I just found this out about Michael Bloomberg: He is a "self made billionare"

[Sloumeau]

103. Who, exactly, are you quoting here?:

"everyone, in the absolute sense, who attains great wealth, did so through criminality and/or the exploitation of other people"

The following is just wrong:

That is idiotic, antithetical to the principles of the United States of America, a direct attack upon both the great FDR and one current Democratic candidate, and in general, a view that could only be held by someone who is woefully ignorant of many things and/or a piteous whiner.

The United States of America was founded on the idea of freedom of ideas and protection from tyranny. The U.S. was designed to allow different ideas to thrive, to let the good ideas rise, and the poor ideas fail. In the 18th century. when the U.S. was born, it was largely an agrarian society. The 19th century marked the rise of the Industrial Revolution whereby various inventions created jobs in areas like building railroads and working in steel mills. I'll post an article from history.com about the differences between Communism and Socialism so that we have it as a reference:

https://www.history.com/news/socialism-communism-differences]

How Are Socialism and Communism Different?

Both socialism and communism are essentially economic philosophies advocating public rather than private ownership, especially of the means of production, distribution and exchange of goods (i.e. making money) in a society. Both aim to fix the problems they see as created by a free-market capitalist system, including the exploitation of workers and a widening gulf between rich and poor.

But while socialism and communism share some basic similarities, there are also important differences between them.

Karl Marx and the Origins of Communism

Socialism emerged in response to the extreme economic and social changes caused by the Industrial Revolution, and particularly the struggles of workers. Many workers grew increasingly poor even as factory owners and other industrialists accrued massive wealth.

In the first half of the 19th century, early socialist thinkers like Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Charles Fourier presented their own models for reorganizing society along the lines of cooperation and community, rather than the competition inherent in capitalism, where the free market controlled the supply and demand of goods.

Then came Karl Marx, the German political philosopher and economist who would become one of the most influential socialist thinkers in history. With his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, Marx published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, which included a chapter criticizing those earlier socialist models as utterly unrealistic “utopian” dreams.

Marx argued that all history was a history of class struggles, and that the working class (or proletariat) would inevitably triumph over the capital class (bourgeoisie) and win control over the means of production, forever erasing all classes.

Communism, sometimes referred to as revolutionary socialism, also originated as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, and came to be defined by Marx’s theories—taken to their extreme end. In fact, Marxists often refer to socialism as the first, necessary phase on the way from capitalism to communism. Marx and Engels themselves didn’t consistently or clearly differentiate communism from socialism, which helped ensure lasting confusion between the two terms.

Key Differences Between Communism and Socialism

Communism

Communist propaganda from China entitled 'Be Ready to Defend or Fight,' circa 1950s.

Under communism, there is no such thing as private property. All property is communally owned, and each person receives a portion based on what they need. A strong central government—the state—controls all aspects of economic production, and provides citizens with their basic necessities, including food, housing, medical care and education.

[Socialism (title should probably be here, but is not in original aritcle)]

By contrast, under socialism, individuals can still own property. But industrial production, or the chief means of generating wealth, is communally owned and managed by a democratically elected government.

Another key difference between socialism and communism is the means of achieving them. In communism, a violent revolution in which the workers rise up against the middle and upper classes is seen as an inevitable part of achieving a pure communist state. Socialism is a less rigid, more flexible ideology. Its adherents seek change and reform, but insist on making these changes through democratic processes within the existing social and political structure, not overthrowing that structure.

You see, both Socialism and Communism arose in direct response to the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, they arose because a few people were getting incredibly wealthy while thousands upon thousands of people were barely eating. If one does not understand this, then one really does not understand the relationship between Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism. As the Industrial Revolution continued, men like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Carnegie amassed giant fortunes while most of their workers worked themselves to death, barely had enough to eat, and lived in shacks. It was this very problem that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to change. It was through all of the New Deal programs that FDR created that things did change for all of America.

President Roosevelt's programs were called Communistic and Socialistic by the Republicans of the time because they sought to remedy the problem of a few people getting incredibly wealthy while most people could barely afford food. In fact, it was the very laissez-faire attitude of the Republicans, whereby they thought it was great that a few were getting so wealthy while so many people starved that caused the Great Depression to happen in the first place.

They too thought that there was nothing exploitative about the super-rich industrialists making countless millions of dollars while their workers went hungry. However, the great economist John Maynard Keynes knew there was a problem with this type of thinking. Keynes recognized that when too many people in society get too poor, the economy collapses. This is because he had learned that economies are mostly demand-driven rather than supply-driven. If too many people have no money, then they purchase no goods or services, and the economy collapses. The massive income inequality of the 1920s created a situation where an incredible portion of the U.S. wealth was in the hands of very few people. This meant that slowly, year by year, not enough people were purchasing food. This eventually led the farms in America to collapse. As the farms collapsed, the farmers could no longer pay their mortgages and the banks repossessed them.

Soon, banks all over America owned farms that they really did not want, while the farmers who really wanted to work their farms had no farms to work. Now we had a whole lot of poor people without money to buy food, and we had a whole lot of farms that were no longer in the hands of the farmers who wanted to work.

So, we had millions of industrial workers with barely any food to eat, and we had all kinds of farms that could not even produce food because no one was working them. The fewer farms that were still in business tried to overproduce food in order to try to make more of a profit, but since no one was buying their food (because no one had any money) the prices that the farmers were receiving for their food dropped. Now the remaining farmers were not making any money, whether they produced a lot of food or a little food. They had no money to pay their mortgages, and the banks ended up with even more farms. This was terrible for the banks because no one wanted to buy the farms. In addition, the regular payments the farmers used to make to the banks that had held their mortgages were no longer coming in.

The banks started collapsing as well. So now we had starving people, food that sold for nothing that no one was buying, farmers not working, banks owning farms they didn't want, and banks collapsing because they were no longer getting payments. The pain soon spread everywhere in the country, and one after another, businesses started to collapse.

Things got worse every year from the stock market crash of 1929 until FDR took office in 1933. FDR believed that he needed to do two main things: 1) give people jobs with a paycheck to stimulate demand and 2) get farmers back on their feet so that they could produce food for the workers that would now have money in their pockets. He created all kinds of jobs programs to put people back to work and give people a paycheck. He also set up a farm loan program to get the farms out of the hands of banks and back into the hands of the farmers. He set up a system to make sure that farmers grew only the amount of each type of food needed and no more to help keep prices up. The good prices that farmers got for their products enabled the farmers to repay their loans. FDR also paid certain farmers *not* to grow food just to make sure that not too much food was grown.

The unemployed started working again. They started purchasing all of the food that the farms were now producing. Farms were able to make a profit and repay their loans. One by one, businesses recovered.

One of the clearest signals that you can have that an economy is getting close to collapse is economic inequality. When too much money is in the hands of two few people, eventually demand collapses, and so does the economy. Not only is this terrible for the entire economy, but it is especially bad for poor people. When economic equality gets too high, the economy always collapses, sooner or late. We have seen this over and over again. We saw this not just with the Great Depression of 1929, but with the painful recession of 1991 and the Great Recession of 2007.

So, to sum up things so far. Socialists don't like the super-rich like existing while people care barely eat. Communists didn't like the super-rich existing while people poor people cannot eat. Also, FDR didn't like the super-rich existing while poor people could barely eat. You know how we know? Look at the tax rate that he set up. Check out the chart at the link below:

]

OK, from looking at the chart, guess which President taxed the richest people the most of any U.S. President in history? Yes, that would be FDR. He was taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

What about the Democratic Socialists? OK, let's look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most well known Democratic Socialists in America. Here's what she said regarding billionaires:

https://news.yahoo.com/no-one-ever-makes-billion-122106844.html]

'No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams billionaires for exploiting workers

AOC doesn't like the billionaires getting rich while people go hungry. Neither does Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, or Amy Klobuchar. Yang wants to give everyone $1000 a month, which is not just traditional Socialism but halfway to the main idea of Communism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs]

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

"This is Democratic Underground, not Marxist Underground."

Hahahaha. That is really funny. It is clear that you really can learn a lot more about Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Democratic-Socialism, FDR, income inequality, the history of the Democratic Party, the problem with billionaires, and why recessions and depressions happen. Personally, I think Communism is both a very poor governmental system and a very poor economic system. However, since you obviously know very little about Communism, Socialism, or Democratic-Socialism, you'd never really be able to pick that up until you knew the subject matter better.