"Billionaires Should Not Exist"

[Stevicus]

And it's about time.

Billionaires are the target in this year's Democratic campaign

WASHINGTON —


When investment mogul Henry Kravis put his Colorado ranch on the market earlier this year for $46 million, attention to its big-game hunting grounds, marble-countered butler’s pantry and golf course designed by Greg Norman ran high on the society pages — and on the Twitter feed of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“Billionaires like this guy make me wonder what our country needs more of,” the Massachusetts senator wrote, “ranches with golf courses designed by PGA players & fireplaces ‘imported from European castles’ — or universal childcare & a Green New Deal?”

It wasn’t long ago that demonizing the super-rich was risky politics for Democrats. Candidates worried about charges of class warfare and feared turning off voters who dreamed of joining the ranks of the 1%. Democratic Party’s economic policies sought to aid the poor and the middle class, but mostly not at the expense of the rich.

As Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate made clear, such reticence has vanished from the current campaign.

Even a few billionaires are jumping on the "bash billionaires" bandwagon.

A widening economic divide, a raft of misdeeds by the billionaire class and diminished political clout for campaign mega-donors have turned the richest Americans into a particularly ripe target this election cycle. Not since the Great Depression have so many candidates so aggressively pilloried the well-to-do.

Apparently, this is reminiscent of FDR in the 1936 campaign, when bashing the rich was also in vogue.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since 1936,” said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, whose films and writings have been a rallying point for rage against the ultra-rich. “That was when FDR said, ‘I welcome their hatred,’” Reich said, referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now Bernie Sanders has been recycling that exact line on the campaign trail.

Should billionaires be allowed to exist? Not according to Bernie Sanders.

“Billionaires should not exist” is emblazoned on bumper stickers sent to Sanders enthusiasts.

The Vermonter isn’t new to crusades against billionaires. But now he has lots of company: California Sen. Kamala Harris boasts that a career highlight was unloading on Jamie Dimon, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, when she was the state attorney general. Tom Steyer, the former hedge-fund investor, doesn’t let his own billionaire status interfere with bashing the upper crust while campaigning.

“No one on this stage wants to protect billionaires,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said during Tuesday’s debate. “Not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires,” she added, referring to Steyer.

Sanders and Warren are leading the charge against billionaires.

But while others have joined the pile-on against the super-wealthy, it is Sanders and Warren who on many days seem to be in an arms race of billionaire antagonism.

They eagerly bait, troll and bash billionaires at every opportunity. They send out missives to donors boasting how much damage their plans would inflict on the wallets of specific wealthy families and corporations.

Why has antagonism against the super-wealthy increased in this campaign? The article explains that it's not simply due to large disparities in wealth, but also due to various scandals, such as Big Pharma execs gouging customers, tech execs failing to protect users' privacy or respond to foreign disinformation, the bailing out of financial execs following the mortgage crisis which they caused.

The broadsides come amid a raft of new data that underscore why billionaires are such a ripe target. America’s 400 richest families last year, for the first time, paid a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 50% of American earners, a new book by UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman reported. (In the 1960s and 1970s, the richest Americans typically paid taxes twice as high as those paid by the working class.)

The top one percent of earners in America have seen their wealth triple in the last 30 years, as the bottom half of American earners watched theirs stagnate. Then there are the scandals: Pharmaceutical execs gouging customers, tech execs haplessly failing to protect users’ privacy or respond to foreign disinformation, financial execs bailed out following the mortgage crisis they helped cause.

That has all lead to a souring of American attitudes toward the ultra-rich. A recent survey by the nonpartisan Democracy Fund Voter Study Group found that Democrats overwhelmingly believe the wealthy have too much political influence (89%), exploit people who work for them (78%) and give unfair advantages to family and friends (84%).

This apparently has been a long time coming within the Democratic Party, as previous leaders were highly reticent and timid when it came to attacking the super-wealthy (which is likely the reason a lot of blue-collar voters have turned against them).

Some in the party have been itching for years to crusade against billionaires, but it became complicated in the Obama era.

“President Obama, in some ways, did not allow this,” said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “He was trying to make the case for the way he addressed the economic crisis, which was bailing out banks. That created a lot of disgruntlement among the working class.”

It appears that Democrats are finally beginning to realize that trying to placate the rich was a failed strategy.

But after Sanders nearly derailed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary with his anti-billionaire theme — and Donald Trump won the general election partly by feeding into populist economic resentment — the argument for a measured approach faded.

“This is not just about people being angry because rich people are rich, and they are not,” said Nell Abernathy, vice president of policy and strategy at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive nonprofit. “The candidates are focused on people who are getting rich at the expense of average Americans.”

As noted in the bolded quote above, this is not about class envy, but more about people getting rich at the expense of average Americans, using dishonest, devious means to do so.

What's also interesting is that both Warren and Sanders take pride in the scare tactics used by billionaires who oppose them:

As they build their case, there are few things some campaigns prize more than anti-endorsements of the super-rich. Sanders has a full page of them proudly displayed on his website.

He boasts how former Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein warned the Sanders candidacy “has the potential to be a dangerous moment” and how former Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam called the senator’s views “contemptible.” And there is Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone recalling the thought that occurred to him when he saw the excitement Sanders created among young voters in 2016: “This is the antichrist!”

Warren, too, has a surfeit of anti-endorsements to brag about. She got major mileage out of the leaked transcript of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, telling employees over the summer that the firm would pull out all the stops to block her plan to break up Big Tech. The audio stars in a new video produced by the campaign in which various rich and powerful men fret about the economic doom a Warren White House would trigger.

This is the common refrain from the wealthy, with empty, baseless Chicken Little warnings that the sky will fall if the dreaded "socialists" take over. But they're only worried about themselves and the super-wealthy. The other 99% of America would be just fine if socialists took over.

 

[PruePhillip]

.

The more billionaires in a society the richer it becomes.
Billionaires don't have huge money banks where they swim in their cash
like Scrooge McDuck.
Getting rid of the billionaires means getting rid of their wealth - and this is
tied up in businesses (think Amazon and Bezos)
So maybe Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Facebook etc should just
find another country. Not sure how this will help America.

America and Russia are similar in size, resources and population. What
makes them vastly different in living standards is ATTITUDE. And a big
issue with Russia is that business and wealth are frowned upon.

 

[Heyo]

The more billionaires in a society the richer it becomes.
Billionaires don't have huge money banks where they swim in their cash
like Scrooge McDuck.
Getting rid of the billionaires means getting rid of their wealth - and this is
tied up in businesses (think Amazon and Bezos)

Maybe the workers at Amazon wouldn't mind their boss being a billionaire if he'd pay them a living wage.

 

[joe1776]

...
What's also interesting is that both Warren and Sanders take pride in the scare tactics used by billionaires who oppose them:..

A couple of examples, please.

 

[Valjean]

Weren't "far left, socialist policies" -- by today's standards, -- the middle-of-the-road from the '30s into the '70s? Wasn't this America's golden age?
The middle class has been stagnating for 40 years as wealth has been 'trickling up' to be hoarded by a small elite who apparently feel little responsibility for the welfare of the 99% they depend on.

 

[Stevicus]

The more billionaires in a society the richer it becomes.

It depends on how you define "society." If we're talking about the fiscal health of the US government, our current national debt might tell a different story.

Besides, one could just as easily make the same argument about paying workers more. Higher wages for them would also mean a richer society, and more stable, too. Political stability depends more on a strong and viable middle class, not billionaires. Countries which have a few super-wealthy on top and a lot of poor people are those which we commonly refer to as "third world." Think about it. Is that what you want for America?

Billionaires don't have huge money banks where they swim in their cash
like Scrooge McDuck.

I haven't seen anyone claiming this, so I'm not sure what your point is in bringing it up.

Getting rid of the billionaires means getting rid of their wealth - and this is
tied up in businesses (think Amazon and Bezos)
So maybe Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Facebook etc should just
find another country. Not sure how this will help America.

Well, they're already finding other countries. These companies are world-wide. They're free to leave America at any time. Although, I'm not sure where they would go.

But even if these companies did leave, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Some of them might be willing to play ball and compromise, just as they realized they had to do with FDR in '36.

America and Russia are similar in size, resources and population. What
makes them vastly different in living standards is ATTITUDE. And a big
issue with Russia is that business and wealth are frowned upon.

Oh, I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it was true during the Soviet era, at least in terms of public displays of wealth, but that was also rooted in their opposition to what they saw as "western decadence." Nowadays, I'm not so sure, although they also seem to have a budding billionaire class with most of their population not quite so well off.

There was a similar situation in Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, where there were a few super-wealthy on top, while the vast majority of the population lived in squalor and hunger.

In the West, the attitude which became prevalent under FDR was not necessarily frowning upon business and wealth (or at least not as much as in Russia), but it was more about the political necessity of promoting a larger, more stable, and viable middle class as a means of stability in society.

 

[Stevicus]

A couple of examples, please.

I quoted the examples right below the part that you're quoting. Did you even bother to read?

 

[Audie]

And it's about time.

Billionaires are the target in this year's Democratic campaign



Even a few billionaires are jumping on the "bash billionaires" bandwagon.



Apparently, this is reminiscent of FDR in the 1936 campaign, when bashing the rich was also in vogue.



Should billionaires be allowed to exist? Not according to Bernie Sanders.



Sanders and Warren are leading the charge against billionaires.



Why has antagonism against the super-wealthy increased in this campaign? The article explains that it's not simply due to large disparities in wealth, but also due to various scandals, such as Big Pharma execs gouging customers, tech execs failing to protect users' privacy or respond to foreign disinformation, the bailing out of financial execs following the mortgage crisis which they caused.



This apparently has been a long time coming within the Democratic Party, as previous leaders were highly reticent and timid when it came to attacking the super-wealthy (which is likely the reason a lot of blue-collar voters have turned against them).



It appears that Democrats are finally beginning to realize that trying to placate the rich was a failed strategy.



As noted in the bolded quote above, this is not about class envy, but more about people getting rich at the expense of average Americans, using dishonest, devious means to do so.

What's also interesting is that both Warren and Sanders take pride in the scare tactics used by billionaires who oppose them:



This is the common refrain from the wealthy, with empty, baseless Chicken Little warnings that the sky will fall if the dreaded "socialists" take over. But they're only worried about themselves and the super-wealthy. The other 99% of America would be just fine if socialists took over.

Poor Bernie is only worth 2.5 million, whereas
Warren is worth 12.

Obama, 40 million, Bill n Hill, 100 or so.

 

[joe1776]

Weren't "far left, socialist policies" -- by today's standards, -- the middle-of-the-road from the '30s into the '70s? Wasn't this America's golden age?
The middle class has been stagnating for 40 years as wealth has been 'trickling up' to be hoarded by a small elite who apparently feel little responsibility for the welfare of the 99% they depend on.

The Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin, were the products of wealthy families who felt a responsibility to the working class. FDR's influence ran into the post WW2 era but the wealthy regained political power and Greed again ruled USA politics..

 

[Vinayaka]

A billion is 1000 million. Having 100 million is a pittance in comparison. Few people can truly grasp large numbers.

 

[joe1776]

I quoted the examples right below the part that you're quoting. Did you even bother to read?

No need to get snotty, Amigo.

I didn't (and still don't) recognize those paragraphs as describing "scare tactics."

 

[sun rise]

Weren't "far left, socialist policies" -- by today's standards, -- the middle-of-the-road from the '30s into the '70s? Wasn't this America's golden age?
The middle class has been stagnating for 40 years as wealth has been 'trickling up' to be hoarded by a small elite who apparently feel little responsibility for the welfare of the 99% they depend on.

And beyond that promoting the lie that having a few super wealthy will in some way help the multitudes being pushed further into poverty.

And what's worse, promoting the policy that they should pay the least in taxes (percentage wise) compared to even the super poor.

I don't mind the super rich who earned their money by working hard for it. I very much mind them not paying a fair share. The more they resist and claim special privileges for their wealth, the more I want to tax and tax and tax them.

 

[Audie]

A billion is 1000 million. Having 100 million is a pittance in comparison. Few people can truly grasp large numbers.

Really. I am pretty sure we can figure it out.

Is there some upper limit to how much money
anyone should have? Why? How much?

100 million is grotesquely larger than what anyone
could possible "need".

2.5 million seems like more than plenty for an
elderly gentleman.

So what next, once "need" is established?

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

There are two kinds of people. Those who work hard and become successful, and those who are sponges and soak up a living from others. Wht should it be wrong for someone to obtain a worth of a billion dollars? The people who do not like this isea are the sponges who want to take money from the rich so they can soak it up for themselves.

 

[sun rise]

The Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin, were the products of wealthy families who felt an responsibility to the working class. FDR's influence ran into the post WW2 era but the wealthy regained political power and Greed again ruled USA politics..

Yes, unbridled greed on the part of the super rich with no sense of responsibility to mitigate it will inevitably cause and is causing a reaction.

The rich are starting class warfare. They'll lose.

 

[Audie]

And beyond that promoting the lie that having a few super wealthy will in some way help the multitudes being pushed further into poverty.

And what's worse, promoting the policy that they should pay the least in taxes (percentage wise) compared to even the super poor.

I don't mind the super rich who earned their money by working hard for it. I very much mind them not paying a fair share. The more they resist and claim special privileges for their wealth, the more I want to tax and tax and tax them.

How much is "fair"?

If you spread all of the wealth in the USA equally,
who would have enough money to, say, build
apartments for people to live in?

 

[Audie]

There are two kinds of people. Those who work hard and become successful, and those who are sponges and soak up a living from others. Wht should it be wrong for someone to obtain a worth of a billion dollars? The people who do not like this isea are the sponges who want to take money from the rich so they can soak it up for themselves.

There are a lot more different "kinds" than that.

 

[sun rise]

There are two kinds of people. Those who work hard and become successful, and those who are sponges and soak up a living from others. Wht should it be wrong for someone to obtain a worth of a billion dollars? The people who do not like this isea are the sponges who want to take money from the rich so they can soak it up for themselves.

It's the opposite. Many of the rich live idle lives of privilege and buy politicians who pass bills making their tax rates lower than others.

I have no beef with people who work hard, succeed, pay their fair share of taxes and use their wealth in positive ways. I have a beef with idle plutocrats that don't work hard, avoid paying their fair share, use their wealth to buy politicians and positive bills and dump on those less fortunate.

 

[Audie]

Yes, unbridled greed on the part of the super rich with no sense of responsibility to mitigate it will inevitably cause and is causing a reaction.

The rich are starting class warfare. They'll lose.

You'd have fit right in with Mao's group.

 

[Audie]

It's the opposite. Many of the rich live idle lives of privilege and buy politicians who pass bills making their tax rates lower than others.

I have no beef with people who work hard, succeed, pay their fair share of taxes and use their wealth in positive ways. I have a beef with idle plutocrats that don't work hard, avoid paying their fair share, use their wealth to buy politicians and positive bills and dump on those less fortunate.

In general, we get people who work hard and
amass money, and their heirs who squander it.
The idle dont tend to do well for long.