Should Billionaires Even Exist?

[Brain357]

Then link to an article already.

Chinese Illegally Donated to Bill Clinton Reelection Campaign. Media Downplayed. | National Review

Here a link to a bunch of articles...…..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/background.htm

You might not like the source........

So they were caught. Isn’t that the goal?

I thought the goal was prevention?

Catching them seems like a good start.

So who went to jail for colluding to steal the election in 1996?

Article said like 21 people.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

It's also just a dodge, and in no way justifies all the horseshit he's been arguing for in this thread.

Campaign finance reform is horseshit?

I thought we had campaign finance reform years ago, called the McCain/ Feingold act.

Conservatives got rid of it.

They did? When?

Citizens united.

They didn't stop anything, the courts did.

 

[ChrisL]

Please do. You are certainly a waste of time who lives in fantasy land.

You have yet to acknowledge that you are dead wrong about manufacturing industry in America. It is on the rise, correct? I even posted the link from the department of labor. Right?

Fox business In January this year.
US manufacturing weakest in a decade

It is growing, as shown in the graph below. This is sourced from the Department of Labor actual statistics.

View attachment 306488

According to this chart, manufacturing jobs are growing and are steadily rising. America is going to be stronger because of it in the long run.

According to everybody manufacturing is hurting. Nice try though.

Not according to the statistics, regardless of the "I hate everything Trump does" rhetoric by the mainstream media. The links I posted to the Department of Labor prove that manufacturing jobs are steadily on the rise.

 

[Brain357]

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. Better than sitting by and doing nothing, like the leftists have done.

They have never worked...learn from history...

They have never been tried in recent history.

Bush and Obama aren’t recent? You really are lost:

 

[ChrisL]

Manufacturing and jobs in other sectors are on the rise, as are wages.

 

[Brain357]

You have yet to acknowledge that you are dead wrong about manufacturing industry in America. It is on the rise, correct? I even posted the link from the department of labor. Right?

Fox business In January this year.
US manufacturing weakest in a decade

It is growing, as shown in the graph below. This is sourced from the Department of Labor actual statistics.

View attachment 306488

According to this chart, manufacturing jobs are growing and are steadily rising. America is going to be stronger because of it in the long run.

According to everybody manufacturing is hurting. Nice try though.

Not according to the statistics, regardless of the "I hate everything Trump does" rhetoric by the mainstream media. The links I posted to the Department of Labor prove that manufacturing jobs are steadily on the rise.

Fox business?

 

[ChrisL]

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. Better than sitting by and doing nothing, like the leftists have done.

They have never worked...learn from history...

They have never been tried in recent history.

Bush and Obama aren’t recent? You really are lost:

They did nothing as extensive as this. Stop lying and being dishonest, China man.

 

[Brain357]

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. Better than sitting by and doing nothing, like the leftists have done.

They have never worked...learn from history...

They have never been tried in recent history.

Bush and Obama aren’t recent? You really are lost:

They did nothing as extensive as this. Stop lying and being dishonest, China man.

And it always fails. Just like trump is failing now.

 

[Brain357]

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. Better than sitting by and doing nothing, like the leftists have done.

They have never worked...learn from history...

They have never been tried in recent history.

Bush and Obama aren’t recent? You really are lost:

They did nothing as extensive as this. Stop lying and being dishonest, China man.

More of a bad thing he good? Funny.

 

[Hum Dinger]

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.

Richard, nobody is forced to work for anybody. It's an agreement between somebody that needs workers and another who needs work. It's laid out up front as to pay and benefits, then it's up to the worker to decide if that offer is reasonable enough to accept the job.

If a worker believes they are being taken advantage of, then they are free to find another job. If they can't find a better job, then the employer they are currently working for is not stealing anything from them. They are getting paid what they are worth.

What a line of horse shit!

Workers have to take whatever job they can get. The alternative is HOMELESSNESS!

They get paid the least that the employers can get away with - there is NO relationship between what they are paid and the value of the work that the employer demands.

There are usually not alternative jobs available...and even if there were employers aren't going to hire anybody that makes any demands.

If they can't find a job, it's because the financial system refuses to fund the creation of those jobs.

If left up to many employers, employees would always be on the verge of homelessness and starvation.

 

[ChrisL]

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. Better than sitting by and doing nothing, like the leftists have done.

They have never worked...learn from history...

They have never been tried in recent history.

Bush and Obama aren’t recent? You really are lost:

They did nothing as extensive as this. Stop lying and being dishonest, China man.

More of a bad thing he good? Funny.

I think your bot program has a virus. LOL!

 

[Brain357]

Trump's tariffs are driving job losses and production cost hikes, the Fed says | Markets Insider

 

[ChrisL]

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.

Richard, nobody is forced to work for anybody. It's an agreement between somebody that needs workers and another who needs work. It's laid out up front as to pay and benefits, then it's up to the worker to decide if that offer is reasonable enough to accept the job.

If a worker believes they are being taken advantage of, then they are free to find another job. If they can't find a better job, then the employer they are currently working for is not stealing anything from them. They are getting paid what they are worth.

What a line of horse shit!

Workers have to take whatever job they can get. The alternative is HOMELESSNESS!

They get paid the least that the employers can get away with - there is NO relationship between what they are paid and the value of the work that the employer demands.

There are usually not alternative jobs available...and even if there were employers aren't going to hire anybody that makes any demands.

If they can't find a job, it's because the financial system refuses to fund the creation of those jobs.

If left up to many employers, employees would always be on the verge of homelessness and starvation.

Sorry, but it is not up to others to take care of you. If you want a better job and better pay, then you have to make yourself more attractive and more valuable to a potential employer. A person collecting social services is usually qualified to receive grants for training programs in order to help them get better job opportunities. But then you have to perform to prove you are a valuable asset and worth what you are getting paid.

 

[ChrisL]

Trump's tariffs are driving job losses and production cost hikes, the Fed says | Markets Insider

Not according to the Department of Labor statistics. Manufacturing jobs are up nationally.

 

[Brain357]

They have never worked...learn from history...

They have never been tried in recent history.

Bush and Obama aren’t recent? You really are lost:

They did nothing as extensive as this. Stop lying and being dishonest, China man.

More of a bad thing he good? Funny.

I think your bot program has a virus. LOL!

You are the one disagreeing with everyone... even the fed says manufacturing hurt.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Trump's tariffs are driving job losses and production cost hikes, the Fed says | Markets Insider

We just had a month of over 220K jobs created. How many more do we need? We already have over a million and a half jobs than Americans to work them.

 

[Brain357]

Trump's tariffs are driving job losses and production cost hikes, the Fed says | Markets Insider

Not according to the Department of Labor statistics. Manufacturing jobs are up nationally.

Trump's tariffs are driving job losses and production cost hikes, the Fed says | Markets Insider

Not according to the Department of Labor statistics. Manufacturing jobs are up nationally.

Sure the fed is wrong. You are such a child...

 

[Brain357]

Trump's tariffs are driving job losses and production cost hikes, the Fed says | Markets Insider

We just had a month of over 220K jobs created. How many more do we need? We already have over a million and a half jobs than Americans to work them.

Trumps goal was to hurt manufacturing?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Chinese Illegally Donated to Bill Clinton Reelection Campaign. Media Downplayed. | National Review

Here a link to a bunch of articles...…..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/background.htm

You might not like the source........

So they were caught. Isn’t that the goal?

I thought the goal was prevention?

Catching them seems like a good start.

So who went to jail for colluding to steal the election in 1996?

Article said like 21 people.

How much time did Clinton and Gore get?

 

[Hum Dinger]

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.

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.

Richard, nobody is forced to work for anybody. It's an agreement between somebody that needs workers and another who needs work. It's laid out up front as to pay and benefits, then it's up to the worker to decide if that offer is reasonable enough to accept the job.

If a worker believes they are being taken advantage of, then they are free to find another job. If they can't find a better job, then the employer they are currently working for is not stealing anything from them. They are getting paid what they are worth.

What a line of horse shit!

Workers have to take whatever job they can get. The alternative is HOMELESSNESS!

They get paid the least that the employers can get away with - there is NO relationship between what they are paid and the value of the work that the employer demands.

There are usually not alternative jobs available...and even if there were employers aren't going to hire anybody that makes any demands.

If they can't find a job, it's because the financial system refuses to fund the creation of those jobs.

If left up to many employers, employees would always be on the verge of homelessness and starvation.

Sorry, but it is not up to others to take care of you. If you want a better job and better pay, then you have to make yourself more attractive and more valuable to a potential employer. A person collecting social services is usually qualified to receive grants for training programs in order to help them get better job opportunities. But then you have to perform to prove you are a valuable asset and worth what you are getting paid.

There's no doubt that better educated and skilled people have a greater potential for valued productivity.

But, pure dumb ass labor produces some of the most valuable of all work - and they should be paid on par with the value of their work - not on par with their financial desperation.

It doesn't take much brains to dig a ditch, but without ditch diggers we would all die.