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Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Says 'Nobody Works Hard Enough to Justify $1 Billion' | Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/politics@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39081380

Jon Queally
Nov 15, 2025

Echoing recent viral comments by music superstar Billie Eilish, Maine Democratic candidate for US Senate Graham Planter is also arguing that the existence of billionaires cannot be justified in a world where working-class people with multiple jobs still cannot afford the basic necessities of life.

In video clip posted Friday of a campaign event in the northern town of Caribou from last month, Platner rails against the “structures” of an economy in which billionaires with vast personal fortunes use their wealth to bend government—including the tax code—to conform to their interests while working people are left increasingly locked out of controlling their own destinies, both materially and politically.

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[–] 22 points 11 months ago (7 children)

These greedy fuckers won't even loose anything if they payed their workers a healthy wage, but they just want to hoard their wealth for whatever reason. Don't the realize society is more productive when people can afford to live?

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago

    It's not about money as much as it's about the power they can buy with it. When they look outside they only see an ocean of slaves to their wealth. People not being able to afford to live doesn't really concern them. They are trying their hardest to replace people with machines so they control all the wealth and the means of production leaving the mass populous helpless in perpetual destitute.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Are we talking about people with $1B in the bank, or people “worth $1B” though?

    If you got rid of the stock market today, forgave all loans and capped property values, it would be interesting to see who is actually rich.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has calculated that Americans have $1.8 trillion in excess savings. Of that, he believes that more than half sits in households in the top 10 percent of the income.

    There are

    10 million (10,000,000) hundred thousands in a trillion, for people to make 100k a year and when these people make that much they will put it back into the economy making those billionaires more money.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    You have a good point, most of these billionaires have most of their wealth tied up in loans, stock market and property. Their wealth is calculated speculation on the value of their assets not in physical dollars.

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