General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSanders: In my view, we can no longer tolerate billionaires becoming obscenely rich ...
Link to tweet
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,481 posts)Cirque du So-What
(25,811 posts)sop
(9,945 posts)Jopin Klobe
(779 posts)... as the gelded age ...
... forevermore ...
LastDemocratInSC
(3,625 posts)The end is nigh
leftstreet
(36,078 posts)crickets
(25,896 posts)DanieRains
(4,619 posts)Accumulated wealth is taxes as income for salary workers would be.
I say over 5 million start taxing accumulated wealth.
And pay off the national debt.
Bingo!!!
WarGamer
(12,103 posts)Here that would translate into a 5% tax on all net worth over $750k
Disaffected
(4,503 posts)the logistics of calculating everyone's net worth (and making it stick in many probable court challenges) seem very arduous to me. For instance, there would have to be formal appraisals made for millions of real estate properties and other assets such as jewelry or works of art and, how do you value stock holdings other than setting an arbitrary valuation day or some such which will be fair to some and not to others?
BigmanPigman
(51,430 posts)End the GOP money train.
taxi
(1,895 posts)You billionaires only have 998 more billions you can make before you become obscenely rich - trillionaires -
Arazi
(6,829 posts)Have to admire Bernie's cheeky move 😂
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/12/jeff-bezos-declines-bernie-sanders-invitation-to-attend-senate-hearing.html?__twitter_impression=true
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, had invited Bezos to appear in front of the committee as part of a hearing on income inequality slated for March 17.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)I don't care if Bezos is wealthy. I care that many aren't making a living wage.
If we want to increase taxes on the well to do I'm fine that.
Bernie Sanders should be making that his issue. Sanders is wealthier than most of us and can fall into his own trap if he isn't careful.
mac2766
(658 posts)He made 143 million dollars that year. At one point, I was called, along with everyone in my dept, to a conference call where it was announced that 1,000 would be let go.
Just think about a CEO making that kind of money and allowing 1,000 people to be let go. Instead of taking a pay cut of say.... 10 million dollars... he let 1,000 people go.
In my opinion, the minimum wage is not our problem. It's a lack of a maximum wage that is the problem.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)Brilliant!!!!!
mac2766
(658 posts)My comment was related to the amount of money that executives are draining from their companies at the expense of their employees, and the very companies that they work for. It's grotesque in some cases.
I am not saying that we should do away with the minimum wage. I'm saying that there needs to be more attention paid to the amounts that executives are taking away from their companies. In no way do I believe that any single individual could think that taking 143 million dollars from their company is a good idea. Especially when mass layoffs of their fellow employees is being considered.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)They're not payed in cash.
A large reason why they're doing that is because the tax reform bill passed under Bill Clinton in 1993 limits the tax deduction on a CEO's salary compensation. It does not do so for stock options the CEO gets.
That needs to be changed. As I said earlier have no problem with them being tax more.
I am however more concerned with the rank and file being paid better. Both a livable wage and the right to collective bargaining are tools to accomplish this.
mac2766
(658 posts)An executive should not be allowed to own stock in the company he or she works for.
DFW
(54,050 posts)I would make an executive's pay MOSTLY in stock of the company he or she works for.
That way, they have incentive to do a good job. If they do a good job, the worth of their stock, and thus their pay, goes up. If they do a poor job, the don't get an automatic bunch of cash that isn't justified by their performance, but rather a reduction in pay because the value of the company, and thus the stock, has decreased under their leadership.
Obviously, this can only work for a publicly traded company. A privately held company is an entirely different animal, although they rarely have thousands of employees or executives with compensation in nine figures. If that is the case (probably Oprah has some sort of deal like that), I say, good for you. If you were smart enough to make that kind of a deal for yourself, and you have billions left over after paying your taxes, enjoy it--and don't forget to give most of it away, like Bill Gates. Even if you're a self-made billionaire, you can't take it with you--just ask Sheldon Adelson.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)That is the problem in this country.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)And try again
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I think your mind is in the gutter. Here is one of the definitions:
"offensive to moral principles; repugnant."
The word is appropriate here. Look at the OP. Bernie even says that we can no longer tolerate billionaires becoming obscenely rich.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)What else am I thinking Kreskin?
Bernie seems to care more about Jeff Bezo's wealth than those living on the street. By your definition that's obscene.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I don't know what your problem is with me, but I have had it with you.
Celerity
(42,643 posts)nation state.
Great video explaining this (and this is from 10 years ago, it has only gotten worse in the US)
How economic inequality harms societies | Richard Wilkinson
If it is a 'losing' issue then we are headed down a nightmarish path. The issue is not just about billionaires (Bezos is worth over 60 THOUSAND times more than Sanders) versus the rest, it is about the incredibly unequal distribution amongst the 332 million Americans. The top 1% percent in the United States now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, they have 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50%.
The concentration of wealth at the top, and the resultant lack of wealth of the vast numbers not at the top is staggering and growing worse yearly (and that was before COVID-19). The US has the 2nd lowest upward social mobility of any OECD nation. Only the UK is worse. The myth of the US as the land of the best opportunities to move up is one of the biggest scams being pushed for decades. You are FAR less likely to move up from the bottom in the US than in almost every other advanced nation. A few years back the GINI co-efficient (measurement of wealth equality) of the US was 139th (meaning 138 nation had more equal wealth distributions). 138th on the list, so one above the US was Iran. The higher the GINI, the less equal the wealth is distributed. Here is another GINI listing (Togo has now passed the US as well) done by Statista: (their total co-efficient numbers are not not exactly the same as the World Bank and OECD ratings, which is discussed in the NBC news article below)
https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1171540/gini-index-by-country
Most Americans couldn't cover a $1,000 financial emergency, survey finds
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/financial-emergency-savings-americans-cover
Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans have enough money set aside to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense, such as a trip to the ER or car repairs, according to a new survey.
U.S. income inequality at highest level in 50 years, economic gap growing in heartland
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-income-inequality-highest-level-50-years-economic-gap-n1058956
ORLANDO, Fla. The gap between the haves and have-nots in the United States grew last year to its highest level in more than 50 years of tracking income inequality, according to Census Bureau figures.
Income inequality in the United States expanded from 2017 to 2018, with several heartland states among the leaders of the increase, even though several wealthy coastal states still had the most inequality overall, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The nation's Gini Index, which measures income inequality, has been rising steadily over the past five decades.
The Gini Index grew from 0.482 in 2017 to 0.485 last year, according to the bureau's 1-year American Community Survey data. The Gini Index is on a scale of 0 to 1; a score of "0'' indicates perfect equality, while a score of "1'' indicates perfect inequality, where one household has all the income.
scipan
(2,295 posts)Wealth inequality seems to underlie every problem we have.
WarGamer
(12,103 posts)I think it's the defining issue of our time.
ShazzieB
(15,952 posts)The defining issue of our time? Absolutely.
Mr. Ected
(9,670 posts)No, not really. I have no issue with American citizens making a billion dollars. Thing is, they didn't make that money in a vacuum. They made it because we paid it to them, out of our adjusted gross incomes. Now they sit on the money, send it offshore, not putting it back into the system. It's dead money, off-limits to the rest of us. Tax them heavily and put the funds back into the system. They won't suffer and we won't have income inequality at the level we currently do.
KPN
(15,585 posts)crickets
(25,896 posts)I don't have problem with people becoming wealthy, but there's wealth and then there's "what the hell?" amounts of money that no single pair of hands should amass or control. It's detrimental to the very society that gave them opportunities in the first place.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)Roy Rolling
(6,853 posts)Its mandatory. Wealth inequality left unchecked leads to economic collapse or revolution. The U.S. can decide what to do, it cant decide not to do anything.
The unwinding of the Republican faux-economy wont be pretty. But it will be inevitable.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Historically total concentration of wealth into a few hands has never ended well. What happened is that the rich were basically slaughtered and then a long period of political and societal horror followed. Eventually the excesses of brutality were corrected and the cycle started over again from a standpoint of greater sharing of societal wealth.
Down through history rich people have been under the allusion that they could protect themselves and their wealth by building fortresses, but in doing so, they only heightened the degree that the people that sacked their first were pissed off - so instead of being allowed to give up most of their wealth and live, the rich people were killed and all of their wealth was taken.
I see people that are building lavish bunkers here in the USA and other parts of the world. When I examine their plans for getting to and staying in the safety of those bunkers, I almost immediately see a number of points where they would simply either not make it to their bunkers, or suffer a prolonged death within those bunkers. It is simply more prudent to pay fair taxes in an amount that rewards society for giving the rich an safe environment in which to get rich.
George II
(67,782 posts)speak easy
(9,098 posts)Got any ideas for a best selling book?
MrsCoffee
(5,801 posts)speak easy
(9,098 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)but I also believe that he views the issue with tinted glasses that he changes as his disgression.
Violet_Crumble
(35,954 posts)n/t
Violet_Crumble
(35,954 posts)I was thinking about it. Technically I'm a millionaire because the value of my home and my superannuation puts me in the millionaire category, though my current salary sits just above average for the city I live in. I guess Australia's divide between rich and poor may be less pronounced than the US, where Jeff Bezos tussles with Elon Musk to be the most wealthy person in the world, while Amazon delivery drivers have to pee in bottles to keep to the demanding and insane delivery deadlines they're given while not even earning enough for them and their families to survive on. That's the billionaires Bernie's talking about. If you want to make some issue of why he's not talking about people like me, go at it, but it looks utterly pathetic tbh (for those who are struggling a bit with the language of Twitter and other internetty stuff, tbh = to be fucking honest....
George II
(67,782 posts)...and now 18.6, an increase of only 2% of the population of the US.
"tbh", your characterization of my post as being "utterly pathetic" is utterly offensive.
Good day!
MrsCoffee
(5,801 posts)Ford_Prefect
(7,817 posts)FakeNoose
(32,334 posts)Hopefully there's another new-FDR on the horizon. I don't believe it's Biden because of his age. Joe is starting things off, but the REAL new-FDR must step forward in a very short time. Maybe it's Pete Buttigieg? I don't know.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)The result has either been bloody revolution (French and Russian Revolutions, the rise of Napoleon and Attila the Hun), or lots of bloodshed (Unionization efforts and hired thugs that beat up and killed unionizers).
Ford_Prefect
(7,817 posts)Either we get this right or there isn't a future planet we can live on, no matter who runs it. It wasn't only FDR alone in his day. It took many who were aware and capable and willing. It is never down to one person only, although it can look that way at times. Trump clearly believes so.
Goodheart
(5,264 posts)And not just linearly, but exponentially. We are living in a plutocracy.
OldBaldy1701E
(4,968 posts)Nothing is going to change, but I hear you!
LiberalLovinLug
(14,153 posts)Dagstead Bumwood
(3,524 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)If a person invents App X that lots of people find useful, that person is going to become very rich.
I believe the courts should be on providing venture funds to underserved populations (POC and women).
Xoan
(25,294 posts)betsuni
(25,122 posts)EndlessWire
(6,373 posts)Bernie himself is a millionaire, and no one advocates limiting HIS wealth.
I think we need to overhaul the tax code and raise the minimum wage. Let's make everyone pay their FAIR SHARE of taxes according to a fairly applied tax code.
But, how can we do that with obstructionist Repubs fighting some kind of civil war in the Congress?
Sometimes, IMO, the very richest companies can pay for advances in technology, discovery, and adventure that needs an aggregate of money. That's something we won't have if we are determined to break them up. Then, we would just be talking about banding together for a large wad of our money. We can't do that effectively for the long term.
What was wrong with the flat tax? No loopholes. What did they say about that? I don't remember.
All I know is that the price of food keeps going up.
wackadoo wabbit
(1,160 posts)or inherited it from his parents.
That's a big difference.
betsuni
(25,122 posts)EndlessWire
(6,373 posts)the provenance of his wealth. You don't see him distributing it, do you? No, because he likes money like anyone else. If his book had netted him a billion bucks, he would have kept it.
And, what do you know about the exploitation of workers? I liked the idea of a graduated phase-in of the $15/hr. minimum wage. $7.25/hr is ridiculous. Single moms working three jobs to keep their kids going is shameful. We are the United States. We can certainly do better than that.
But, Bernie has this idea that things will happen despite costs. I don't see how we can encourage enterprise and have people strive for excellence in business without allowing them to see how much they can get. Same as Bernie did. The only thing we should do is require everyone to pay their fair share according to a tax code that doesn't let people weasel out of paying that fair share.
If people pay their fair share and they are still billionaires, leave them alone. If they are paying their workers $7.25 an hour, that's OUR fault for not raising the minimum wage to something survivable.
wackadoo wabbit
(1,160 posts)I've been an exploited worker! And more than once. Your temerity in making assumptions about me is not becoming.
The whole canard that paying workers their worth will somehow discourage business is just that, a canard. I'm surprised that a member of DU would not only apparently believe that, but would repeat it.
I could go on, but let me say just one more thing. You wrote: "If they are paying their workers $7.25 an hour, that's OUR fault for not raising the minimum wage to something survivable." Yeah, exactly. And that's what Bernie is trying to do.
EndlessWire
(6,373 posts)I do not have to lockstep with general DU opinion.
Second, the worth of a job is subjective. If you are in a job that doesn't pay you what you want, that doesn't make it exploitive. It might be, but it might not. Go back to school and get into a higher bracket.
If Bernie is saying that, he isn't doing a good job of it. I keep hearing "dismantle" the high tech companies. It's one thing to regulate a monopoly, but it's another to dismantle someone's company just because it made him a lot of money. A new tax code without loopholes and raising the minimum wage would certainly help.
I made no assumptions about you. I don't know you. I am going to assume that most of the people on DU will consider themselves exploited since they probably don't have a billion bucks (insert protests here.) But, here you had a chance to talk about the relative worth of various positions and other points of view, and you chose to be sensitive.
Right now, the most important people in my life are my postal workers, the Amazon delivery drivers, and my trash truck drivers. Do I want them to have at least $15 an hour? You bet.
Celerity
(42,643 posts)Sanders net worth is between 2 and 3 million total (depending on what sources you use), counting all assets.
Bezos is (as of March 13, 2021) worth
https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=3188a13e1b23
raking the higher 3 million usd figure for Sanders
that is over 63,300 times more than Sanders (and Bezo lost 20 billion usd or so from his all-time high, which I am sure he will soon gain back)
Bezos also had to give his ex wife what is now well over 50 billion usd in their divorce settlement
Sander is nowhere near the top 1% (for the US) in terms of net worth. He would have to almost quadruple his net worth to qualify as the top 1%
Sanders is in the top 4.5% i terms of net worth
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/
In 2020, based off 2019 data (so has likely gone up since then)
it took $11,099,166 to qualify for the top 1%
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/
data source (US Federal Reserve) here
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf20.pdf
and here
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
Net Worth Percentiles for the United States in 2020
Between 11% and 12% of Americans are 'millionaires' in terms of net worth accrued by them or their household. It is hardly an ultra exclusive club. Many have become millionaires simply do to buying a house long ago that has now went up drastically in value. Also a millionaire now in 2021 is not at all what it was worth back 40, 50, 60 years ago due to inflation.
JanMichael
(24,846 posts)NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)His advocacy for progressive taxation of the wealthy and breaking up monopolies and having large companies pay their fair share will always fail when he's framing in those terms. It sounds too much like Socialism. Ugh. --- I wonder if sometimes it's better to just work quietly and get things done in the background rather than poking a hornet's nest and drawing negative attention.
Celerity
(42,643 posts)economy's wealth extraction/concentration machine, which takes more and more from the bottom 90% and funnels it upwards to the top of the pyramidion in ever-increasing concentrations each year and/or decade. This occurs within a structure of the 2nd worst upward mobility of any of the advanced OECD nations (only the UK is worse). The myth of America as the best nation for producing the largest percentage of rags to riches (or even moving up to the higher middle class statuses) stories is just that, a huge myth.
see this for a further fleshing out
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15223005
WarGamer
(12,103 posts)Unfortunately not all politicians believe this... even some on "Team Blue".
gulliver
(13,142 posts)Tax billionaires? Of course. That's what most people, Dems and Republicans, want to do. That's the good part of Sanders's tweet.
Saying that "we can longer tolerate billionaires?" That's just terrible sales technique and terrible revenue strategy. It's so bad that it arguably sets back the goal of taxing the wealth of billionaires for the good of the country. This tweet rates a -7 on the scale from -10 to 10 in terms of advancing progressive goals. It gives a snack to resentment and tosses a banquet of prosperity in the trash.
Of course we can tolerate billionaires becoming obscenely rich. Just tax them. That's the only thing that needs to be in the message. Use billionaire wealth as sources of tax revenue for the good of the country in which the billionaires have prospered and created their wealth.
Every single American deserves the right to know that if they have a good enough idea, they can become billionaires. And buy toys. And pay huge taxes.
oasis
(49,150 posts)brooklynite
(93,843 posts)How much are you or I allowed to have?
Donkees
(31,079 posts)underpaid and unpaid work by women and girls adds three times more to the global economy each year than the whole technology industry together.
Lawson says Oxfams annual report examines the relationship between billionaires and the super, super rich people at the top of the global economy, and the people at the bottom, particularly the hundreds of millions of poor women who spend billions of hours a day, in caring for the sick, caring for the elderly, cooking, cleaning
Unseen and unrewarded contribution by women
Its a pun on the word care, he says, because its this foundation of unpaid work done by the poorest women that generates enormous wealth for the economy.
Lawson notes that in the report it is calculated that the combined contribution to the global economy of all this care work done by poor women is worth 10.8 trillion US dollars: thats three times bigger than the whole tech industry - three times bigger than Google, Facebook, all of them put together.
It is this unseen and unrewarded contribution by women that creates enormous wealth that is sucked upward into the bank accounts of the richest people and of the billionaires, he says.
That wealth generated by the worlds poorest women, he explains, is encapsulated and concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of people who are predominantly men.
'Billionaire boom'
Lawson expresses his belief that the world would be much better off without the current billionaire boom phenomenon.
Gender equality and economic equality go hand in hand
Lawson concludes noting that the current economy, that gives an extreme amount of wealth to a tiny group of people at the top is also a deeply sexist economy: Its an economy that is built on the backs of women and of poor women and their labour, whether its poorly paid labour or even unpaid labour, it is a sexist economy and its a broken economy, and you can only fix the gap between the rich and the poor if at the same time you fix the gap between women and men.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2020-01/oxfam-annual-report-unpaid-work-poor-women.html
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/extreme-inequality-and-poverty/