Why don’t you want to undo the effects of monopolies such as Bill Gates’ bank account?
1 Like
Who said I didn’t. In fact, I’ve explicitly said over and over again I’m for much larger taxes, in various forms, on the rich.
It’s frustrating why people can’t seem to separate the general from the specific in these discussions.
Because I think Gates is doing good in the world is instantly transformed into “all billionaires are good”.
1 Like
He also ripped off his investors. I don’t recall if any were what would be billionaires now.
Yep, put another way, if your living expenses for you and your family are 40K and you make 60K pretax, you’d pay about $9K in federal taxes plus probably a few grand in state taxes. You’d have less left over to save and accumulate net worth than you paid in federal taxes. You’re being taxed over 50% on your wealth-building income.
On the other hand if you’re making $100 million, your living expenses are basically negligible so you pretty much are paying ~20% or whatever it is of your wealth-building income.
There’s a huge hump it’s really hard to get over where you’re trying to outpace expenses and taxes to start accumulating wealth, and the system really has its foot on your back. It’s a good thing to be in that spot, because it’s better than the spot where you’re trying to scrape together enough to pay living expenses… But in reality we should ease up on people trying to rise through the middle class and really hammer the people who not only built up wealth but built up obscene wealth.
People with $100B net worths are a bug of American capitalism, not a feature. I think the Dems should try to frame it in the sense that we want to set up a system where it’s impossible to be as successful as Jeff Bezos, but imminently more possible to be born poor and end up worth a few million. We should also frame it such that we’re not anti-rich, we’re not anti-wealthy, but we think it’s better to create 10,000 success stories of people going from nothing to $10 million rather than one story of someone going from nothing/middle class/rich to $100 billion.
We want an environment where the dream success story means yourself and a few generations are set for life, not one where a Bezos kid born in 3020 is already set for life.
The issue here is that it’s very easy to be in favor of higher income taxes in an environment where that’s basically never going to happen. Now that it’s got a chance of happening, whaddayaknow, he’s not cool with this particular plan.
I get that there’s a big difference between taxing income and taxing already accumulated wealth, but in a way this is trying to accomplish what he claimed to support over the last 15-20 years right? Like, hey, we didn’t get those tax increases so you paid 10% instead of 20% or 20% instead of 30%. Now we want to come back for some of that income we missed.
1 Like
I didn’t say he’s evil. His bogarting shouldn’t be tolerated though.
So what do you want? 90% tax on everything over a certain amount but we have to be nicer to him?
Letter from Schiff to Nunes includes the subject of the current inquiry: Nunes sends letter to DNI on unmasking legislation | Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence
-
Did the President request that a foreign leader and government initiate investigations to benefit the President’s personal political interests in the United States, including an investigation related to the President’s political rival and potential opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential election?
-
Did the President – directly or through agents – seek to use the power of the Office of the President and other instruments of the federal government in other ways to apply pressure on the head of state and government of Ukraine to advance the President’s personal political interests, including by leveraging an Oval Office meeting desired by the President of Ukraine or by withholding U.S. military assistance to Ukraine?
-
Did the President and his Administration seek to obstruct, suppress or cover up information to conceal from the Congress and the American people evidence about the President’s actions and conduct?
Rewrite those in the form of statements, and you have your first three articles of impeachment.
2 Likes
LOL that camera angle. Could they have made him look any worse?
1 Like
Minor change, but I’d love it if they said “…including but not limited to…” because we KNOW that these aren’t the only times he’s used his power to advance his own interests, and it’d be good to have all of those be under this impeachment umbrella rather than limiting ourselves to Ukraine.
Predictit market for the number of articles just jumped for “three”
A) Good to see the 25th Amendment is totally useless
B) This might be what the GOP ends up blaming it all on. It might be something like… “Trump wasn’t the problem, electing Trump wasn’t the problem, and Trump was the best POTUS ever for a while, the problem was the onset of dementia late in 2018, and the lack of information available for our patriots in the Senate, who certainly would have removed him for THAT had they known.”
Sounds like a hoot.
Bernie and Liz are extremely inspiring. What you mean is that the moderates are not particularly inspiring.
Great tweet, a little down in the thread they mention that as of a few years ago his net worth had doubled since retirement despite giving tons away.
So we should all pick letting them more than double their net worth from 50B to more than 100B despite giving away a bunch because reasons? Like it sounds an awful lot to me like he could have donated what he’s donated, paid an extra $20 billion in taxes, and would still have increased his net worth after retiring.
His net worth is going up, not down. And it’s outpacing inflation, with ease, so it’s not just that.
Also if Bill Gates wanted to, he could simply give a shit ton of his money away NOW rather than wait for Liz to win and tax it. Like if she wins in November, he could put $50 billion into a number of charitable trusts and avoid the tax on that. Problem solved.
This is similar to a system Georgia actually used.
This lighting and contrast is horrific. Does he really have a Freddy Krueger-like face when seen up close?
Also, Mississippi
Mississippi's 1890 constitution requires a statewide candidate to win a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the 122 state House districts. If nobody wins both, the election is decided by the House, and representatives are not obligated to vote as their districts did. The process was written when white politicians across the South were enacting Jim Crow laws to erase black political power gained during Reconstruction, and the separate House vote was promoted as a way for the white ruling class have the final say in who holds office.
I give this some credence. It’s just always hard to tell whether inciting a huge expression of discontent or even outrage
- stokes the fires into an uncontrollable blaze
- makes a WTF explosion that then sucks all of the oxygen out of the room and kills the fire
It can often seem like #2 is leading to #1, but instead having such a direct outlet for our rage means we feel some sort of resolution and can’t help but move on.
He also looks significantly more bald with that lighting/angle.
I don’t think it’s possible to rule out the fact that when Lindsey Graham called him an ‘equal opportunity abuser of people’ it was extremely true and people are getting passive aggressive in response. Even if they don’t mean to.
I don’t care how much I believed in someone or something… if they treated me like shit day in and day out I’d shank them at least in subtle ways. Wouldn’t be able to help myself.
Transcripts up
3 Likes
Pence was put on the ticket by Manafort. Let us not forget…
===
I wake up to 135 posts in the thread thinking something big must have happened today. Nope, about 5 Trump related posts and the rest are a derail related to clovis again defending the wealthy/rich. Clovis really deserves his own thread for this kind of stuff.
Definitely into American baseball and pie made from apples
Thank you for the thread saver.