Not that I’m particularly against that - quite the opposite, in fact. But I’m wondering if anyone sees, or had seen a path to social and climate recovery/progress that could occur without first eradicating the class of people who most enjoy the present status quo.
Demand money be removed from politics and follow through to make it happen. Make laws that no longer favor the rich.
It’ll never happen, but it’s what it would take.
I’ll add that we can now remove the tax exempt status for religious organizations. Only problem is it puts more money in the hands of the government so they mismanage that as well.
I wish we could get full transparency of where literally every dollar is spent. We shouldn’t have to ask for that.
Think globally act locally y’all
So, let’s put aside for a moment the rather shocking number of people casually advocating for murder in this thread.
I want to talk instead about how everyone here is just talking for granted the notion that removing the billionaires, Republican politicians, or whatever “they” you care to think of, would be a solution, or even a positive step, for modern social ills.
There’s a big undercurrent in almost any political discussion online, this implication that every one of the world’s problems actually has a super simple solution, that The Powerful could just snap their fingers and make it happen if they wanted to, and it’s only because of their greed etc that we have any problems that all. Obviously we live in a time of huge inequity and we’d be a lot better off if we found a good way to improve it.
But many (most?) of our biggest problems are inherent to the challenge of keeping 8 billion people alive and happy in a hostile universe, and in fact nobody has ever had a perfect solution. Throwing the entire planet into chaos by causally throwing away human beings’ rights and leaving an enormous portion of the world’s capital in uncertain hands, ready to be seized by some other set of psychopathic opportunists who happen to be in a position to do so, certainly ain’t it.
I mean, take all their money so that they’re no longer billionaires.
I think it’s possible they might have an opinion on that subject, perhaps loosely phrased as “over my dead body”
Well, then they’ll have consented, then. Ethical conundrum solved!
THE TEST IS OVER
Tax all billionaires more?
The problem isn’t the exact rate, it is their ability to pay for tax experts so they can avoid having most of their wealth taxed at all. This is why Biden wanted to beef up the IRS and sic them on billionaires. Scrutinize the cracks they slip through.
That’s part of the problem; but, increasing tax rates (income, capital gains, depreciation recapture, 1031 exchanges etc) is needed even more than enforcement of existing. You’d be surprised how much of what the rich do to reduce their tax burden is perfectly legal and IRS enforcement would just be an annoyance.
Adjust our economic system to disallow inherited wealth beyond a lavish amount. I don’t mind a person getting rich for starting and succeeding with a massive company. I do mind the 100B being passed to their children, who will never have done anything to earn it.
Let the kids have $10 million each or something, the government should take the rest. If they try to “leave” the country the same thing should apply.
This will also adjust the incentive for billionaires to just make more money since they know they won’t be able to pass it on maybe they will start actually spending it to keep the
RIP BlameThePeacock. Tragically eaten alive by billionaires before they could finish their post.
F
Oh no they got SquiggleMonster too!
Japan solved the overpaid corporate culture nonsense. Australia has the most wealth equality, without the parasitic billionaire problem. The solutions have existed for a long time.
The real issue in the USA is the lack of effective legislation. There is no political accountability. This is all due to a two party system. All it takes to fix the USA is outlawing gerrymandering, rejecting the electoral college, and institute tiered voting where everyone votes for the candidates based upon their preferred priority order. Popular votes is the only Democratic method. Representative republics are a corruption of democracy that was a necessity with the travel and communication limitations of 300 years ago but not now. Voting for candidates by priority would make party affiliation nearly meaningless and force accountability and substance because the difference between candidates would drastically decrease. It would eliminate the polarized nonsense that all the billionaires want. It isn’t about the ridiculous nonsense, it is about ensuring very little productive legislation is possible. No laws means do anything you want. The US has a tenth of the laws and protections of any other western country.
I’ve always interpreted that idea as “make it so billionaires can’t exist” change the system so that people can’t actually make all that money.
Befriend them and work to change their hearts, maybe?
I appreciate your optimism
If I didn’t feel like @canitendtherabbits would spend the rest of their life being disappointed I’d agree.
Can we all at least try to pretend that unflagged sarcasm is humorous - or at least exists - for a while?
Seemed obvious to me.
Welp, I mean you can target them with hatred and bitterness and have that animosity inside of you or you can mind your own, do what I said when your paths cross, and be free to live a life better than that. It really is that simple.
They don’t have those. Or souls.
How about; befriend them, lure them into a fatal trap, eat their heart?
Yes, you’re supposed to eat them too. This helps reduce world hunger.
In all seriousness, we’ve dealt with this problem before. We had a time we call the era of the robber barons if you want to read a little about it.
This is a meme, right? …right?
There are relatively few steps that would go a long way toward stopping the accumulation of obscene amounts of wealth.
- Make tax rates similar to what we had in the 50s (conservatives love the 50s), with the brackets adjusted for inflation.
- Make all types of income tax at those rates.
- Eliminate taxable income caps including social security withholding.
- Make inheritance and gift taxes equivalent.
- End Citizens United through congressional action.
- Use that tax money on social programs, small business development programs, and infrastructure.
If you want to really jump start things we should also make all campaigns publicly funded.
You don’t have to eradicate all of them, just each year have the richest person in the world executed. Only one. Watch all these billionaires race to give their money away and put it into philanthropic endeavours.
Of course, if any of them are found to be evading or hiding the true extent of their wealth, execution. And money invested in their own organisations/businesses would also of course be counted as theirs.
The problem with some of them is that they can do whatever they want for just a little more money and they do it all the time, thats why regulation is a must if the people is what matters, CMV
While I’d say that it is absolutely the case that the ruling class must be eliminated before there can be meaningful change, since they’re too far removed from common life (or sanity for that matter) to make any of the necessary concessions of their own volition, I think it’s undeniably the case that a rational society cannot be built by people who believe that killing people is an acceptable approach to problems.
I think the only hope is that our descendants, when they rebuild civilization out of the rubble we leave behind, will do a better job of it - at the very least, that they’ll know better than to let psychopaths gain power.
That suggests, though, that societal progress can only occur once they ARE dead, or at least disenfranchised beyond any hope of recovery (and presumably a lot of other people dead too, if civilization is reduced to ruins)
But I would challenge the assertion that people willing to kill (or, I guess, order it to be done) are unable to improve upon current society. If certain individuals are impeding society from advancement, and the only viable solution to their removal is one of violence, simply seeing that to be the case and being willing to take those actions doesn’t necessarily mean their vision of society is a flawed one (though I will admit, it does make for a reasonable inductive argument of that conclusion)
But if, as you say, the ruling class must first be removed before positive change can take place, that suggests that either the only path to improvement is through such extreme means, or else there is no path to a better society.
Does eating the billionaires count as murder?/s
But seriously though, eliminating bad actors should be the first step. Otherwise they will just drag their heels into the ground preventing any real progress for whatever reason they have. Whether it be greed, malice, or just plain old stupidity.
Death will likely be involved at some point realistically. Either by people refusing to go peacefully, or by a lack of action by the people resulting in groups dying for things like heat stroke/freezing to death, starvation, general unrest.
I wish that things like that wouldn’t happen, but I won’t be surprised if it does.
