In the case of the billionaire parasites, we would want to assign the variables Reich does to each billionaire, as to how they amassed such huge amounts. Using this approach, we could then determine what the most common causes of the disease actually are. One of the things another poster has pointed out is the additional variable we ought to add to account for the Russian billionaires, and some others, who gained their billions through illegal activities - drugs, gambling, extortion, blackmail, human trafficking and so on. And, of course, we would add in McCartney's variable - gained billions through artistic genius as well as astute investments.
What we would then come up with is the probability that any given billionaire became that way through the freakish and feverish amassing of wealth through each of the variables. Or, conversely, you could express the same thing in a table with each variable moving in an upward trend from baby billionaires like McCartney, to the REAL big guys, like Jeff Bezos, who this year is worth a whopping $111 billion.
An aside: Bezos, of course, is the CEO and founder of Amazon. Now, I am an Amazon Prime member because it is amazingly convenient. However, look at the working conditions in Amazon's warehouses. We began hearing about those in 2009, and very little has changed since then, except the slavish fast, fast, fast tending the humans have to do of those robots. The most recent story I heard was that the warehouses are so big that some employees carry bottles to urinate in because they literally do not have time to go to the restroom.
And, I have also noticed that some of the products I get from Amazon aren't of the same quality I would get if I bought them elsewhere. Batteries, for instance. And clumping cat litter. So, you know, culture flows from the top down and the little nickel and dime ripoffs of people like you and I are standard operating procedure in our capitalist utopia - you pay as dearly as they can force you to for as little as they can give you. That's how it is. And Bezos isn't alone.
Consider Microsoft's Bill Gates. He created a monopoly with Microsoft. I pay them about $120 a year, I think, for Office 365, a platform I'm using right now.
So are we hypocrites, using these products? Should I be boycotting Amazon? Should I be boycotting Walmart (I do, because I have Amazon, and Costco memberships).
See what I mean? It is insidious. There's no real way to avoid padding these peoples' pockets because that is how our system is set up.
I'm all for some truly confiscatory taxation to eliminate billionaires, cap CEO salaries, and expand the fiduciary responsibility of C-suite people in publicly held corporations beyond mere shareholder earnings (like Warren wants to do, which is why I'm for her), to include all stakeholders - the consumers, the community where the company is based, the environment and so on. Not just shareholders.
Bottom line, we don't need billionaires. No one should be a billionaire. Not when there 25,000 people a day on this earth who starve to death, and 45 million Americans who die every year because they cannot afford healthcare, and millions of working people who work more than one job just to make ends meet.
A little redistribution of wealth is definitely called for around here.
One last thought: These parasites have waged class warfare on all of us for decades, centuries. And they have been winning. All you need to do is look at the rise in wealth inequality and you can see that.
They win when we are divided. When we hate and mistrust one another. When we focus on things like racism or homophobia or anti-abortion hysteria to the extent we don't feel their hands in our pockets.
They win when we have giant tax cuts for billionaires and corporations even when those we elect knew goddamn well it would break the budget.
They win when our government does not serve as our central bank, and we end up paying back money we owe to ourselves (the national debt) to bankers and 'investors' instead of to ourselves.
They win when it is legal to pour money secretly into electing politicians, and then use that as a lever to make them enact policies that help them, not us. This is why we are even having the debate about Medicare for all - millions in dark money from big pharma and for profit healthcare is pouring into DC and to the media to make the idea seem untenable, impossible, radical, SOCIALIST!!!
And Trump has nearly singlehandedly gutted the EPA - lessened water purity standards, loosened up fracking regulations, tried to get rid of the endangered species act, pulled us formally out of the Paris agreements.
Indeed, human caused climate change is the apotheosis of the capitalist system. And, if we don't do something to change our whole concept of how we organize ourselves economically, the very earth we live on will be rendered uninhabitable by the greed of a few.
I firmly believe we cannot even begin to solve these problems without first getting rid of the billionaires and reforming the whole system so it becomes impossible to amass that much wealth. Why should a dirtbag like Trump have billions when there are millions of people who don't have enough?
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