billionaires should be desperate to be taxed. something is going to happen to them, and 'taxed' is the best verb they can hope for at this point

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[–] 116 points 1 year ago (11 children)

11 years ago...

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats — By NICK HANAUER

See also his Wikipedia page in the section on his controversial TED talk where he said:

Businesses and the rich do not create jobs. Jobs are created by a feedback loop between customers and businesses that is set in motion by consumers increasing their demand....

If lower income tax rates for the wealthy really worked we would be drowning in jobs, and yet unemployment and underemployment is at record highs

TED refused to publish the talk.

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  • [–] 50 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    They refused to publish it? Wow, thank you for finally giving me a concrete reason to hate TED talks. They've always seemed like the biggest fart-sniffing conventions I can imagine. And it drives me nuts how people all present with a certain cadence, intonation, tone of voice. Like some kind of learned artificial dialect, the "good public speaker" dialect/accent. A perfectly fitting marker of the incestuous masturbation so prevalent among the kinds of people who give TED talks. I'm not saying they're all bad, so no offense to anyone's favorite TED speaker. There's been decent ones, but its largely exactly the kind of elite Ivy League parasite that, remarkably, manages to be despicable to both conservatives and many liberals. No wonder TED didn't publish something that might make their own speakers feel bad.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    In the 2019 talk, Hanauer does not explicitly mention any political party but calls out the faults of “neo-liberal economic theory” and highlights alternative economic hypotheses.

    Probably more effective this way. Need to get the conservatives on board.

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  • [–] 53 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I think we have passed the point of no return. Like, we are going to have our very first trillionaire, and everyone seems okay with it.

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah, but if I tax trillionaires, what happens when I myself become a trillionaire?!

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I think we’re beyond taxing territory. I’d say we’ve reached confiscation of wealth over 100 million territory. These people have become a threat to everyone on earth and can’t be tolerated

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don't know... the way people cheered Luigi tells me that most people are not okay with it - but that's never stopped the media and their political handlers before.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The biggest problem is there is only 1 Luigi.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I mean... there is more where he came from. But I'd say that's not the important thing.

    Compare the public's reaction when Alexander Berkman shot capitalist Henry Clay Frick back in 1892. There was a lot of sympathy for when capitalist (and Nazi) Hanns Martin Schleyer was offed by RAF in 1977. I'd say the magic spell that capitalists once enjoyed has been thoroughly broken - and that's unprecedented.

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I think we are very close to being past the point of society accepting these people in any form. Too much damage has already been done while the ultrawealthy laughed it away.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I wish i felt that way. Maybe in 20 years, but right now these people are still on a high pedestal in the eyes of the majority. They’ve mastered the art of giving “just enough” to keep the masses at bay. It will take a catastrophe of epic proportions with billions dead or suffering and these rich mf’ers sitting high in their ivory towers before the masses will open their eyes. Even then we’ll be told to “pray” and they will give us a few more scraps to naw on (all while they “prey” on us to further widen the gap between us and them).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Idk, I live in the US and I have a hard time believing the status quo can even continue 2 years not to mention 20.

    Will it just get worse? Probably, but I don't think there is any holding the masses back that will kick the can that far down the road. The point of critical evolution towards collapse is right now.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I’m in the US as well. Specifically the south. These inbreds still to this day love cheeto jesus and would eat his ass on command. So many people here would rather hate than eat. It’s so sad. I have family obligations (elderly parents) but I can’t wait to get out of here.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This is something that, of all people, Ivanka Trump has kvetched about in private — her infamy, her dad's infamy, her company's infamy, her wealth's infamy, and not to mention, her husband's infamy — has essentially procluded them from any social circles in NYC. They reportedly left politics because every single one of their friends would refuse to engage with them anymore.

    One simple thing that brings me joy in a dark world is that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump can't make a single friend.

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  • [–] 79 points 1 year ago (23 children)

    Yeah, but if these people were truly masters of long-term thinking, they wouldn't be spending all their time ruining the economies upon which their wealth is predicated.

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  • [–] 69 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    You say that, but if you have a large cache of cash, economic crashes are just opportunities to buy assets at a bargain.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    Up to a point yes. However, if the majority of your 'wealth' is not liquid and bound up in a stockmarket that no longer exists, you're going to have a hard time leveraging it. Similarly, what liquid wealth you have is only as valuable as the form it takes. Your dollar bills in a hyper-inflationary scenario is going to have more values as toilet paper than as a means of exchange, and your gold is no good if there are no one around willing to exchange anything for it. You can eat gold, but the nutritional value is somewhat dubious.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Quit licking boots. You think banks will stop loaning money to musk if Tesla stock crashed? Trump has been bankrupt multiple times, it's a big club and you ain't in it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Watch who you're calling a bootlicker. You talking to a guy who've never taken a loan, made use of credit or had an insurance policy. And I dare say banks will stop loaning money to Musk when they have no fucking money.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That's what you think boot licking is?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    I think bootlicking is bowing down to the (unreasonable, amoral or unethical) demands of someone who considers themselves the master or owner of other people whether that's you or someone else, and that this can take many forms and have many motivations, precisely none of which are acceptable or excusable. I cannot think of a single form of it that has been characteristic of my life, and so I'd kindly ask you to use that term for someone who deserves it instead of me. I suggest the nearest MAGA adherent or Russian. Thanks.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    They're so busy building survival bunkers....

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I fully approved of this. Then just cement over all the exits when they have closed the hatches and forget about them

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    All one would have to do is find the air filtration vents.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    I think it's very civic-minded of them to hole up in a static position so we know where to find them.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I think the ultra wealthy are just trying to buy time until they can put automated turrets and drone death squads in their mansions.

    I'm not trying to argue that it's a sound strategy, it's just what I think they're aiming for.

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  • I think the ultra wealthy will have to leave their apartment at some point, and then they're vulnerable.

    Also, what's even more important is that the rich own all their wealth in the form of company shares and real estate, and that cannot be moved inside a bunker because it fundamentally has to face the outer world. In other words, the billionaires can hide in their bunkers their entire life for all i care, but the publicly accessible infrastructure that they own is gonna get taxed in that case, and that is just as well.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Sorry, I could afford to buy a "t".

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  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago* (25 children)

    Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    That's capitalism. I find the more of a capitalist someone is, the more they worship money and the more they idolize anyone with a lot of it.

    It also seems to be the case that the further you are from capitalism and it's ideals as a person, the more you're willing to emphasize with those less fortunate and want to help them to succeed.

    Weird huh?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Capitalism doesn’t hold a monopoly on financial obesity, it can manifest in many economic models.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Agreed. People blame capitalism but our problem isn't economic: it's social, psychological, cultural.

    That financial obesity is a symptom, but the root is the issue of cooperating with immense amounts of total strangers: no animal is wired for it, almost no one is wired to truly, deeply, emotionally care for nameless and faceless people: strangers who, you feel, won't help you when you have a fever, but who raise the price of potatoes because they need them too. We say we do care, maybe we even donate 5€ to some cause, but a stranger is a stranger and our day goes on.

    That antagonism is even more heartfelt if you were a child who wasn't give the love they should have been given... Like way too many of us. Burning the village to feel its warmth.

    No animal before us had the option, once they had abused the trust of their pack, to easily move hundreds of miles away and start from scratch with a clean reputation.

    No animal before us fell into the trap of the paradox of tolerance: if a pack member intentionally and repeatedly damages other members, other animals do not spend a lot of time writing books about feel-good, entirely theorethical principles.

    No animal is as detached from themselves as we are: since we have such complicated language with abstract concepts, we can forget the truth of our bodies and live in a fantasy world. We can even deceive ourselves, and make decisions informed by that deception. Even worse, we can deceive others a lot better than other animals: a lying gazelle might maybe sound the "lion!" alarm when there is no lion, but it's soon discovered; humans instead can brainwash others into standing against their own best interests, and the victim might believe it was their own opinion until their very last breath.

    Capitalism creates competition with its advanatages and disadvantages, but I'm not sure it has great alternatives within the current system: incentives are necessary in a society of strangers, although I think the details -such as the amounts and the safeties- should be re-thought.

    Again, within the current system. But I believe we will witness big changes in our lifetime (climate, biodiversity, AI, mass surveillance, military drones, a multipolar world, life extension, pandemics...), and who knows, maybe the entire framework might change.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    This is true, but since many of us live under the concepts of capitalism, I felt it was a good point of reference.

    Pretty much all the glorified billionaires that I'm aware of are from capitalistic economic models.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Obesity applied to just about everything is an existential threat, we evolved as prey animals fighting for scarcity and now have no prey peers except ourselves … so we fight ourselves for resources

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    we evolved as prey animals

    Humans are predators, not prey. A quick heuristic for this is forward-facing eyes.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    A quicker one is to understand biology and where we’re placed ecologically in the food chain.

    Eye placement isn’t a bellwether for being a predator. Our forward facing eyes give us pretty good binocular vision which is a pretty good thing for primates to have evolved. Dense foliage is something we’re good at seeing through. We don’t know EXACTLY why we evolved forward facing eyes but this is one of the best theorized guesses.

    We have carnivorous traits but are not strictly a predator. We’re somewhere around pigs on the food chain.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    What do you consider carnivorous traits? Binocular vision is for depth perception, something the world's best arm cannon would specialize in. Meanwhile, Orca don't have binocular vision but are absolutely an apex predator.

    Also, humans don't conform to natural classifications and food chains so arguing what is prey or predator is pointless. Humans are now one of the mass extinction events on this planet and it doesn't look like that's going to slow.

    We do fight ourselves for resources, but honestly so does basically other animal on earth. Even the previously mentioned orca have had fads of wearing salmon hats for social clout. What makes us special is we understand how we are fucking ourselves over and do it anyway.

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  • [+] -9 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Obesity is a nonsense term used by traitors. Let’s not do that. Being fat is fine, capitalism is not.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I mean, there are proven negative physical and mental effects to being overweight. None apply to everyone but in general being a healthy weight is, well, healthier

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    See, you just proved my point. You said “healthy weight” even though there is no such thing, and demonstrably so. You are allowing yourself to adopt capitalist thinking.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Obesity is a product of capitalism, the very thing you claim to hate. There would be no fat people in your personal utopia.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Being fat has nothing to do with capitalism. You are a right wing traitor lunatic who belongs in prison if you believe that nonsense.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    So you're telling me that Walmart, highly engineered and processed foods, food deserts and a general lack of, or disconnection from, traditional cuisine and foodways all have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism... lol, ok man

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah, stop the fat shaming!

    Eat the rich!

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Read the room, buddy did you really want to Karen out and distract from the message with your petty complaint?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I love when you worthless right wing dumbfucks come at me with shit like “read the room” and “the downvotes speak for themselves”. I don’t care if everyone is downvoting me. I’m right and you’re a moron.

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