Please read this article

[Wyatt earp]

Tell me what you think

No, the rich aren't like the rest of us: Michael Mechanic on the secret worlds of wealth

Author Michael Mechanic explains that the super-rich aren't happy — and their greed is poisoning our society

www.salon.com

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Has it ever happened, that Salon ever published an article that wasn't complete left wrong-wing bullshit?

Seeing what the source is, I see no reason why any intelligent person would waste so much as a second to glance at the article.

 

[pknopp]

This is again blaming the wrong people. The issue is not the billionaires. The issue is the regular people who simply accept and make excuse for the things that allow them to become millionaires.

Massive printing of money which makes billionaires, billionaires but makes millions of others poorer.

 

[surada]

Has it ever happened, that Salon ever published an article that wasn't complete left wrong-wing bullshit?

Seeing what the source is, I see no reason why any intelligent person would waste so much as a second to glance at the article.

Do you know anyone who is very rich?

 

[surada]

Excerpt:

After his history-making feat, Jeff Bezos gave $100 million to CNN commentator Van Jones, and another $100 million to chef José Andrés, who has dedicated himself to providing free meals to frontline workers and others in need during the pandemic. They were asked by Bezos to use the money for charitable purposes. This beneficence was a type of "apology" for his grotesque act of hubris and ego: he and most others of his class have no sincere sense of social obligation.

In so many ways these billionaires and their space adventures, during a time of human misery and rising neofascism in America and the world, is like bad science fiction turned to life. It is as if Paul Verhoeven, Mike Judge and Roger Corman collaborated on a film and then found a way to replace reality as we once understood it with their elaborate simulation.

Advertisement:
Bezos and Branson's antics are further evidence that America is a plutocratic pathocracy that is cannibalizing itself. In this new Gilded Age, millionaires and billionaires have enriched themselves through a political and economic system in which social parasitism and social Darwinism rule largely uncontested.

In this new world — that in many ways is an old world, with echoes of feudalism and debt peonage — neoliberalism means "socialism" for the rich and "free markets" for everyone else. Even worse, the poor, working classes and middle class directly subsidize the wealth and greed of the very rich, because the latter largely do not pay federal and state taxes.

With the billions of dollars Bezos and Branson collectively spent on their rocket rides to space, they could instead have chosen to provide vaccines for the poor around the world, rid the human race of a deadly disease, help uplift the poor and other vulnerable people worldwide, create a project to address the global climate emergency, or done other good works that would have simultaneously soothed their egos and desperate need for attention while also helping others.

With the money spent on his rocket ride and his gifts to Jones and Andrés, Bezos could have instead chosen to provide a true living wage for his employees (the very people who helped him to obtain his vast wealth) or given each of them a substantial cash bonus.

As seen with the Biden administration's new Child Tax Credit it does not take large sums of money to substantially improve the life chances of poor and working-class people in America. Bezos and Branson could easily choose to do the same.

In response to these billionaire space flights, Deepak Xavier, who heads Oxfam International's global inequality campaign, said this:

We've now reached stratospheric inequality. Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. 11 people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement.

The ultra-rich are being propped up by unfair tax systems and pitiful labor protections. US billionaires got around $1.8 trillion richer since the beginning of the pandemic and nine new billionaires were created by Big Pharma's monopoly on the COVID-19 vaccines.

Bezos pays next to no US income tax but can spend $7.5 billion on his own aerospace adventure. Bezos' fortune has almost doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. He could afford to pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and still be richer than he was when the pandemic began.

Billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes for our hospitals, schools, roads and social care, too.

Governments must adopt a much stronger global minimum tax on multinational corporations and look at new revenues. A wealth tax, for example of just 3 percent, would generate $6 billion a year from Bezos' $200 billion fortune alone ― a sixth of what the US spends on foreign aid. A COVID-19 profits tax on Amazon would yield $11 billion, enough to vaccinate nearly 600 million people.

What we need is a fair tax system that allows more investment into ending hunger and poverty, into education and healthcare, and into saving the planet from the growing climate crisis ―rather than leaving it.

continued

 

[jillian]

Do you know anyone who is very rich?

I don’t think they get a lot of rich people in trailer parks

 

[Moonglow]

This will end badly for the ultra rich.

 

[Uncensored2008]

This is again blaming the wrong people. The issue is not the billionaires. The issue is the regular people who simply accept and make excuse for the things that allow them to become millionaires.

Massive printing of money which makes billionaires, billionaires but makes millions of others poorer.

Oh? So that's what made Bezos a billionaire, printing money?



No doubt you dream of a world where instead of Amazon, there is a government run online shopping portal. Of course it would be text only - but wouldn't matter since all the clothes would be one size and grey....

 

[Uncensored2008]

I don’t think they get a lot of rich people in trailer parks

You would know, fakelawyer.

 

[Uncensored2008]

This will end badly for the ultra rich.

You fascists are waging war against the Middle Class, the Bourgeoisie, while you protect the ultra-rich, the Aristocracy. The ultra-rich run the Nazi democrat party.

 

[Crepitus]

Tell me what you think

No, the rich aren't like the rest of us: Michael Mechanic on the secret worlds of wealth

Author Michael Mechanic explains that the super-rich aren't happy — and their greed is poisoning our society

www.salon.com

I agree with it completely.

I'm pretty sure you won't.

 

[Crepitus]

The issue is the regular people who simply accept and make excuse for the things that allow them to become millionaires.

That was the point of the whole thing. It's not the wealthy folks themselves that are the problem, it's the society that enables them.

 

[Crepitus]

This will end badly for the ultra rich.

I'm afraid it will. There will.come a point when folks just won't stand for it anymore.

 

[Crepitus]

You fascists are waging war against the Middle Class, the Bourgeoisie, while you protect the ultra-rich, the Aristocracy. The ultra-rich run the Nazi democrat party.

Ugh, do you have to shit all over every single thread?

 

[Uncensored2008]

Ugh, do you have to shit all over every single thread?

Oh look, it's the CCP troll again.

Fuck off Chang.

 

[surada]

I'm afraid it will. There will.come a point when folks just won't stand for it anymore.

Uncensored2008

"We've now reached stratospheric inequality.

Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. 11 people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement."

 

[Uncensored2008]

Uncensored2008

"We've now reached stratospheric inequality.

Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. 11 people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement."

You've reached stratospheric hyperbole.

Despite the incessant demagoguery you fascists engage in, we have greater stratification of wealth in American than any other place in the world. We had the flattest curve of wealth distribution in 1986, which has held relatively stable since.

We have billionaires, but despite the war democrats fight to crush it, the middle class remains strong and vibrant.

 

[Anathema]

Tell me what you think

Whst do I think?…

Well, I KNOW thst no private citizen has ANY level of responsibility to provide anything for anyone else, regardless of how much they may have or how little the one who is seeking the assistance has.

 

[pknopp]

Oh? So that's what made Bezos a billionaire, printing money?



No doubt you dream of a world where instead of Amazon, there is a government run online shopping portal. Of course it would be text only - but wouldn't matter since all the clothes would be one size and grey....

Yes, his massive wealth is through massive printing of money. You understand that but you just can't bring yourself around to admitting it.

Sure he would be wealthy anyway but nothing like he is without the print, print, print.

It's funny, people are condemning Biden for continuing on this path but despite condemning it, you refuse to own up to the ramifications. You want it done, you just want your guy doing it.

It needs to STOP, period.

 

[pknopp]

I'm afraid it will. There will.come a point when folks just won't stand for it anymore.

Other countries are already moving to end it. We are going to want to sacrifice our young again in stupid wars to try and stop it.