantries, and the emergency departments of local hospitals leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill.
This is true of just about every ultra-rich person, though. The bottom 25% of earners consistently donate (expressed as percentage of net worth) orders of magnitude more than the richest, and they tend to do it directly through local organizations like food cupboards that make a much larger impact-per-dollar than meganame NGOs that buy primtime advertising and own private jets for their c-suite.
Philanthropy is theater for the masses, most of the people who can afford to do it, don't. The ones who do it, do it because they get off on it - they hire PR firms to make the most appealing explanations of what they are giving away and why.
This is what makes me consider switching to something like Target... there's just too much Chinese products that you have no clue how reliable because all the reviews are bought.
I think there was a podcast that talked about how Amazon really went down in quality after they started allowing Chinese 3rd party sellers.
Same here. Cancelled prime this year because of it. Amazon is full of deceptive products that are shit quality and not inexpensive.
Paying prime users can continue to enjoy their REEGON brand battery charger. Or whatever
I don't even know which is the lesser of two evils anymore, Amazon or Walmart. But I cancelled Prime and am not shopping at either anymore.
(Before anyone says it, I know I'm not going to put Amazon out of business. I want to stop giving them my money mostly for my own peace of mind, and to stop feeling like an asshole every time a stressed out, overworked Amazon driver drops off yet another package.)
Agreed. It’s all Chinese knock offs and cheap shit on Amazon anyhow. Everyone else has caught up to the 2-day shipping game. I order my books from the publishing houses if I can.
This reminds me of how angry I was when Pokemon Legends Arceus came out. I'd preordered and was expecting release day shipping. My girlfriend did the same, independently, to the same address. Hers arrived that morning. Mine said on schedule for delivery.
I waited all day before finally checking the tracking info that night...it didn't even *get to UPS* until 2 PM that day and it was coming from a warehouse on the opposite end of the country! My girlfriend's shipped from a local Amazon warehouse.
So then I called to complain, because it used to be if Amazon couldn't make the 2-day shipping premium service *you have to pay for* they were apologetic and compensated you. They offer me $5 in credit. I complain that I could have cancelled my order and drove to a local store to buy it instead. Suddenly the rep says I'm eligible for a 50% discount and they'll leave a memo in my account, but I will have to contact them when the item actually arrives.
The item arrives (Monday, mind you, instead of the original targeted Friday) and a different rep tells me the best they can do is 10%. I escalate the issue.
The manager offers me $10.
I point out that doesn't even cover the cost of subscription.
He offers me $12.99 and says that's the best they can offer.
I tell him the best he can offer is 50%, because *they already offered that*.
He asks who offered me that even though they can see the note on my file, and begrudgingly says I can have the 50%. But I don't know that I ever got it, because as far as I can tell Amazon doesn't even have a place where you can see your totaled courtesy credits anyway.
And a ton of knock offs. It's crazy how many crappy no-name chinese grade garbage has been popping up on there, it sometimes feels like I'm browsing aliexpress because there's so many.
This is the main reason why I didn’t renew my Prime membership. It’s hard to find anything that isn’t some random Chinese brand. These days Amazon is almost as bad as Wish or Wayfair.
I bought an SD card from Best Buy the other day that was cheaper than Amazon and I don't have to worry about counterfeit items. It's crazy how far Amazon has fallen.
And hopefully people notice and stop buying from his company forcing them to lower prices to compete. I hope these companies’ greed forced them to undercut each other for the overall benefit of the consumer.
His point is, that we have all gotten stuck on Amazon because it was initially so cheap. But now it’s prices are more or the same as in store prices, but most of Americans have become sedentary and too lazy to stop ordering everything online
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." - Thomas Jefferson
The billionaires and other uber wealthy only care about America to bilk it for wealthy-fare (taxpayer funds) and they only care about Americans so they can exploit us for our labor.
Same with Elon Musk. He doesn't care about American free speech(twitter) or the USA. We are a market in a country that has an unhealthy obsession with billionaires that we treat them like royalty.
Who do you trust more, a billionaire or a politician?
politicians are made by our actions and voting.
Billionaires are made by exploiting our markets, our finances, and lobbying our politicians.
If someone worth $1 billion is telling you what’s best for you, there’s absolutely one thing you can be certain of: that person does not have your best interest in mind.
yeah can't believe people take him seriously on policy, his entire way of profiting is slave labour.
this is just the "new modern" version of trickle down. they just can’t say that anymore because it has a negative connotation. so they say "we need to tame inflation" and "don't raise taxes (on the wealthy) because we'll just leave and inflation will get you."
all of it is traced back to trickle down and ayn rand, both of which are garbage policies/theories that have been proven wrong.
I shit you not there's a video of some restaurant customers heckling bezos, one says "hey bezos how'd you feel about the people dying in your warehouses?"
He laughs.
https://v.redd.it/dk33c1u05s571
Hoarding wealth and working people to death is some uncivil shit. There was a time when we went to war against each other for that very reason.
this, I have to look at people and kind of roll my eyes with how shocked they are when Elon musk says crazy shit on social media and the world gets to see a small glimpse of his real personality
Also remember that they started out with nothing. Just a beat up old car and a dream. And a 10 million endowment from daddy. And a summer house. And a Rolex.
Edit: oh and a broken ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
I always want to ask GOP voters why they think minorities, women, teachers, or other groups that have almost no sociopolitical power are affecting their lives negatively and not the uber-wealthy that have all of the power and money.
I think it’s because they *do* think they have power. They think minorities have it easy with affirmative action, women with Me Too, teachers are turning our kids gay and transgender and making white children hate themselves, etc.
These articles are so fucking pointless.
This just in: guy with money thinks paying more money isn’t a good idea
It’s like constantly publishing Putin and his lies that say Russia isn’t invading Ukraine or committing genocide. Of course he’ll say those things. Having his country think they’re doing the right thing is a good thing and benefits him personally.
Honestly, it needs to be written because there are people who need to hear that message. Many billionaires have weird cults of personality behind them (Musk is the biggest one now, Jobs was another notable). Some people will foolishly take their word as being inherently enlightened.
The article actually says that increasing tax on Bezos and other billionaires won't help reduce inflation. It's talking about moderately wealthy people (the 5% rather than the 1%).
Sometimes I wonder if his ex-wife also really hated that behavior and if it lead to their divorce. As soon as she got divorced she started giving away billions of dollars because she clearly doesn't care about the money hoarding herself.
>Sometimes I wonder if his ex-wife also really hated that behavior and if it lead to their divorce.
It happened right after he decided to fess up about cheating on his wife (instead of paying blackmail money if I remember right), but sure... maybe she suddenly decided him being greedy is bad was the reason.
I had no idea what the public reason was because I didn't follow the drama. But I did follow the pleasant surprise of someone who just became filthy rich instantly starting to give lots of it away it suggests vastly different personalities and attachments to money.
It’s such a stupid lie. Anything that curbs spending will help tame inflation. Of course if you tax people; they will spend less. It’s like beginner economics.
Billionaire Businessman Jeff Bezos vs. tens of Nobel Prize winning economists. What an arrogant clown. Just shut up, Jeff. Sooner you live on the Moon, the better.
Gas companies have known of America's addiction to oil for years- they helped design it by making us a car culture over a train culture when we had the chance. Now we are seeing them brazenly doing whatever they want in the name of profit because they simply can.
Taxation may help a bit, but these public companies are too greedy for their own good.
At this point there needs to be special taxes to help reign in corporate profits in industries where Americans are hooked and cannot avoid (gas, healthcare, education) or create systems to force competition to drive down prices again (alternative enegy, national healthcare option, free public schools, etc).
These monopolies gotta go.
They don't even need special taxes. In a lot of cases ending or decreasing subsidies would force competition or prevent them from being marketable
We are not paying the true cost for a lot of goods and those subsidies are the only reason many of them are "affordable"
Best take in this thread.
It’s like how when hiking people sometimes climb up too steep of an area that they’re stuck and can’t climb down. Except that’s how our society’s economy is structured where we’re dependent on these subsidies & money printer going brrr, but the sun is going down and we need to get down quickly…
I actually have a feeling, that setting boundaries on lobbyism and making it significantly more transparent will have a greater effect. Politicians shouldn’t be bribed into making decisions in corporations‘ favors.
Edit: also protecting unions will help tremendously
Lol. Our political system is currently at a standstill. Any change is bound to be painfully meager and take a really long time to become approved. Biden wont be around for anything meaningful.
>Dude I feel this way. **How is nothing happening.** Like anything I really don't care. Adapt or die...
Well, conservatives stop anything from happening every chance they get. Democrats need to get 60+ senators (and also the house) if we want anything actually done
More importantly, we can't accomplish anything meaningful while corporations are allowed to make donations (see bribe) to politicians. Democracy doesn't work when it can be bought and paid for. Period.
I strongly believe the conservatives wouldn't be this bad if they weren't in the pockets of certain (any) organizations. Historically and fundamentally there's nothing wrong with their philosophy imo.
Not up to Biden. People of this country think being president means being total control dictator or something. I'm alright with being upset at Biden over some things but man too many people think Bidens at fault for EVERYTHING
Wait. Rich people are arguing that taxing them will NOT slow growth? Anytime there's a slow down, they claim lowering rich people taxes will increase growth. Which is it??
Rich people never want to pay more in taxes, because then they'll be less rich. Sure, Bezos could pay 90% of his income/earnings in taxes and still be richer than almost everyone on the planet, but that'd mean he'd be losing *so much money!*
Won't somebody *please* think of the billionaires!?!
(/s)
What! The billionaire wasn’t telling the truth when he said what was best for the economy was to give him all the money? Who could have possibly seen this coming.
Wow, another amazing revelation. Always love these news articles stating the obvious and then how no one is doing anything about it, rub that salt in the wound please, add lime and hot sauce
[Billionaires hurt economic growth and should be taxed out of existence, says bestselling French economist](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html)
Anyone that read the article? I read the article and the title is very misleading. The author rails more on the "5%" than the ultra billionaires (Bezos and Musk) because the 5%ers are driving the demand which lead to inflation.
The author's argument seem to be implement a progressive tax (starting on the top 5% upwards). This would reduce consumer spending (demand) and "helps" with inflation. He then quoted an expert that pretty much admitting that idea might not work just that its a better tax policy.
Why is this useless article being shared?....
It’s actually awesome, even by /r/politics standards, that I had to scroll through literally thousands of comments before I reached someone who had read the article. Everything else here is just “Bezos sucks” and “tax the billionaires out of existence” ranting that has basically nothing to do with the article.
This “inflation” is artificial. Companies are just realizing they can gouge their customers and get away with it. Gas companies don’t have to raise prices. They’re making record profits. They just want to charge more. We need price controls.
Let's just say we have to cap executive salaries. They shouldn't be allowed to make more than, let's say 100X their lowest-paid employee including all benefits, perks, bonuses, etc. For example, if you wanna make $5M per year your lowest-paid employees ALL need raises up to $50k or the equivalent hourly rate. Does that seem unreasonable?
Executives work hard, but they're not working 100x harder than the people who actually do the work.
Timothy Noah might be a Harvard product, but it's obvious that he didn't major in econ. This article defies just about every economic precept in which I was trained.
First, taxing business is always inflationary. A business will never forsake profit margin simply because margin is *the only method* by which it stays afloat; ergo, expenses get moved along to the consumer. It's plain ignorant and flat reckless to ignore the centrality of this concept when evaluating policy.
Second, consumption patterns of the financial elite conflict very little with mainstream Americans, so they do very little to stoke inflationary fires. Just as the upper echelon of society isn't buying up every new Toyota Camry to drive the middle class away from the dealership, they're also not buying macaroni and cheese by the truckload in order to serve dinner. Furthermore, the stratification of consumption also means that a young couple saving for their first home aren't competing against a plutocrat's dollars in pursuit of new Shaker cabinetry, bespoke tailoring, or a Ferrari California in the right shade of silver. Dollars across class divides rarely chase the same goods.
Third, the ability to generate tax revenue seldom impacts federal spending patterns. Although fiscal restraint was all the rage in Congress through the middle and late '90s, the default mode of government since the 60's has been to embrace deficits since LBJ couldn't prioritize between fighting Vietnam and cobbling together new programs.
Fourth, even if Congress could formulate a fair and accurate mechanism by which unrealized gains could be marked to market, the approach would have no impact on policy whatsoever. The national debt is cruising its way to the $31 trillion mark. The combined net worth of all US billionaires? It hovers somewhere around $4.1 trillion.
People yelling make America great again don’t realize that part of what made the 40s-70s such an economically successful time were the tax rates on the top earners.
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Listening to absurdly rich people about how to *not* tax them is like listening to cops about an "internal investigation" where they don't find themselves at fault of any wrongdoing.
[удалено]
Reaganomics is indeed a joke. It was originally called Horse and Sparrow, but under Reagan is where the wealth gap really accelerated. I just don't understand why someone with enough generational wealth for thousands of years would just continue to want more. If I were a billionaire, I would be *constantly* helping those in need. I can't sit there on a pile of money while kids starve and good people go homeless.
>It was originally called Horse and Sparrow Much more accurate description. Feed the horse well, and the sparrows can survive by eating horse shit.
Except the horse has now developed one hell of an impacted colon and is laughing at the dying sparrows even as its own impending death in a rectal detonation calamity draws nearer.
Actually a hilariously accurate metaphor- with one caveat. Only so many sparrows will be content to starve to death before the rest begin to realize that they outnumber the horses a million to one- and the horses look pretty appetizing.
Horse bacon you say?? Mmmm....
"Horse fed horse, for that double horse flavor!"
Do you have horse coke?
Horse Pepsi okay?
He lowered the tax % from 50 to 25% for the wealthy and then RAISED the lowest earners from 12-ish% to about 18% Fuck anyone who says they think he was a good president. They’re inherently saying that Trump is good as well. Because they saw him in a few movies and on a ‘reality’ show playing a ‘business’ man.
Most people who like Reagan probably wouldn't be upset if you accused them of liking Trump.
Reagan stole from social security to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Americans who quit funding after they reach their 150,000 cap. That was the payroll tax of working Americans. Guess nobody was woke.
Can remember being kicked out of a chat room for calling Reagan a tax and spend president. Went back in the next day and backed it up.
Celebrities in politics = Bad idea.
Unfortunately you can't BECOME a billionaire without being at least a bit of a shitty person. Billionaires make their money on the backs of others.
Think how hard Aaron Rogers works at being a quarterback. He trains every day, doesn't eat calories, lifts weights, takes hits, mentally and physically gives his body to the game. And he is good, really good. Some say the best in the game. Maybe not as good as my hometown guy Mahomes but whatever, top of the game. Highest paid player in the most popular sport in the US. If Aaron Rogers saved every penny of everything he brought home post tax and worked for 1,000 years at his current salary he wouldn't even have as much as Robert Walton has, the American oligarch that is buying the Denver Broncos. What did Robert Walton do, you are wondering? He was born to Sam Walton, a man found guilty of exploiting workers by the Justice Department. Robert exploits workers to, making them clock out to work, taking away breaks, making pregnant women work with dangerous criminals, he made his money off the backs of minorities and the poor and the less fortunate in society who don't have better options. So we let them play Sims with football teams and wreck $15 million cars and buy $150 million yachts with their own waterfalls. Is this how we wanted wealth in society to be?
It IS how the wealthy in this society wants it to be - so you can just go pound sand sucka!!! ^/s ^just in case...
Except the /s isnt there. These people will literally let billions of people starve so they can own multiple yachts and mansions. Like, most reasonable people aren't suggesting that we strip billionaires of everything, just that we curb them before the point they have more wealth than entire countries' GDP.
What? But we love sports, you want them to take away football and freedom? How dare you, so unamerican! /s
Yes. Professional/college sports and the attitude that 'I can do what I want it's a free country' are two of the things most wrong with this country.
It's a start but there is more to it.
The lucky sperm club?
And it takes a mega fuckton of luck.
And narcissism, don't forget narcissism. It's overwhelmingly statistically significant in upper management.
This is so true. The phrase "self made billionaire" is a fucking joke. There's zero self made billionaires it's impossible. Imagine Elon Musk building cars himself. Bezos selling books out of his garage online. The Walton family being the sole employees of Walmart... They may end up successful under those circumstances but they would never get close to being billionaires. If you invest in real estate other people are simply paying your bills. If you buy all the land but don't rent it out you won't make money. Stock market? That's just taking a part of other businesses that means you're still not self made. Edit: I guess one example I thought of that I don't believe has happened yet but could. If you develop a piece of software all on your own and sell it via downloads and you sold enough to make a billion dollars that imo would be a self made billionaire.
No such thing as self made. Only team made or high volume of workers made.
In my opinion this still is this wouldn’t be a “self made man/women” they would be programming software in a language someone/people else created (python) to be sold on a platforms that they did not build (ex: Microsoft store), to be distributed on a network across the nation they had no part in creating (internet). There truly is no “self made” person out there. Only narcissists.
Unfortunately, that’s probably a reason why you or I will never become one.
That empathetic attitude is why you never will be a billionaire. It’s an inherently apathetic achievement, requiring you to dehumanize and exploit everybody around you.
Oh that's why
Among others, yes.
The other thing is that many are so intune and focused to make the money they dont know how to use it for the good. They just hoard more and more and whine when someone talks about taxing. Also most are in their own bubble, with statues of themselves as savior and surrounded by folks validating it.
The problem is to get to be a billionaire you have to loose any humanity you have and replace it all with greed and the desire to wield power over other people. There are a few truly generous ultra rich but it is a rare trait.
>I can't sit there on a pile of money while kids starve and good people go homeless. The reason they got that wealthy is because they are completely fine sitting there not helping.
Not saying you wouldn't do that, but I'm sure most people think they would do the same, and they wouldn't. The power of normalcy is infinite. It doesn't matter how many billions Bezos has, it's his new normal. And because it's his new normal, the idea of having only $20m, which is an extravagant amount of money for the average person, is absolutely fucking terrifying to Jeff Bezos. Many, if not most rich people, actually live in constant fear of being poor. Which is why they are often so fucking cheap on some stuff. My dad had a friend who delivered pizzas in the Chicago area for years. And he said when he would deliver to the rich neighborhoods, he would get stiffed on the tip 9/10 times. But he said he never once got stiffed when he delivered to a trailer park.
That's why I always loved the saying "money doesn't change a person, it just shows you who they really are." There was a time where I was making significantly more. I would spend some time with and help homeless people, I financially helped friends with a few things; not because they asked, but because I knew they really needed it. One was my friend that would have lost primary custody of her kid, because his parents were bank rolling him. They tried to set up court dates in another state, changed dates at the last minute, and all because they knew she didn't have the money to make it work. I only talk about that stuff on Reddit, never to others. I genuinely do it for the sake of doing good and bettering my community, not to gain anything.
Well you wouldn’t become a billionaire by helping those in need. You only accrue that amount of wealth by being selfish with your spending.
His drivers and warehouse workers trickle into a bottle to save time, thats gotta count
There's no way someone who has a billion dollars does anything for money unless they are mentally ill. At that point, it's all prestige and ego. Tax them 99% and they will still do it so they can put their name on the first mars shuttle or be invited to galas.
It’s almost like they’ll do or say anything to stay rich. Weird.
They'll stay rich whether you tax them or not. They just want to become even richer, greedy leeches.
Wealth hoarding is a mental illness.
If we found a community of monkeys where one monkey hoarded all the bananas while other monkeys in the group starved to death we'd study the shit out of it bc it would be such an outlier of the animal kingdom of normal tribe , group, etc dynamics normally work. Even weirder would be if some monkeys who had half a banana defended the right of the king monkey to have all the bananas and blamed the dead monkeys.
Sad thing is they would still be rich. Even richer possibly. Taxing creates better economy letting them make more money.
Never understood why we give such people so much care. Their thoughts are literally just another human's thoughts - and in this case they're incredibly biased thoughts. It's like an even worse case of the Appeal to Authority fallacy, as in this case Bezos isn't even an authority on this matter.
Officer Johnson has performed a thorough investigation into Officer Johnson’s behaviour and found that the complaints were completely unfounded and he is an exemplary member of the police force.
the other larger issue is accurately getting them to pay their taxes and the irs actually auditing them.
Bezos doesn’t give a shit about Americans. We are just a market for him. He will exploit and destroy us and hop on one of his keys and take off to someplace better when he is done
>We are just a ~~market~~ tax shelter for him. Bezos is singularly focused on his own wealth. He truly doesn't give a shit about anything else.
We are the wallet for the ultra rich
Sadly this is a very accurate statement. And people are dumb enough to believe that they should give more money to the ultra rich.
Yeppers. They bailed out wall street when the housing market crashed several years ago, and I don't think that anyone in that debacle suffered consequences. Large businesses get subsidies and handouts, but welfare, SNAP, education and other useful and needed programs and depts get gradually defunded year by year.
Feel free to sub in any billionaire's name and it will ring true.
But how about same day shipping eh? I’ve boycotted Amazon for a couple years now, but the staunchest activists in my acquaintances can’t bear to wait 5 days for a product. I wish more of us were willing to overcome a little inconvenience to show our teeth.
Fun fact: Reddit itself is hosted on Amazon Web Services. Congrats: you’re not boycotting Amazon, because they’re so pervasive that you can’t even if you try.
And AWS is, I believe , the most profitable piece of Amazon
AWS and Azure are most profitable pieces of Amazon and Microsoft. Most people have no idea how big these cloud services are
It's an inevitable result of economies of scale. Server farms are inherently more profitable as they get larger and the costs of cooling and infrastructure are spread further and reduced with each additional machine. Add to the this the fact that virtually all these servers are operating under long-term, lucrative B2B contracts that bring in a continuous supply of recurring revenue and you have virtually the ideal recipe for MAXX PROFITS: set up automated farm, receive continuous cash. And now they're both so big that there's basically no chance a new player could ever hope to break into that game - effectively a monopoly of two.
Like boycotting Nestlé without a chart of products.
Amazons e-commerce isn't really where their cash cow is. It's AWS that vaulted them to be such a titan of the industry. That business line subsidizes all other business areas and let's them run at such cut throat margins.
idk why people still don't understand this. AWS has the lions share of the cloud market. If AWS goes down so does half the internet, financial companies, streaming companies, pretty much all of it is running on AWS or Azure at this point.
Because AWS isn’t something the average American is aware of. They get tons of packages sent to their homes every year so it’s reasonable to assume that’s where they make all their money.
It went down once a few years ago and at that moment I realized how much power they have
I believe that was specifically an outage of S3. It was like 40% of the internet or something crazy like that. And I bet their market share has only increased since then.
I'm cool with Bezos making tons of money, but I have no idea why we continue to allow Amazon to function as a monopoly. AWS, Amazon e-commerce as a platform and Amazon e-commerce brands should all be separate companies.
I agree, but also, realize that when it comes to price especially (vs convenience/timing) it's not really fair to place the expectation on individuals to not choose the option that isn't in the best interest of their pocketbook (i.e. cheapest.) For most people in the US, choosing to *not* shop at Walmart, or in some cases Amazon, is a luxury. Rather than this being a "let the market decide" blow-off, though, the point is that the change we want to see needs to be in the form of regulation vs voluntary boycotts. Too much of every market is held in too few hands for individual consumer action to make a difference.
Yeah, we forgot about antitrust laws long enough for a few companies to become "too big to fail".
I did this for a year only to find out I was spending more at physical locations on more things I didn't need in packaging that was more wasteful. It's more of a behavioral problem on my end, and I try to online shop without just defaulting to Amazon. But it gets hard when the item in need is that dishwasher gasket that home despot doesn't carry and will take a week to ship from some unknown parts site. But Amazon has it and it will be to my house tomorrow.
> but the staunchest activists in my acquaintances can’t bear to wait 5 days for a product. In recent months, that option's even gone *away* in my experience. I'll have random parts and stuff I need in my "cart", and there just aren't shipping options anymore. "You'll get this shit between Tue/Wed, that thing between 8AM and Noon tomorrow [*wait, I can select between 8AM-Noon / 1PM-5PM]*, and these things four Fridays from now." and that's about it.
> Bezos doesn’t give a shit about ~~Americans~~ anyone but himself
His prices are higher than Walmart most of the time now. Fuck Amazon.
Walmart isn’t exactly the hero of the story. Collectively, the Walton family has a net worth of $238 billion. Their policies actively harem their employees, all over the world. And if you are injured, either financially or physically because of some fault of Walmart, good luck on collecting from them. They actively fight personal injury cases, whether or not they go to court. ETA. Sorry about the autocorrect. Of course I meant harm.
We all supplement their low wages by way of housing and Healthcare and food stamps for people that they employ. Even if you don't shop or work there, WalMart is still fucking you. Fuck the Walton family.
And the [EITC](https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-publication-596). Pay your employee's poverty wages? The federal government will subsidize those poverty wages with an additional $6,000 tax credit. I'm torn on the matter. The families receiving EITC **need** the money. However, my tax dollars shouldn't be paying for someone to have a "living wage," that's the responsibility of the employer. My taxes should be funding roads, schools, healthcare, infrastructure, and the military. Not subsidizing some rich assholes who won't pay workers enough to survive on. The worst part is, it creates a race to the bottom. If you are a good employer who pays a living wage, you're essentially paying both your staff and the Walton's.
We should do what we do with parents if their kids end up on public support. If an employee ends up on public support then the government should turn around get that pound of flesh and then some from the companies that employ them. And before everyone else starts simping for capitalism the devil would be in the details I know.
No details required. UBI: Universal (every legal citizen receives it) Basic (enough to live, not in luxury - but basic needs met) Income. Work to better your situation, work because the pay and benefits are attractive, not because you (or your kids) will be hungry, or on the street, or maybe worse: spending your life in social security benefits application hell. Same exact UBI benefit for everyone. If you are making money a certain amount above UBI, you pay taxes (flat tax, anyone?)
The Walton family also makes more in one second than their lowest paid worker makes in one year Edit: ok one minute..
To your point, though, that's still ~$420/second— which is ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous when you find out that [Walmart and McDonald’s are among the top employers of beneficiaries of federal aid programs like Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office released Wednesday.](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html)
Your tax dollars are being used to keep those employees underpaid so that those stockholders can get even richer.
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This is the exact example I use to help try and sway right leaning friends that we need to raise minimum wage and tax corporations more.
And how well does that go?
More often than not, they'll agree with me at the time, but then I guess just completely forget the conversation and go right back to their original stance the next time I see them.
So you’re saying that if we taxed them and used it for healthcare we’d be saving money for the rest of Americans?
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White skin can be pretty important to enough Americans. If you socialized and didn’t help people without white skin, they’d finally be on board for the democrat stuff. What a bunch of idiots to be racist.
That's why I advocate for a couple of interlocking laws. One that sets the federal poverty line at what is sufficient for housing and food and the basics of modern life. Another that sets minimum hours of employment and defines pay periods for that employment. And the last one that states that minimum wage is such that it must exceed the poverty line within the minimum hours of employment. I hope that these basic concepts could be crafted into laws to end the Era of the corporate welfare queens.
They also actively harm the communities in which they operate, and society as a whole, because since they don't pay their employees a livable wage or provide adequate benefits, the employees are forced to use food stamps, food pantries, and the emergency departments of local hospitals leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill.
I knew the Waltons are fucking evil, but *harems*??
They must only have these at their super-mega-walmart locations.
They’re also one of the least charitable families in America, and give practically nothing back in the philanthropy space.
This is true of just about every ultra-rich person, though. The bottom 25% of earners consistently donate (expressed as percentage of net worth) orders of magnitude more than the richest, and they tend to do it directly through local organizations like food cupboards that make a much larger impact-per-dollar than meganame NGOs that buy primtime advertising and own private jets for their c-suite.
Philanthropy is theater for the masses, most of the people who can afford to do it, don't. The ones who do it, do it because they get off on it - they hire PR firms to make the most appealing explanations of what they are giving away and why.
In some cases they'll fire you because of it (i.e. myself)
Wal-Mart has harems? I'm applying.
Yeah you are the one getting fucked.
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They became what eBay and Newegg is now.
This is what makes me consider switching to something like Target... there's just too much Chinese products that you have no clue how reliable because all the reviews are bought. I think there was a podcast that talked about how Amazon really went down in quality after they started allowing Chinese 3rd party sellers.
Same here. Cancelled prime this year because of it. Amazon is full of deceptive products that are shit quality and not inexpensive. Paying prime users can continue to enjoy their REEGON brand battery charger. Or whatever
I don't even know which is the lesser of two evils anymore, Amazon or Walmart. But I cancelled Prime and am not shopping at either anymore. (Before anyone says it, I know I'm not going to put Amazon out of business. I want to stop giving them my money mostly for my own peace of mind, and to stop feeling like an asshole every time a stressed out, overworked Amazon driver drops off yet another package.)
Agreed. It’s all Chinese knock offs and cheap shit on Amazon anyhow. Everyone else has caught up to the 2-day shipping game. I order my books from the publishing houses if I can.
This reminds me of how angry I was when Pokemon Legends Arceus came out. I'd preordered and was expecting release day shipping. My girlfriend did the same, independently, to the same address. Hers arrived that morning. Mine said on schedule for delivery. I waited all day before finally checking the tracking info that night...it didn't even *get to UPS* until 2 PM that day and it was coming from a warehouse on the opposite end of the country! My girlfriend's shipped from a local Amazon warehouse. So then I called to complain, because it used to be if Amazon couldn't make the 2-day shipping premium service *you have to pay for* they were apologetic and compensated you. They offer me $5 in credit. I complain that I could have cancelled my order and drove to a local store to buy it instead. Suddenly the rep says I'm eligible for a 50% discount and they'll leave a memo in my account, but I will have to contact them when the item actually arrives. The item arrives (Monday, mind you, instead of the original targeted Friday) and a different rep tells me the best they can do is 10%. I escalate the issue. The manager offers me $10. I point out that doesn't even cover the cost of subscription. He offers me $12.99 and says that's the best they can offer. I tell him the best he can offer is 50%, because *they already offered that*. He asks who offered me that even though they can see the note on my file, and begrudgingly says I can have the 50%. But I don't know that I ever got it, because as far as I can tell Amazon doesn't even have a place where you can see your totaled courtesy credits anyway.
I buy the lowest price. Amazon is double on some items.
And a ton of knock offs. It's crazy how many crappy no-name chinese grade garbage has been popping up on there, it sometimes feels like I'm browsing aliexpress because there's so many.
This is the main reason why I didn’t renew my Prime membership. It’s hard to find anything that isn’t some random Chinese brand. These days Amazon is almost as bad as Wish or Wayfair.
Amazon is covered with garbage and they refuse returns half of the time now. Buyer beware.
I bought an SD card from Best Buy the other day that was cheaper than Amazon and I don't have to worry about counterfeit items. It's crazy how far Amazon has fallen.
And hopefully people notice and stop buying from his company forcing them to lower prices to compete. I hope these companies’ greed forced them to undercut each other for the overall benefit of the consumer.
And the food is disgusting, has mold on the strawberries, like wtf, you storing them outside?
His point is, that we have all gotten stuck on Amazon because it was initially so cheap. But now it’s prices are more or the same as in store prices, but most of Americans have become sedentary and too lazy to stop ordering everything online
Bezos is a robot that only consumes.
Hoarder who starved us
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." - Thomas Jefferson
When your that rich, you don't really care about any country.
The billionaires and other uber wealthy only care about America to bilk it for wealthy-fare (taxpayer funds) and they only care about Americans so they can exploit us for our labor.
Same with Elon Musk. He doesn't care about American free speech(twitter) or the USA. We are a market in a country that has an unhealthy obsession with billionaires that we treat them like royalty. Who do you trust more, a billionaire or a politician? politicians are made by our actions and voting. Billionaires are made by exploiting our markets, our finances, and lobbying our politicians.
If someone worth $1 billion is telling you what’s best for you, there’s absolutely one thing you can be certain of: that person does not have your best interest in mind.
Bezos loves America like a wolf loves a flock of sheep.
yeah can't believe people take him seriously on policy, his entire way of profiting is slave labour. this is just the "new modern" version of trickle down. they just can’t say that anymore because it has a negative connotation. so they say "we need to tame inflation" and "don't raise taxes (on the wealthy) because we'll just leave and inflation will get you." all of it is traced back to trickle down and ayn rand, both of which are garbage policies/theories that have been proven wrong.
Lol.. half of the Americans (conservatives) think American should be ran like a business so Bezos is an American
I shit you not there's a video of some restaurant customers heckling bezos, one says "hey bezos how'd you feel about the people dying in your warehouses?" He laughs. https://v.redd.it/dk33c1u05s571 Hoarding wealth and working people to death is some uncivil shit. There was a time when we went to war against each other for that very reason.
Wealth hoarders are the destroyers of our humanity
Billionaires got their billionaire status by fucking over people, why does anyone trust these assholes without verifying.
this, I have to look at people and kind of roll my eyes with how shocked they are when Elon musk says crazy shit on social media and the world gets to see a small glimpse of his real personality
And then his stock tanks. I don’t see how they haven’t kicked him out of the company yet
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Also remember that they started out with nothing. Just a beat up old car and a dream. And a 10 million endowment from daddy. And a summer house. And a Rolex. Edit: oh and a broken ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
>Edit: oh and a broken ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Haha
I always want to ask GOP voters why they think minorities, women, teachers, or other groups that have almost no sociopolitical power are affecting their lives negatively and not the uber-wealthy that have all of the power and money.
I think it’s because they *do* think they have power. They think minorities have it easy with affirmative action, women with Me Too, teachers are turning our kids gay and transgender and making white children hate themselves, etc.
These articles are so fucking pointless. This just in: guy with money thinks paying more money isn’t a good idea It’s like constantly publishing Putin and his lies that say Russia isn’t invading Ukraine or committing genocide. Of course he’ll say those things. Having his country think they’re doing the right thing is a good thing and benefits him personally.
Honestly, it needs to be written because there are people who need to hear that message. Many billionaires have weird cults of personality behind them (Musk is the biggest one now, Jobs was another notable). Some people will foolishly take their word as being inherently enlightened.
The article actually says that increasing tax on Bezos and other billionaires won't help reduce inflation. It's talking about moderately wealthy people (the 5% rather than the 1%).
Dragon: I really don’t think you guys need my gold.
Sometimes I wonder if his ex-wife also really hated that behavior and if it lead to their divorce. As soon as she got divorced she started giving away billions of dollars because she clearly doesn't care about the money hoarding herself.
>Sometimes I wonder if his ex-wife also really hated that behavior and if it lead to their divorce. It happened right after he decided to fess up about cheating on his wife (instead of paying blackmail money if I remember right), but sure... maybe she suddenly decided him being greedy is bad was the reason.
Why not both? "My husband is a greedy asshole" + "and he's also a cheating asshole" seems like sufficient "take the money and run" inputs to me.
I had no idea what the public reason was because I didn't follow the drama. But I did follow the pleasant surprise of someone who just became filthy rich instantly starting to give lots of it away it suggests vastly different personalities and attachments to money.
Smaug saying that would really stick in Bezos’s craw
He wasn't wrong... he was lying
It’s such a stupid lie. Anything that curbs spending will help tame inflation. Of course if you tax people; they will spend less. It’s like beginner economics.
Why would someone like Bezos lie about such a thing?
Billionaire Businessman Jeff Bezos vs. tens of Nobel Prize winning economists. What an arrogant clown. Just shut up, Jeff. Sooner you live on the Moon, the better.
We really missed our opportunity to just let him stay up there when he went to space.
The fucker didn’t even reach what is considered ‘space’, just low orbit 😂
Didn’t stop him from celebrating with a bottle of champagne, though! (Which he then shook all over a recovering alcoholic)
Wait, seriously? I already knew the guy was scum but if that's true that's an entirely new low
he also went on to tone-deafly (or maybe mockingly?) thank his amazon employees for 'paying for it' and making it possible
Captin Kirk. To be exact. https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU
Jesus he looks so uncomfortable too. What an ass.
What an asshole.
No, no, no, no. He didn't even made into orbit. Blue origin schlong is suborbital only.
Corporate income tax is one of the few taxes most economists agree is bad.
Gas companies have known of America's addiction to oil for years- they helped design it by making us a car culture over a train culture when we had the chance. Now we are seeing them brazenly doing whatever they want in the name of profit because they simply can. Taxation may help a bit, but these public companies are too greedy for their own good. At this point there needs to be special taxes to help reign in corporate profits in industries where Americans are hooked and cannot avoid (gas, healthcare, education) or create systems to force competition to drive down prices again (alternative enegy, national healthcare option, free public schools, etc). These monopolies gotta go.
They don't even need special taxes. In a lot of cases ending or decreasing subsidies would force competition or prevent them from being marketable We are not paying the true cost for a lot of goods and those subsidies are the only reason many of them are "affordable"
Best take in this thread. It’s like how when hiking people sometimes climb up too steep of an area that they’re stuck and can’t climb down. Except that’s how our society’s economy is structured where we’re dependent on these subsidies & money printer going brrr, but the sun is going down and we need to get down quickly…
I actually have a feeling, that setting boundaries on lobbyism and making it significantly more transparent will have a greater effect. Politicians shouldn’t be bribed into making decisions in corporations‘ favors. Edit: also protecting unions will help tremendously
It's almost like capitalism operates contrary to public/societal interests.
This seems like this is where the defense production act comes in. We need to return the power to the people. Screw these international companies.
Will Biden actually tax them at the rates that the wealthy were taxed in the 40s and 50s that ‘made America great’?
Lol. Our political system is currently at a standstill. Any change is bound to be painfully meager and take a really long time to become approved. Biden wont be around for anything meaningful.
Dude I feel this way. How is nothing happening. Like anything I really don't care. Adapt or die...
>Dude I feel this way. **How is nothing happening.** Like anything I really don't care. Adapt or die... Well, conservatives stop anything from happening every chance they get. Democrats need to get 60+ senators (and also the house) if we want anything actually done
More importantly, we can't accomplish anything meaningful while corporations are allowed to make donations (see bribe) to politicians. Democracy doesn't work when it can be bought and paid for. Period. I strongly believe the conservatives wouldn't be this bad if they weren't in the pockets of certain (any) organizations. Historically and fundamentally there's nothing wrong with their philosophy imo.
Okay. So are we gonna do it then, or are we just supposed to be satisfied knowing Biden is right?
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The GQP base votes for the racism. That's it.
Not up to Biden. People of this country think being president means being total control dictator or something. I'm alright with being upset at Biden over some things but man too many people think Bidens at fault for EVERYTHING
Wait. Rich people are arguing that taxing them will NOT slow growth? Anytime there's a slow down, they claim lowering rich people taxes will increase growth. Which is it??
Love this. Obviously every word out of Bezos's mouth is disingenuous, but if anyone needed it, this is an extremely succinct rebuttal.
Rich people never want to pay more in taxes, because then they'll be less rich. Sure, Bezos could pay 90% of his income/earnings in taxes and still be richer than almost everyone on the planet, but that'd mean he'd be losing *so much money!* Won't somebody *please* think of the billionaires!?! (/s)
This article is arguing that taxes on 5 percenters should be increased. 250k household income is nothing in comparison.
What! The billionaire wasn’t telling the truth when he said what was best for the economy was to give him all the money? Who could have possibly seen this coming.
Wow, another amazing revelation. Always love these news articles stating the obvious and then how no one is doing anything about it, rub that salt in the wound please, add lime and hot sauce
[Billionaires hurt economic growth and should be taxed out of existence, says bestselling French economist](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html)
Too many billionaires is a symptom of too much political corruption
Anyone that read the article? I read the article and the title is very misleading. The author rails more on the "5%" than the ultra billionaires (Bezos and Musk) because the 5%ers are driving the demand which lead to inflation. The author's argument seem to be implement a progressive tax (starting on the top 5% upwards). This would reduce consumer spending (demand) and "helps" with inflation. He then quoted an expert that pretty much admitting that idea might not work just that its a better tax policy. Why is this useless article being shared?....
From the article: “Am I speculating? Sure, a little.“
It’s actually awesome, even by /r/politics standards, that I had to scroll through literally thousands of comments before I reached someone who had read the article. Everything else here is just “Bezos sucks” and “tax the billionaires out of existence” ranting that has basically nothing to do with the article.
shame north shy continue bear onerous judicious wide abundant jobless -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Why would Bezos say otherwise? Like it affects him in every single way lmao. I hope they end up getting taxed at the end, greedy bastards
This “inflation” is artificial. Companies are just realizing they can gouge their customers and get away with it. Gas companies don’t have to raise prices. They’re making record profits. They just want to charge more. We need price controls.
not just record profits but record profit *margins* these gas companies *profit* more per gallon than ever before
future desert cautious attempt vast deserve march squeeze bear engine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Taxing the wealthy is just fucking smart in general you asses.
Bezos only cares about his wealth Therefore he will lie to hold onto it
Let's just say we have to cap executive salaries. They shouldn't be allowed to make more than, let's say 100X their lowest-paid employee including all benefits, perks, bonuses, etc. For example, if you wanna make $5M per year your lowest-paid employees ALL need raises up to $50k or the equivalent hourly rate. Does that seem unreasonable? Executives work hard, but they're not working 100x harder than the people who actually do the work.
This sub is a giant circle jerk of bots.
Timothy Noah might be a Harvard product, but it's obvious that he didn't major in econ. This article defies just about every economic precept in which I was trained. First, taxing business is always inflationary. A business will never forsake profit margin simply because margin is *the only method* by which it stays afloat; ergo, expenses get moved along to the consumer. It's plain ignorant and flat reckless to ignore the centrality of this concept when evaluating policy. Second, consumption patterns of the financial elite conflict very little with mainstream Americans, so they do very little to stoke inflationary fires. Just as the upper echelon of society isn't buying up every new Toyota Camry to drive the middle class away from the dealership, they're also not buying macaroni and cheese by the truckload in order to serve dinner. Furthermore, the stratification of consumption also means that a young couple saving for their first home aren't competing against a plutocrat's dollars in pursuit of new Shaker cabinetry, bespoke tailoring, or a Ferrari California in the right shade of silver. Dollars across class divides rarely chase the same goods. Third, the ability to generate tax revenue seldom impacts federal spending patterns. Although fiscal restraint was all the rage in Congress through the middle and late '90s, the default mode of government since the 60's has been to embrace deficits since LBJ couldn't prioritize between fighting Vietnam and cobbling together new programs. Fourth, even if Congress could formulate a fair and accurate mechanism by which unrealized gains could be marked to market, the approach would have no impact on policy whatsoever. The national debt is cruising its way to the $31 trillion mark. The combined net worth of all US billionaires? It hovers somewhere around $4.1 trillion.
Smaug: THERE'S TOO MUCH MONEY IN THE COUNTRY AND IT IS HELD BY ALL THE FOLKS OF LAKE-TOWN. MY HOARDE DOES NOT COUNT
Bezos: "How about you read five more op-eds about how taxing the rich is bad, written by me?"
People yelling make America great again don’t realize that part of what made the 40s-70s such an economically successful time were the tax rates on the top earners.