Bernie Sanders: "top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 95%"

[bomberfox]

“We should be saying right now, in a world in which globally the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 95%, and in nation after nation you’re seeing more and more income and wealth inequality, I would say that in the United States we should not have billionaires.”

How does Bernie propose to do this?

“So we need to democratise our society, get people involved and create an economy that works for all of us, not just the folks on Wall Street or the new high tech billionaires.”

I went to the "Bernie's solution" link.

His solution? A complete restructuring of economic priorities—one that replaces corporate dominance with democratic engagement.

Didn't see a plan.

Bernie appeals to emotion.

“The idea that somebody now has $300-$400bn when we have people sleeping out on the streets, when people can’t afford healthcare, can’t afford childcare – that is insane.”

What would happen to Mackenzie Scott's philanthropy if we took all but one billion dollars of her wealth? And what of billionaires whose legacies to the people are more important than their bank accounts?

Alex Meruelo is one such billionaire.

City councilmember explains why he was one of the key 'yes' votes in favor of GSR Arena

For much of the Reno Redevelopment Agency Board's meeting last week, the swing vote on whether Grand Sierra Resort project moved forward with public-money suppo

nevadasportsnet.com

The public-comment portion of the meeting lasted more than 2 hours with 51 people speaking, including 50 in favor of the project...

Reno redevelopment agency OK's property tax reimbursement plan for GSR arena project

The Grand Sierra Resort's tax-increment financing for phase one was approved 5-2 on Wednesday by Reno's redevelopment agency.

www.rgj.com

GSR owner Alex Meruelo said he would give the lease to the property of Fire Station 21 to the city, and give an additional 5% of the 90% property tax reimbursement earnings to youth sports recreation facilities.

The city gets gifted a $5m piece of property, takes no risk in TIF, over $3m will be returned to Ward 3 youth sports, the University of Nevada gets a state-of-the-art basketball stadium built with private money (and leased), the community gets (more) jobs (which Meruelo has been creating in the area since 2014), more entertainment opportunities, and Tuscon's AHL hockey team when Meruelo moves them in 2027.

Everybody here loves him, including his employees. He's a modern American success story, son of Cuban immigrants. All billionaires aren't bad people. Meruelo's wealth is tied up in his major properties: The Sahara in Las Vegas, The Grand Sierra in Reno and the Tuscon Roadrunners hockey team. What would Bernie do with his property? If Bernie took ownership of the GSR, would Reno still get its stadium and the rest of the $1b investment planned by Meruelo? Why should I, as a Reno area resident, allow the federal government to limit wealth at $1b dollars? Sounds very autocratic.

Bernie Sanders has no solutions. He speaks to grievance.

The problem is the need for billionaire philanthropy in the first place. Solidarity is better than charity. The capitalist class is not my friend, labor exploitation of the same caliber has been shipped overseas. These people arent going to pay Americans a living wage if they are forced to come back.

 

[iguanaman]

Who was it that said something about, "eventually you run out of other people's money"?

Bernie should listen to them.

The rich won't run out of money. They have more than enough to pay their fair share and still be rich.

 

[aociswundumho]

A progressive tax exponentially taxes more the more one makes, starting at a high point, people who earn above, say, $300k per year, (or whatever they decide on) the middle pay taxes, but it's not supposed to be burdensome. The burden, the pain, should be shouldered by those who can easily afford it. Taht's progressivism, in a nutshell. Why? Because that's where the money is. Increasing taxes on poor and middle will destroy the economy because they do the bulk of purchasing, which is the engine of jobs.

The Willy Sutton theory of taxation.

When you tax something, you get less of it. High taxes on income and investments means you will get less of both, which harms long term economic growth.

 

[iguanaman]

It's amazing how inequality in the US is just accepted as just fine.

It is the GOP's fault 100%. It started when corporate execs became "job creators" and Reagan slashed taxes on the top promising they would use that extra money to give them raises. The opposite happened. As soon as business owners could keep most of the profits for themselves the middle class stopped getting any raises for 25 years.

 

[Mithrae]

I admire Bernie Sanders, but to be precise, the wealth concentration figures are, well, Sanders does exaggerate.

'Exaggerate' seems a little polite - outright lied if the report is correct. It seemed high for American figures so I checked that before realizing he was talking about globally, which seemed more plausible. But on checking that now it seems he's still way off, with the top 1% globally owning around 45% of wealth, less than half of Sanders' reported claim.

Visualizing the Pyramid of Global Wealth Distribution

Global wealth stands at over $454 trillion. This graphic shows how it's distributed, by various levels of net worth.

www.visualcapitalist.com

 

[bomberfox]

Agreed, and comparing the two is interesting.

The common stereotype of the liberal college student and the MAGA steel worker holds true with regard to Trump tariffs. Anyone who stayed awake through 1st year economics understands tariffs and their economic effects. I would assume these same "liberal students" would also understand that limiting wealth to less than one billion dollars would result in individuals moving all their wealth, except maybe one billion, out of the reach of the US government. The country would become poorer, just as it will if Trump's tariffs ever take full effect. So, the stereotype of the educated young liberal fails here.

I'm not sure what young liberals are thinking right now. Not that I've looked really hard, but the townhalls making headiness involve more mature voters; I don't see many young people active here.

Bernie was drawing large crowds recently. Anger was palpable and justified, as it is in townhalls. But "eat the billionaires" is just a bumper sticker slogan. He may as well be chanting "waste, fraud and abuse." Indeed, he is, from the other extreme.

Tax the rich, feed the poor, until there are no poor no more, makes for great songwriting (written and performed by wealthy capitalists), but while "tax the rich, feed the poor" should be the default setting, the object should be, "teach and help the poor to succeed, until there are no poor no more."

Bernie's ideas are economically impossible. I would hope young college students know this, but that's the problem with stereotypes. I don't think Bernie has much appeal with anyone, myself.

Psst they already do it while benefitting from massive tax cuts. The tax rate isnt really what moves them. Capitalism always has an underclass so you can teach the poor all you like but capitalism really doesnt have a solution. Solidarity does. The rich believes they should not pay for the benefits they received from societal investments and they think exploiting labor is a god given right.

They violently suppressed labor organizing around the world and destroyed it at home.

 

[Surrealistik]

It is the GOP's fault 100%. It started when corporate execs became "job creators" and Reagan slashed taxes on the top promising they would use that extra money to give them raises. The opposite happened. As soon as business owners could keep most of the profits for themselves the middle class stopped getting any raises for 25 years.

And keep in mind that this is heavily weighted towards consumer goods, which is very much a best case scenario.

With respect to such uh... 'trivialities' as healthcare, housing, education, rent, and even food most recently, purchasing power is in fact deeply underwater compared to the 60s and 70s.

When the system delivers such consistently horrible results, it is little wonder it is fertile ground for moron demagogues and false populists like Trump to make a mess of things.

 

[iguanaman]

'Exaggerate' seems a little polite - outright lied if the report is correct. It seemed high for American figures so I checked that before realizing he was talking about globally, which seemed more plausible. But on checking that now it seems he's still way off, with the top 1% globally owning around 45% of wealth, less than half of Sanders' reported claim.

Visualizing the Pyramid of Global Wealth Distribution

Global wealth stands at over $454 trillion. This graphic shows how it's distributed, by various levels of net worth.

www.visualcapitalist.com

Here is a more detailed look...

 

[Mithrae]

And keep in mind that this is heavily weighted towards consumer goods, which is very much a best case scenario.

With respect to such uh... 'trivialities' as healthcare, housing, education, rent, and even food most recently, purchasing power is in fact deeply underwater compared to the 60s and 70s.

When the system delivers such consistently horrible results, it is little wonder it is fertile ground for moron demagogues and false populists like Trump to make a mess of things.

So... you're saying that for optional spending companies have matched prices to wage increases, while for essential goods and services they charge as much as they can and consumers just have to try to afford it somehow?

I don't think anyone could have predicted that

Healthcare in particular is probably the most perverse industry to leave solely or largely to market forces since it is often very literally "your money or your life," but to greater or lesser extents something similar applies to your other examples being essential (housing/food) or very important (education) and difficult to DIY successfully (even food in an urban setting).

 

[Surrealistik]

So... you're saying that for optional spending companies have matched prices to wage increases, while for essential goods and services they charge as much as they can and consumers just have to try to afford it somehow?

I don't think anyone could have predicted that

Healthcare in particular is probably the most perverse industry to leave solely or largely to market forces since it is often very literally "your money or your life," but to greater or lesser extents something similar applies to your other examples being essential (housing/food) or very important (education) and difficult to DIY successfully (even food in an urban setting).

When the government is de facto run by the very same robber bandits, whether Democrat or Republican, and this bad behaviour is thus allowed to continue uncontested, yes, this is indeed a very predictable outcome.

 

[Allan]

If you've got a thousand dollars and are being taxed 20%, you transfer 20% of those dollars to the government. If you've got a thousand shares and are being taxed 20%, a fairly obvious possibility would be to transfer 20% of those shares to the government. Probably too cumbersome to work for normal taxpayers, but in the case of billionaires it would work just fine.

I suppose one 'criticism' is that it would potentially result in a de facto form of socialism with the government owning large or majority stakes in most industries; but a trusteeship system could help avoid the pitfalls of straying too far towards a centrally-planned economy and, perhaps more to the point, it seems to me that should be viewed as an even more damning criticism of the state we've reached in the present system: Why would it be better for a handful unelected individuals to hold those stakes rather than a democratic government?

Under this tax scheme all wealthy American investors would be wiped out in a few years.

They won't tolerate that. They'll simply move their assets to other countries who will welcome them with open arms.

 

[Mithrae]

Under this tax scheme all wealthy American investors would be wiped out in a few years.

They won't tolerate that. They'll simply move their assets to other countries who will welcome them with open arms.

You didn't end up responding to post #104: Are you trying to say (or trying to avoid actually saying) that humans simply aren't clever enough to develop a model for functioning modern societies without extreme upwards concentration of wealth and power?

This argument is exactly the same as the one used by climate science deniers - "If we regulate polluting industries they'll just go and boost the economies of other countries" - opponents of minimum wages or labour laws - "If we make American companies pay more for labour they'll just move their operations and hire foreign workers" - and basically any other regressive position with even the remotest possibility of international scope.

It's an important concern to be aware of, of course, but what it is instead generally used for (and fails miserably at) is pretending either that there isn't actually a problem or that there's no point in striving for a solution. You might not be aware of this, judging by your post, but international agreements are possible. Exit taxes and controls on the movement of capital (let alone more static assets such as land which constitutes another big area of ultra-rich unearned income) are possible. And while no human system will ever be perfect, improvement or even a partial solution better than the current shitshow is possible. Or at least would have been, were it not for the prevalence of people eager to voice pseudo-'concerns' like the above.

 

[Allan]

You didn't end up responding to post #104: Are you trying to say (or trying to avoid actually saying) that humans simply aren't clever enough to develop a model for functioning modern societies without extreme upwards concentration of wealth and power?

Under your proposal the source of the 'wealth tax' is eliminated. Bill Billionaire either gets completely wiped out or moves to Ireland. So now you've lost both the wealth tax and the income tax.

You've also lost the economic growth he created for the US and the wealth he created for other individuals who may have gained by investing in his company.

Also now the goverment is holding stock for many if not most of America's companies. They could take a capital loss since the business acumen that created that wealth is removed from the equation.

To answer your last question: there is nothing wrong with concentration of wealth if the individual and their companies are taxed fairly on the income.

Taxing high earner income is the way to benefit middle and lower income citizens without killing the golden goose.

 

[Luckyone]

It's time to tax billionaires into extinction. Redistribute all their wealth to the people. Enough is enough!!

“We shouldn’t have billionaires”—Bernie Sanders says it’s time to tax them into extinction

Senator Bernie Sanders has reignited his call for wealth redistribution by asserting that poverty could be entirely eliminated if billionaires were taxed more

sinhalaguide.com

Capitalism does work as it made the U.S. into the #1 nation in the world. Having said that, unrestrained Capitalism generates greed and power hunger and that takes it over the top and causes back things to occur. What is needed is restrictions on Capitalism, meaning you can be the best you can be but don't take it to where it hurts others in order to benefit you.

One simple fact:

Having $1 Billion dollars guarantees you a life of luxury

Generational wealth: How long can a billion dollars last?​

I was just thinking about wealth inequality in this country and the vast gulf that exists between billionaires and the rest of us. I was also thinking about arguments against the estate tax, and how people think it's morally wrong to tax people's inheritances.

So, I wanted to do the math to see how long a billion dollars can last.

Imagine a billionaire that dies and leaves his two kids his estate of exactly $1 billion in a trust fund. Furthermore, let's assume that the trust fund rations out $100,000 per year to live off of. This is $100,000 without tax, mind you, which is enough to be in the top few percent of income, without working.

If each kid lives to be 80 years old on average, that's $8 million over a lifetime.

The same offer is made to any kids that the billionaire's kids have, and so on.

For the sake of argument, let's say that on average, each kid has 2 kids of their own, and the generations are on average 20 years apart.

Finally, let's assume that the trust fund earns enough interest to exactly match inflation (which is extremely conservative).

So, generation 1 will use 16 million (8 for each kid)

Generation 2 will have 4 members and use 32 million

Generation 3 will have 8 members and use 64 million

Generation 4 will have 16 members and use 128 million (we're at $240 million total so far)

Generation 5 will have 32 members and will use 256 million (at $496 million total)

Generation 6 will have 64 members and won't have the $512 million left over, but they will have $504 million, which is close enough for my tastes. Each member of this generation gets $98,400 per year and closes out the fund.

That means when generation 6 is born 120 years later, they can live comfortably until their deaths at 80, 200 years after the trust fund was started.

That's 126 people over 200 years that lived upper middle class lifestyles without having to work a single day of their lives. And I guarantee you they will have some kind of false sense of accomplishment about having earned that money.

There are over 500 billionaires in the USA today, each one of them can sustain their families for centuries for each billion that they have. Some of them have tens of billions, meaning they could sustain their families for thousands of years. Thousands of years of people all born on the summit of a mountain, thinking that they climbed it.

I'm not sure I have a point with all of this, I just wanted a place to put down my musings on exactly how big a billion dollars is.

Once you have a billions dollars, there is no need to make more, meaning that these billionaires (and even millionaires) can contribute more to the nation without being affected one iota personally.

When taxes for the rich were higher, the standard of living for all Americans was higher and the rich did not suffer. When the rich had unrestricted earning power, things got bad for the nation. Here is a chart that shows that:

 

[Mulefoot]

It's amazing how inequality in the US is just accepted as just fine.

I think wealth inequality is a value proposition just like any other. In this conversation inequality is set against a different value proposition, namely the ability to earn and keep what one deserves based on his/her efforts to earn and keep it.

Perhaps Americans on the whole tend to value the latter, relative to other countries.

 

[Peter]

I think wealth inequality is a value proposition just like any other. In this conversation inequality is set against a different value proposition, namely the ability to earn and keep what one deserves based on his/her efforts to earn and keep it.

Perhaps Americans on the whole tend to value the latter, relative to other countries.

The main problem is the ability of the super rich to game the system and give themselves vast tax breaks and payoffs even when they fail dismally.

How many times have we seen CEO's given enormous golden goodbye payments after being ousted for gross incompetance and the comapny being completely screwed?
Just look at the number of people saying Musk must be given $50+ Billion as a bonus and just how that money could be much better used for the beterment of the entire Tesla workforce.
The Republicans claim this is only jelousy but people aren't asking to enrich themselves they want the money to benefit everyone rather than 1 already insanely rich individual.

 

[Craig234]

Can anyone link to Bernie saying the top 1% have 95% of the wealth - not someone claiming he did?

 

[Mulefoot]

The main problem is the ability of the super rich to game the system and give themselves vast tax breaks and payoffs even when they fail dismally.

How many times have we seen CEO's given enormous golden goodbye payments after being ousted for gross incompetance and the comapny being completely screwed?
Just look at the number of people saying Musk must be given $50+ Billion as a bonus and just how that money could be much better used for the beterment of the entire Tesla workforce.
The Republicans claim this is only jelousy but people aren't asking to enrich themselves they want the money to benefit everyone rather than 1 already insanely rich individual.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's always right - particularly in extreme situations like this. I'm just proposing that there are other principles that are at conflict with creating wealth equality. And that those conflicting principles have value.

 

[Mithrae]

I think wealth inequality is a value proposition just like any other. In this conversation inequality is set against a different value proposition, namely the ability to earn and keep what one deserves based on his/her efforts to earn and keep it.

Perhaps Americans on the whole tend to value the latter, relative to other countries.

No-one earns a billion dollars. No-one even earns $10 million dollars for that matter, not in any meaningful sense based on their actual talents and efforts; it's the windfalls of a system whose characteristics inherently concentrate society's wealth towards a focal point, a focal point 'we' have chosen to accept being a handful of individuals rather than for public distribution of our common wealth. As I earlier explained in post #102:


Why do you believe that it's acceptable for any person to accumulate that much wealth from our societies and planet?

It's a pretty safe guess that there is no person on this planet who is more than three or four times more talented than the average for their field (human brains and bodies are subject to biological limits) and no person who is more than three or four times more hard-working than the average (a week has only so many hours). But even we go way out on a limb and imagine a superman who is both ten times more talented and ten times more hard-working than others, what this mythical creature could have actually earned by their own efforts would still cap out at about a hundred times the average, somewhere in the order of $20 million in the USA. Without this superman, we might more reasonably suppose that there just possibly might be one or two truly exceptional folk who've actually earned $2 or $3 million by their own efforts.

All the rest is wealth accumulated from their societies and their environment; thousands of years of prior technological innovation which make Facebook a possibility, tens of millions of viewers which make professional basketball a lucrative career possibility, coincidences of geology and millions of dollars of government infrastructure that make it valuable to 'own' land that you never produced... the protection of a military and international treaties, the stability of economic regulation and central banking, the availability of an educated workforce, communications networks for advertising, infrastructure for distribution, consumers with disposable income, the list of societal and environmental contributions to rich peoples' wealth goes on and on.

I'm not saying that's always or entirely a bad thing, but it is a fact that far too few people even understand, let alone acknowledge, instead subscribing to the utterly ridiculous myth of the 'self-made man.'

So I'm curious... is there any kind of upper limit you would consider for how much wealth individuals 'should be' allowed to extract from their societies, or just as much as they can possibly grab going into the hundreds of billions and soon trillions of dollars?



The most common justification and as far as I know the only one which has any kind of merit is based on incentivization... but that pretty much caps out somewhere around $10 or $20 million at current monetary values, beyond which further wealth has little or no appreciable effect on quality of life (weighed against rapidly-increasing adverse ecological and societal consequences). This isn't benign - billionaires' wealth was distributed towards them and away from the rest of us by a system designed to do so, and not only deprives society of a lot of potential good from increasing investment in science, education, healthcare and so on but very often actively contributes to harm.

 

[Mithrae]

Under your proposal the source of the 'wealth tax' is eliminated. Bill Billionaire either gets completely wiped out or moves to Ireland. So now you've lost both the wealth tax and the income tax.

You've also lost the economic growth he created for the US and the wealth he created for other individuals who may have gained by investing in his company.

Also now the goverment is holding stock for many if not most of America's companies. They could take a capital loss since the business acumen that created that wealth is removed from the equation.

Billionaires don't earn their wealth in any meaningful sense, as explained in the post above and earlier in the thread.

Pretending that they "create" their wealth is even more ridiculous, their own self-deifying propaganda accepted by the worshipful masses.

Next you'll be telling me that billionaires have a higher "net worth" than the rest of us, rather than "net wealth." These framings of our language and thinking into terms of worship and reverence for the ultra-rich were not accidents. So no, you are pretty obviously incorrect that

there is nothing wrong with concentration of wealth if the individual and their companies are taxed fairly on the income.

As I pointed out to you earlier, reasonable anti-corruption laws in Canada for example sure helps in terms of overt political bribery in Canada; but it doesn't prevent Canadian billionaires from exerting overt influence in less developed countries like India or the USA (Elon Musk was South African once); it doesn't mitigate the less overt but more pervasive billionaire-friendly propaganda of the mass media they own (Rupert Murdoch was an Australian once); it doesn't do anything about the absurd environmental impacts of superyachts and any other form of consumption; it doesn't prevent billionaires' disproportionate and perverse influence on markets such as housing in particular; and it doesn't prevent the ongoing compounding problem of trillionaires in the next decade or two.

Money is power, so extreme concentration of wealth is an extreme concentration of power: It might be more limited and exercised less obviously in cases where such obvious and reasonable legal restrictions such as those are in place, but it would be particularly naive to imagine it doesn't exist just because of those limits.

 

[markdc]

Bernie is your typical leftoid when it comes to "helping" people. He wants people helped, but he doesn't want to do the actual helping.

Yeah, like all those vile NeoCons who want us to go to war against other countries but would never dream of doing the actual fighting.

Mark

 

[bomberfox]

Under this tax scheme all wealthy American investors would be wiped out in a few years.

They won't tolerate that. They'll simply move their assets to other countries who will welcome them with open arms.

We can certainly take them.

 

[bomberfox]

Yeah, I'm not saying it's always right - particularly in extreme situations like this. I'm just proposing that there are other principles that are at conflict with creating wealth equality. And that those conflicting principles have value.

Im less concerned with absolutely equalizing wealth than im concerned about people who contribute massive amount of work towards that wealth yet get incredibly little.

 

[HenryChinaski]

Did they teach you how fast living standards rose during the gilded age?

yes, indeed it did for the super wealthy, the rest, not so much.

During the Gilded Age (late 1870s to early 1900s), living standards were extremely disparate, with the wealthy enjoying lavish lifestyles while the majority of the population, particularly the working class, struggled with poverty and dangerous working conditions. The rapid industrialization led to a stark divide, with a few industrialists accumulating immense wealth while most workers faced low wages and poor living conditions.

 

[Allan]

Im less concerned with absolutely equalizing wealth than im concerned about people who contribute massive amount of work towards that wealth yet get incredibly little.

Warren Buffet has a running bet with his fellow billionaires - can any of them show they pay more income tax than their secretary?

He's never lost on that bet.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-warren-buffett-calls-outrageous-173016060.html