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

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.
One of the reasons i became a socialist is realizing that reform under the American system is simply not possible anymore.
 
It's time to tax billionaires into extinction. Redistribute all their wealth to the people. Enough is enough!!

Amen! Until everyone is equally broke we can never be equal and everybody having the same shit is the whole purpose of society and government! MORE COMMUNISM AND LESS FREEDOM FOR EVERYBODY!!!
 
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.

Warren Buffet paid more taxes. He had a lower tax RATE. Two completely different things.

And guess what, the IRS will take a voluntary contribution if you want to pay more taxes. So why didn't Warren choose to pay 36% tax rate like his secretary?
 
Warren Buffet paid more taxes. He had a lower tax RATE. Two completely different things.
Everyone reading my comment knows I meant tax rate. Except you.

Hey any updates on Tim's Memorial Day message? 🤣
 
Everyone reading my comment knows I meant tax rate. Except you.

Hey any updates on Tim's Memorial Day message? 🤣
So why didn't you say tax rate? Words mean things and if you can't be clear when you debate...
 
the economic growth he created
Let's take Jeff Bezos as an example here. What economic growth did he create with Amazon? He didn't "create" any consumers. He didn't "create" any demand. He didn't even "create" any new products. People buy more or less the same stuff as they always did, but now they do so with less exercise, less social interaction, and fewer people employed in retail to meet those demands. There's some upsides in there somewhere as well, but it's very possible that Amazon and online retailing has been a net negative for society and economy. Of course it's not like Bezos is the devil or anything, because this was an inevitable trend with the growth of the internet; it wasn't a particularly innovative idea, Bezos just got into it a little earlier, a little more aggressively and in some ways a little more efficiently (by all accounts he's been pretty 'efficient' with wages and working conditions, for example) than other folk did.

Or Bill Gates, one of the more admirable 'richest men' there've been for what it's worth; intelligent, hard-working, generous and Microsoft products have pretty unequivocally been a net positive for humanity. But what did he actually create? He didn't invent metallurgy, or electronics, or computers. He didn't even invent DOS; it was simply by adapting and licensing DOS for IBM and IBM-compatible PCs that they took off as an industry standard, and by the time they were developing Windows it much more of a team effort (and indeed for his own part Gates at the time "did not think that he was working hard enough"). If there'd been no Bill Gates or Paul Allen, office and personal computing still would have exploded in popularity, operating systems and processing programs still would have been developed, and presumably someone else would have become a mega-billionaire as a result; maybe a few years later or less spectacularly, maybe the products would have been a bit worse or maybe they would have been a bit better, but there's no basis for supposing that the absence of Bill Gates would have resulted in major societal or economic consequences.

Do you think that Steve Jobs "created" ten times more of anything than Steve Wozniak? Or that Bill Gates "created" five times more than Paul Allen, let alone dozens or hundreds of times more than their other programming and marketing team members?

If these billionaires were two or three times more talented and hard-working than their average peers in their respective fields - and even that is a big if in most cases - then by all means they deserve a few million dollars. But they are billionaires due to the windfalls of a inherently wealth-concentrating system, the focal point of which 'we' have chosen to accept being towards a handful of individuals rather than towards public distribution of our common wealth.
 
Let's take Jeff Bezos as an example here. What economic growth did he create with Amazon? He didn't "create" any consumers. He didn't "create" any demand. He didn't even "create" any new products. People buy more or less the same stuff as they always did, but now they do so with less exercise, less social interaction, and fewer people employed in retail to meet those demands. There's some upsides in there somewhere as well, but it's very possible that Amazon and online retailing has been a net negative for society and economy. Of course it's not like Bezos is the devil or anything, because this was an inevitable trend with the growth of the internet; it wasn't a particularly innovative idea, Bezos just got into it a little earlier, a little more aggressively and in some ways a little more efficiently (by all accounts he's been pretty 'efficient' with wages and working conditions, for example) than other folk did.

Or Bill Gates, one of the more admirable 'richest men' there've been for what it's worth; intelligent, hard-working, generous and Microsoft products have pretty unequivocally been a net positive for humanity. But what did he actually create? He didn't invent metallurgy, or electronics, or computers. He didn't even invent DOS; it was simply by adapting and licensing DOS for IBM and IBM-compatible PCs that they took off as an industry standard, and by the time they were developing Windows it much more of a team effort (and indeed for his own part Gates at the time "did not think that he was working hard enough"). If there'd been no Bill Gates or Paul Allen, office and personal computing still would have exploded in popularity, operating systems and processing programs still would have been developed, and presumably someone else would have become a mega-billionaire as a result; maybe a few years later or less spectacularly, maybe the products would have been a bit worse or maybe they would have been a bit better, but there's no basis for supposing that the absence of Bill Gates would have resulted in major societal or economic consequences.

Do you think that Steve Jobs "created" ten times more of anything than Steve Wozniak? Or that Bill Gates "created" five times more than Paul Allen, let alone dozens or hundreds of times more than their other programming and marketing team members?

If these billionaires were two or three times more talented and hard-working than their average peers in their respective fields - and even that is a big if in most cases - then by all means they deserve a few million dollars. But they are billionaires due to the windfalls of a inherently wealth-concentrating system, the focal point of which 'we' have chosen to accept being towards a handful of individuals rather than towards public distribution of our common wealth.
Your measures of their success are soundly contradicted by their enormous success.

Whether you think they're successful or not is meaningless in the face of the size of the companies they created.

Their wealth is based on owning shares in those companies. Regardless of what you think the founder's contributions were the fact is the companies are worth a lot of money.
 
Your measures of their success are soundly contradicted by their enormous success.

Whether you think they're successful or not is meaningless in the face of the size of the companies they created.

Their wealth is based on owning shares in those companies. Regardless of what you think the founder's contributions were the fact is the companies are worth a lot of money.
Yes, they're rich because they're rich (y) No-one is disputing that folk like Bezos and Gates led and (in these cases) founded big companies, just as folk like Alexander and Augustus led or founded big empires... the question is how much more legitimate the accumulation of wealth and power from the former is compared to the accumulation of wealth and power from the latter? A little more legitimate at least since there was less violence involved 🤭

But in both cases the accumulation of wealth and power is still overwhelmingly (like 99.9+%) based on the efforts and actions of other people - prior technological development, communications and distribution infrastructure, an educated workforce, a prosperous consumer base etc. etc. - and indeed the absence of Bezos or Gates would have had virtually negligible consequences for the development of modern society (unlike the not necessarily positive but very significant consequences of Alexander or Augustus).
 
Let's take Jeff Bezos as an example here. What economic growth did he create with Amazon? He didn't "create" any consumers. He didn't "create" any demand. He didn't even "create" any new products. People buy more or less the same stuff as they always did, but now they do so with less exercise, less social interaction, and fewer people employed in retail to meet those demands. There's some upsides in there somewhere as well, but it's very possible that Amazon and online retailing has been a net negative for society and economy. Of course it's not like Bezos is the devil or anything, because this was an inevitable trend with the growth of the internet; it wasn't a particularly innovative idea, Bezos just got into it a little earlier, a little more aggressively and in some ways a little more efficiently (by all accounts he's been pretty 'efficient' with wages and working conditions, for example) than other folk did.

Or Bill Gates, one of the more admirable 'richest men' there've been for what it's worth; intelligent, hard-working, generous and Microsoft products have pretty unequivocally been a net positive for humanity. But what did he actually create? He didn't invent metallurgy, or electronics, or computers. He didn't even invent DOS; it was simply by adapting and licensing DOS for IBM and IBM-compatible PCs that they took off as an industry standard, and by the time they were developing Windows it much more of a team effort (and indeed for his own part Gates at the time "did not think that he was working hard enough"). If there'd been no Bill Gates or Paul Allen, office and personal computing still would have exploded in popularity, operating systems and processing programs still would have been developed, and presumably someone else would have become a mega-billionaire as a result; maybe a few years later or less spectacularly, maybe the products would have been a bit worse or maybe they would have been a bit better, but there's no basis for supposing that the absence of Bill Gates would have resulted in major societal or economic consequences.

Do you think that Steve Jobs "created" ten times more of anything than Steve Wozniak? Or that Bill Gates "created" five times more than Paul Allen, let alone dozens or hundreds of times more than their other programming and marketing team members?

If these billionaires were two or three times more talented and hard-working than their average peers in their respective fields - and even that is a big if in most cases - then by all means they deserve a few million dollars. But they are billionaires due to the windfalls of a inherently wealth-concentrating system, the focal point of which 'we' have chosen to accept being towards a handful of individuals rather than towards public distribution of our common wealth.
Completely agree. Great post. It's sad how many of my fellow Americans get duped into these right wing lies. They are actively voting in favor of the billionaire class over culture war nonsense.
 
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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?
I don't think I've ever considered an upper limit. Personally, it's a matter of principle that someone gets paid what the market bears (without cronyism, of course, and perhaps the Delaware judge got it correct here). In Musk's case, the market determined his incentives were worth 50B, based on various financial milestones the company met with Musk at the helm, voted on by a large majority of stakeholders, and ratified by the board who represented those company stakeholders. This compensation consisted of equity stock options, and would've had zero specific negative impact on anyone else's quality of life as far as I can tell. I don't claim at all that the compensation would've enhanced HIS quality of life, and in fact, I think one could make a case that it would decrease it at some point. But who are you, or anyone else, to determine what limits should exist after which they surpass some arbitrary, appreciable effect?

Your question poses only one side of the ledger. Sure, Musk would've EXTRACTED wealth from society, but the incentive package was voted on by stakeholders only if when under his leadership the company INSERTED FAR MORE QUANTIFIABLE wealth into society via a dozen stock market cap milestones, positively adding specific wealth to the society. The company has a market cap of 1 trillion dollars by the way. I'm not saying that only he could've led Tesla into that valuation, but shareholders (whose stake would be diluted to the tune of about 10% of their holdings) passed the package on to the board.

Musk is a weirdo. I don't like anything about him. But aside from cronyism, or some undue conflict that would render the comp package null and void (and that may be the case here), I can't sit here with zero skin in the game and declare that his incentive package is just too much because philosophical reasons. The shareholders voted to incentive him if value was created with him at the helm. And he delivered.
 
These crooks belong in prison.

The people who want to steal wealth from the people who created it are the crooks, not the other way around.
 
The people who want to steal wealth from the people who created it are the crooks, not the other way around.
They didn't create anything alone. They still had all their employees labor and then the people willing to buy their product. It's a group effort.
 
I don't think I've ever considered an upper limit. Personally, it's a matter of principle that someone gets paid what the market bears (without cronyism, of course, and perhaps the Delaware judge got it correct here). In Musk's case, the market determined his incentives were worth 50B, based on various financial milestones the company met with Musk at the helm, voted on by a large majority of stakeholders, and ratified by the board who represented those company stakeholders. This compensation consisted of equity stock options, and would've had zero specific negative impact on anyone else's quality of life as far as I can tell. I don't claim at all that the compensation would've enhanced HIS quality of life, and in fact, I think one could make a case that it would decrease it at some point. But who are you, or anyone else, to determine what limits should exist after which they surpass some arbitrary, appreciable effect?
I'm not saying that there's anything necessarily nefarious about billionaire accumulation of wealth (though in many cases that is also true), I'm just pointing out that it isn't earned by them and it certainly isn't "created" by them.

If that was all there was to it, if it was superficially 'unfair' but otherwise harmless I might agree with you... but there are at least four fairly obvious ways in which billionaire wealth generally and actively harms others:
  1. Most obviously, the lack of availability of that societally-generated wealth for funding of healthcare, education, science and infrastructure leaves less ideal conditions for everyone else.
  2. Concentration of wealth means concentration of influence and power, which undermines democracy, most obviously and directly in case of lax 'donation' laws such as the USA but also indirectly through media influence, funding of 'think tanks' and public policy institutes, networking of powerful people and so on.
  3. Ownership of private property is by definition a restriction on other people's freedom to access those resources, meaning that extreme concentration of wealth infringes on everyone else's liberty (for example, restricting others from owning suitable land for a home by buying up vast quantities of investment real estate).
  4. And above all, on a finite planet whose biosphere and resources are already being degraded and exploited far beyond sustainable rates, disproportionate consumption of those resources by the wealthy - and more importantly, the consumer-capitalist culture from which they accumulate most of their wealth and are therefore incentivized to accelerate - is literally undermining the conditions on which our modern global civilization depends.
Any one of these would be an excellent reason to curtail the undue power and impact of the ultra-rich, let alone all four aligned! Our civilization is potentially heading towards a general collapse as a result of multiple earth- and eco-system stressors, the best-known being climate change, and yet virtually nothing is done about it because it doesn't suit the interests of the rich and powerful.

I gather there's also a pretty solid body of evidence suggesting that extreme wealth tends to be psychologically damaging to those people themselves, stifling empathy, compassion and interpersonal relationships (and hence further enabling the regression of 2, 3 and 4*)... but if it weren't for these impacts against other people, curtailing their wealth on those grounds would be akin to banning drug use 'for their own good.'



Edit: * An excellent though lengthy article by Naomi Klein in April discusses ideas I've had running around the old noggin for over a decade. She calls it "end times fascism," though I think of it more as a bunker culture, whether on a national, local or literal bunker scale; billionaires' financially-insulated false sense of "independence" from other people and the natural world encouraging the mentality that they can continue plundering whatever remains of our planetary wealth and retreat into their bunkers as it all goes to shit.

 
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They didn't create anything alone. They still had all their employees labor and then the people willing to buy their product. It's a group effort.

They paid their employees, and their customers received a product or service in exchange for their payment.

That doesn't change the fact that they became billionaires because THEY created the businesses that provided those jobs and products/services.
 
It's time to tax billionaires into extinction. Redistribute all their wealth to the people. Enough is enough!!

Sanders won't do that they are the people that would find his campaign.
 
I'm not saying that there's anything necessarily nefarious about billionaire accumulation of wealth (though in many cases that is also true), I'm just pointing out that it isn't earned by them and it certainly isn't "created" by them.
I think this is semantics. The meaning "creating" or "earning" is immaterial. Skin-In-The-Game Tesla stakeholders and directors overwhelmingly voted to incentivize Musk with 56 Billion dollars, if under the direction of Musk, Tesla achieved certain objective, financial milestones. Those milestones were achieved under his leadership, and Tesla's society of stakeholders were simultaneously enriched via the same measure that you think Musk should not have- namely the value of dollars. So, should other stakeholders not participate in the increase of value that billionaires also strive to increase for themselves?

You are currently only arguing that society shouldn't have billionaires, and that argument is too simple. Instead, your argument would need to prove that society is better off without the incremental value that billionaires generally create for society, while in their pursuit of billions of dollars.
 
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