You know what’s not cool anymore? Billionaires.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren believe some Americans have too much money, and they’re not alone.
Their very existence is now the subject of political debate, sparked most recently by tax-the-rich proposals from two prominent politicians.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed placing a 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million and 3 percent on assets over $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she wants to increase the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $10 million a year.
Their ideas went viral, starting a mainstream conversation about inequality and wealth.
This kind of talk has always existed among a certain group of hard-core progressives and left-leaning economists, but heading into next year’s presidential election, the idea that the super-rich should pay their fair share is gaining real momentum.
Marshall Steinbaum, a research director at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute, has advocated taxing the rich at higher rates for years. “We do not need billionaires,” Steinbaum told HuffPost. “The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past.”
For Steinbaum, higher taxes on the wealthy would mean freeing up more money for everyone else. If you think of the economy as a pie, right now, billionaires are getting just about all of it, while we’re all left splitting just one slice.
If you raise taxes on the richest, their incentive to grab at every morsel declines. The theory is they’ll fight a little less hard to depress everyone else’s wages if they know that every extra million is going to get taxed away. A high-paid CEO has less incentive to keep workers’ wages low so he can get a bigger payday.
Billionaires were once a rare breed. In the past few decades, as the U.S. has slashed tax rates, their numbers have exploded, far outpacing inflation.
Since 2008, the number of billionaires in the world has doubled, according to a report published last week by the anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam. In just the last year, billionaires raked in an astonishing $2.5 billion each day.
In 1982, the first year Forbes debuted its list of the 400 richest Americans, there were about a dozen billionaires. The richest man in the U.S. back then was an 85-year-old shipping magnate with an estimated worth of $2 billion, or $5.2 billion in today’s dollars.
"We do not need billionaires. The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past."
--Marshall Steinbaum, Roosevelt Institute
Nowadays, Forbes’ list is entirely billionaires. The richest is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $160 billion.
More: Should Billionaires Even Exist?
I agree! Billionaires aren't cool anymore! The playing field is tilted like the Titanic before it went down. There is no logical reason for so few to have so much. What do you think?
The fact is that wealth is only created by the production of physical items. Services may have value that is equated to the value of physical items, but service do not create wealth.
There are many mechanisms for people to horde wealth, but hording wealth is NOT creating wealth.
Unfortunately, the people who actually create wealth are deprived of the ownership of the wealth that they create, while most people that have horded huge amounts of wealth have not created any wealth whatsoever in their lifetimes. They may have performed some services that have value, but usually extremely wealthy people's total services rendered are NOT close in value to the amount of wealth that they own.
Basically, extremely wealthy people are thieves. They don't mean to be thieves, but they are.
Our society has many, many mechanisms for legal thievery. That's the problem.
Hording your own money does not make you a thief. Greedy? Perhaps, but not a thief.
Even if the government took ALL of this wealth, you aren't going to see any of it. Lol. You will still be paying government taxes also.
I don't know what you people think would happen? That the government is going to support your arses with the wealth they take from someone else? Not going to happen.
I agree that taxation is not the solution. Fair wealth distribution is the solution.
You know what’s not cool anymore? Billionaires.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren believe some Americans have too much money, and they’re not alone.
Their very existence is now the subject of political debate, sparked most recently by tax-the-rich proposals from two prominent politicians.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed placing a 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million and 3 percent on assets over $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she wants to increase the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $10 million a year.
Their ideas went viral, starting a mainstream conversation about inequality and wealth.
This kind of talk has always existed among a certain group of hard-core progressives and left-leaning economists, but heading into next year’s presidential election, the idea that the super-rich should pay their fair share is gaining real momentum.
Marshall Steinbaum, a research director at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute, has advocated taxing the rich at higher rates for years. “We do not need billionaires,” Steinbaum told HuffPost. “The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past.”
For Steinbaum, higher taxes on the wealthy would mean freeing up more money for everyone else. If you think of the economy as a pie, right now, billionaires are getting just about all of it, while we’re all left splitting just one slice.
If you raise taxes on the richest, their incentive to grab at every morsel declines. The theory is they’ll fight a little less hard to depress everyone else’s wages if they know that every extra million is going to get taxed away. A high-paid CEO has less incentive to keep workers’ wages low so he can get a bigger payday.
Billionaires were once a rare breed. In the past few decades, as the U.S. has slashed tax rates, their numbers have exploded, far outpacing inflation.
Since 2008, the number of billionaires in the world has doubled, according to a report published last week by the anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam. In just the last year, billionaires raked in an astonishing $2.5 billion each day.
In 1982, the first year Forbes debuted its list of the 400 richest Americans, there were about a dozen billionaires. The richest man in the U.S. back then was an 85-year-old shipping magnate with an estimated worth of $2 billion, or $5.2 billion in today’s dollars.
"We do not need billionaires. The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past."
--Marshall Steinbaum, Roosevelt Institute
Nowadays, Forbes’ list is entirely billionaires. The richest is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $160 billion.
More: Should Billionaires Even Exist?
I agree! Billionaires aren't cool anymore! The playing field is tilted like the Titanic before it went down. There is no logical reason for so few to have so much. What do you think?
The fact is that wealth is only created by the production of physical items. Services may have value that is equated to the value of physical items, but service do not create wealth.
There are many mechanisms for people to horde wealth, but hording wealth is NOT creating wealth.
Unfortunately, the people who actually create wealth are deprived of the ownership of the wealth that they create, while most people that have horded huge amounts of wealth have not created any wealth whatsoever in their lifetimes. They may have performed some services that have value, but usually extremely wealthy people's total services rendered are NOT close in value to the amount of wealth that they own.
Basically, extremely wealthy people are thieves. They don't mean to be thieves, but they are.
Our society has many, many mechanisms for legal thievery. That's the problem.
Theft is the action of taking anothers property against their will, or leaving them with no reasonable alternative but to surrender it. So who are these thieves taking belongings from?
The financially advantaged taking advantage of the financially disadvantaged would qualify as 'no reasonable alternative but to surrender it'.
When a person is starving and/or has a family to support they are forced to work for whatever their employers are willing to pay them. They are in no position to demand payment on par with the value of their work.
If you think buying politicians is good.
Please do. You are certainly a waste of time who lives in fantasy land.
Catching them seems like a good start.
You know what’s not cool anymore? Billionaires.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren believe some Americans have too much money, and they’re not alone.
Their very existence is now the subject of political debate, sparked most recently by tax-the-rich proposals from two prominent politicians.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed placing a 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million and 3 percent on assets over $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she wants to increase the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $10 million a year.
Their ideas went viral, starting a mainstream conversation about inequality and wealth.
This kind of talk has always existed among a certain group of hard-core progressives and left-leaning economists, but heading into next year’s presidential election, the idea that the super-rich should pay their fair share is gaining real momentum.
Marshall Steinbaum, a research director at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute, has advocated taxing the rich at higher rates for years. “We do not need billionaires,” Steinbaum told HuffPost. “The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past.”
For Steinbaum, higher taxes on the wealthy would mean freeing up more money for everyone else. If you think of the economy as a pie, right now, billionaires are getting just about all of it, while we’re all left splitting just one slice.
If you raise taxes on the richest, their incentive to grab at every morsel declines. The theory is they’ll fight a little less hard to depress everyone else’s wages if they know that every extra million is going to get taxed away. A high-paid CEO has less incentive to keep workers’ wages low so he can get a bigger payday.
Billionaires were once a rare breed. In the past few decades, as the U.S. has slashed tax rates, their numbers have exploded, far outpacing inflation.
Since 2008, the number of billionaires in the world has doubled, according to a report published last week by the anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam. In just the last year, billionaires raked in an astonishing $2.5 billion each day.
In 1982, the first year Forbes debuted its list of the 400 richest Americans, there were about a dozen billionaires. The richest man in the U.S. back then was an 85-year-old shipping magnate with an estimated worth of $2 billion, or $5.2 billion in today’s dollars.
"We do not need billionaires. The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past."
--Marshall Steinbaum, Roosevelt Institute
Nowadays, Forbes’ list is entirely billionaires. The richest is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $160 billion.
More: Should Billionaires Even Exist?
I agree! Billionaires aren't cool anymore! The playing field is tilted like the Titanic before it went down. There is no logical reason for so few to have so much. What do you think?
The fact is that wealth is only created by the production of physical items. Services may have value that is equated to the value of physical items, but service do not create wealth.
There are many mechanisms for people to horde wealth, but hording wealth is NOT creating wealth.
Unfortunately, the people who actually create wealth are deprived of the ownership of the wealth that they create, while most people that have horded huge amounts of wealth have not created any wealth whatsoever in their lifetimes. They may have performed some services that have value, but usually extremely wealthy people's total services rendered are NOT close in value to the amount of wealth that they own.
Basically, extremely wealthy people are thieves. They don't mean to be thieves, but they are.
Our society has many, many mechanisms for legal thievery. That's the problem.
Hording your own money does not make you a thief. Greedy? Perhaps, but not a thief.
Even if the government took ALL of this wealth, you aren't going to see any of it. Lol. You will still be paying government taxes also.
I don't know what you people think would happen? That the government is going to support your arses with the wealth they take from someone else? Not going to happen.
I agree that taxation is not the solution. Fair wealth distribution is the solution.
You know what’s not cool anymore? Billionaires.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren believe some Americans have too much money, and they’re not alone.
Their very existence is now the subject of political debate, sparked most recently by tax-the-rich proposals from two prominent politicians.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed placing a 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million and 3 percent on assets over $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she wants to increase the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $10 million a year.
Their ideas went viral, starting a mainstream conversation about inequality and wealth.
This kind of talk has always existed among a certain group of hard-core progressives and left-leaning economists, but heading into next year’s presidential election, the idea that the super-rich should pay their fair share is gaining real momentum.
Marshall Steinbaum, a research director at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute, has advocated taxing the rich at higher rates for years. “We do not need billionaires,” Steinbaum told HuffPost. “The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past.”
For Steinbaum, higher taxes on the wealthy would mean freeing up more money for everyone else. If you think of the economy as a pie, right now, billionaires are getting just about all of it, while we’re all left splitting just one slice.
If you raise taxes on the richest, their incentive to grab at every morsel declines. The theory is they’ll fight a little less hard to depress everyone else’s wages if they know that every extra million is going to get taxed away. A high-paid CEO has less incentive to keep workers’ wages low so he can get a bigger payday.
Billionaires were once a rare breed. In the past few decades, as the U.S. has slashed tax rates, their numbers have exploded, far outpacing inflation.
Since 2008, the number of billionaires in the world has doubled, according to a report published last week by the anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam. In just the last year, billionaires raked in an astonishing $2.5 billion each day.
In 1982, the first year Forbes debuted its list of the 400 richest Americans, there were about a dozen billionaires. The richest man in the U.S. back then was an 85-year-old shipping magnate with an estimated worth of $2 billion, or $5.2 billion in today’s dollars.
"We do not need billionaires. The economy’s done better without billionaires in the past."
--Marshall Steinbaum, Roosevelt Institute
Nowadays, Forbes’ list is entirely billionaires. The richest is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $160 billion.
More: Should Billionaires Even Exist?
I agree! Billionaires aren't cool anymore! The playing field is tilted like the Titanic before it went down. There is no logical reason for so few to have so much. What do you think?
The fact is that wealth is only created by the production of physical items. Services may have value that is equated to the value of physical items, but service do not create wealth.
There are many mechanisms for people to horde wealth, but hording wealth is NOT creating wealth.
Unfortunately, the people who actually create wealth are deprived of the ownership of the wealth that they create, while most people that have horded huge amounts of wealth have not created any wealth whatsoever in their lifetimes. They may have performed some services that have value, but usually extremely wealthy people's total services rendered are NOT close in value to the amount of wealth that they own.
Basically, extremely wealthy people are thieves. They don't mean to be thieves, but they are.
Our society has many, many mechanisms for legal thievery. That's the problem.
Theft is the action of taking anothers property against their will, or leaving them with no reasonable alternative but to surrender it. So who are these thieves taking belongings from?
The financially advantaged taking advantage of the financially disadvantaged would qualify as 'no reasonable alternative but to surrender it'.
When a person is starving and/or has a family to support they are forced to work for whatever their employers are willing to pay them. They are in no position to demand payment on par with the value of their work.
Better than sitting by and doing nothing, like the leftists have done.
America is going to be stronger because of it in the long run.
They have never worked...learn from history...These changes are going to take time and may happen slowly at first. Some industries may feel some pain, but they will adapt. This is the best path to take to try to save our manufacturing industry. If we don't do something, all of these jobs will eventually disappear. And that is the bottom line. Of course the leftists are going to try to make it all seem as negative as they possibly can (and the Chinese). It's a positive though, regardless of how much they temper tantrum about it.
According to everybody manufacturing is hurting. Nice try though.
According to this chart, manufacturing jobs are growing and are steadily rising.
They have never worked...learn from history...These changes are going to take time and may happen slowly at first. Some industries may feel some pain, but they will adapt. This is the best path to take to try to save our manufacturing industry. If we don't do something, all of these jobs will eventually disappear. And that is the bottom line. Of course the leftists are going to try to make it all seem as negative as they possibly can (and the Chinese). It's a positive though, regardless of how much they temper tantrum about it.
