Why should a medical doctor in the US earn $350,000 a year when the average person in India makes $500 a year? That's just not right. He started a company, owned most of it and sold products to willing buyers. Most of his clients are Wall Street institutions that pay him!! Is he supposed to stop taking new orders when he hits a "net worth" of 999,999,999??
Because the Indian government is responsible for their people. We live in the United States, the world's wealthiest nation on the planet, where 40 percent of its citizens don't see a doctor regularly because they can't afford it. This is a weak trollish argument that has zero substance coming from you.
He isn't supposed to stop taking new orders, he's supposed to restructure his salaries and benefits so that his workers make a lot more money and he doesn't get to the point where he surpasses $999,999,999. Long before that he should have been giving greater rewards and payment to those that have enabled him to make anything close to that amount of money. Guess what happens when he does that. 1. His workers are happier pour more money back into the economy. 2. The economy having an influx of money grants the support needed for new businesses, innovation, and an expansion of existing businesses. 3. That in turn gives more people well paying jobs at these other new and expanded businesses. 4. This leads us back to even more workers making a better salary and so the whole goes back to 1. It's a cycle.
You aren't listening. The doctor should pay more, but not as much more as the billionaires and multi-billionaires. You go where can get the biggest bang for the buck and cause the least amount of pain while doing it.
There is a reason you get so much hate on this BBS. Because you just like to try to insult people. You have an irrational hatred of success and like to tear people down. Whether its the wealthy or James Harden you're just a hater. You've been called out over and over that you're just a hater. You should find things that make you happy about yourself and things that you like and not compare yourself to others. Did the girl you were in love with run off and marry someone because they were 'better' than you? And now you are just a mad, sad hater. You try to cover it up by what you've learned in your economics classes but its all a mask to cover the hatred in your heart. Its an unhealthy way to live. To be a hater and always fight with others and put down people and try to justify it with alleged intellectual ideas or methodical thought. You should talk to someone to clear up those issues inside you bro. It will burn you up inside. Best of luck.
I guess "trust fund baby" really did hit a nerve with you. Hilarious coming from someone who I've seen multiple times disparage other people for doing things such as getting degrees and acting superior to them because you are a "entrepreneur". Get off your shitty undeserved high horse trust fund baby. You've literally made fun of and dismissed other posters' hard work multiple times.
The argument of Bernie's campaign isn't that we need money and they'll have to pay a little more so we can get it. Its a statement that people of that wealth level should not exist and that its immoral, only made through corruption and its a hatred that's pretty obvious. Many candidates and politicians say we need to tax X, Y and Z to pay for this and that etc. But few have a visceral hatred for a group of people and speak about it that brazenly. It's just a question of whether we are a liberal free society or whether we live under rules that limit our freedoms actions and how much wealth we are allowed to have.
You rely too much on binary thinking and binary arguments. There are more than two possibilities when it comes to financial policy. There is a spectrum of possible taxation where one increases the ROI and multipliers for benefits to the middle class and poor while not disincentivizing too heavily the rich. Scandinavia and Europe have been doing this for generations, and they also have constitutions, rights, and free markets. If the word socialism scares you so much, then call it 'compassionate capitalism.' When American liberals make simple pragmatic arguments for making the country a better place for everyone by redistributing wealth, your reductive argument that we must address all possible inequalities in the earth is a strawman. There are precisely zero American liberals arguing for equal outcomes for everyone in America or the world. There are many more reasonable objections to make about Bernie's plans and you're making none of them.
Not hit a nerve at all. I'm not the one using bad language. Most people's attacks say more about themselves. I don't 'hate' education as I have one and took out a lot of debt for my masters. Again why is it that you hate on everyone and everything so much? It's really indicative of something deeper. Was there expectations of something early on and failures or being looked down upon? And now you have to prove it to random people on a message board? Were you looked upon as a failure in your family and culture and as you see others succeeding around you, you begin to hate on anyone and everyone? You mask it with attempts to make your arguments sound rational and factual but the roots of your personality are in that of hating others successes maybe as a way of justifying your own failures or late or delayed start in life? Hating Billionaires, hating Trust Fund Babies, Hating James Harden. You need to stop hating and just love yourself.
I think it's more likely that Sanders wins the presidency without the Senate and possibly without the House. Again we have to look at 2018. The Democrats took back the House by flipping more than 40 Republican Districts. The Democrats that won those districts were moderate to conservative Democrats not the very liberal Sanders type candidates. In fact I asked this twice in the "Bernie Sanders for President" thread if anyone could name a very liberal Sanders type candidate that flipped a Republican seat, or just won in a Red or purple district in recent elections. The only answer I got was Bernie Sanders himself but that was 18 years ago and he replaced Jim Jeffords who switched parties from Republican to Democrat before retiring. The mistake is to look at the popularity of people like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar as a wave. They won overwhelmingly in blue districts and in Omar's case replaced an already very liberal Keith Ellison. Liberals winning in already blue districts doesn't change the overall math of Congress and as the saying goes the most important vote someone in Congress casts is the first one of who is in leadership. In the Senate we could replace the whole Democratic caucus with Sanders' clones and nothing will change as long as Mitch McConnel is still majority leader. Sanders path to victory isn't expanding the map but getting out more votes in deep blue areas. For example in the Milwaukee area Clinton got thousands more less votes than Obama and if she had Obama type numbers there she wins WI. That might get Sanders the presidency but it doesn't do anything to help Democrats defending purple districts. Also in the Senate in 2018 Democrats had a net loss of seats having their seats flipped in IN, TN, and FL. IN and TN are red states so the Democrats are already at at disadvantage. Yet in FL they suffered a double loss losing both the Senate seat and the governorship. In the Senate you had a moderate Democrat lose to moderate (Republican) but the governorship was the very liberal Andrew Gillum losing to the very conservative Ron DeSantis. If we look at the the Senate seats that the Democrats flipped in that sense that was the very moderate almost conservative Krysten Sinema beating the very conservative McSally in AZ and the the moderate almost conservative Doug Jones beating the very conservative Roy Moore. Roy Moore was a special case but that Sinema narrowly beat McSally, who was appointed to Jeff Flake's seat, is up for reelection. If y'all think that McSally can be defeated by running someone much more liberal than Sinema in a state that Trump won in 2016 good luck on that. Y'all are free to believe that there is a big liberal wave that will not just put Sanders into the Presidency but also sweep in a very liberal congress. I'm not seeing it and if any of y'all can point to the map where very liberal Congressional candidates can both flip the Senate and sweep out moderates im purple districts through primaries I would like to see it.
As a Bernie supporter, I am actually ok with billionaires in the simple, abstract sense. I get it, It's fine to have incentives so that people go out and try to make a product or a service or whatever and get rich. But the problem is the enormous influence power that that kind of money affords you and most billionaires (especially the ones you never hear about in the news) end up abusing that power. Either by buying politicians, skirting environmental regulations, avoiding criminal prosecution, silencing whistleblowers/opposition, selling products that are known to be harmful (opioids, fossil fuels, etc) or just by underpaying the many laborers that work for them. Power, when it is too highly concentrated, is corruptible. Whether that power lies in the government, private enterprise, or whatever. Just look at the Koch brothers, look at the irreparable harm they have likely done to this country over the last 20-30 years due to the hundreds or even thousands of elections they have influenced just through their money. We literally have an entire political party that doesn't even believe in the idea of climate change. It is insane. Look at the Sackler family, think of all the museums and colleges they have poured money into in an attempt to sanitize their hands of the opioid epidemic. These people are too powerful, and that has to change. So when Bernie says billionaires shouldn't exist, there is a very strong case against them. Obviously a "billionaires shouldn't exist" bill is never going to legally pass in Congress. But getting money out of the political system, and instituting wealth taxes that shrink these billionaires' wealth over time is the right direction to go.
So so much psychoanalysis built in strawmen. I've think I've repeated myself plenty that there is no hate towards billionares, at least the ones who avoid as much as possible doing corrupt and illegal things. It's a discussion about reforming systems and mechanisms that are in place that allows a people to accumulate near a trillion dollars in wealth when 40 percent of the country can't afford to do routine check ups and with many of those 40% working full time jobs doing the right thing. And you make light of people going to college as an insult and I'll make light of trust fund babies as an insult. So I need to psychoanalyze why you have complexes with government workers and college students?
This is why I've said that I don't like Bernie's antagonistic approach to the issue but the things he's saying are great. He's just saying it the wrong way. He's right that we don't need Billionaires and most of them made it by exploiting others, unfair labor practices, manipulation of the tax codes etc. Those aren't illegal but they are wrong. Bernie would be better off pointing out those practices and working on ways to end those. It wouldn't get some people upset and overreacting. Among the things proposed would be a tax that would reduce Billionaire's holdings and prevent future folks for becoming a billionaire because nobody needs to be a billionaire. Then he can point out all of the good that will be done with those taxes. That would be a better way of going about it. But he isn't doing that. That doesn't change the fact that he isn't saying Billionaires shouldn't be allowed to live. He's going after the money, not the people. No harm is done should what he says about Billionaires be implemented. It really doesn't make sense why you are so upset about it.
I agree but unless Trump is defeated and Mitch McConnel no longer the Majority leader there is going to be very little change. All of the Democrats have plans that improve health care, addresses climate change, gun control, and the wealth gap. Yet do we actually believe that a large majority of Americans are ready for the Sanders Revolution and not just support Sanders but also turnout a Sanders type Congress. Sanders is doing well and dominating 30% of Democrats, in a fractured field that might get him to the general but 30% of Democrats isn't the majority nor is it reflective of the country as a whole.
Except we elected an extremist in 2016 and in 2018 the GOP lost control of the House and several statehouses. History tends to show that the party in power tends to do worse in midterm elections. Consider how badly Obama got slaughtered in 2010 and Clinton in 1994.
Agreed. But the less than 30% of Democrats the other candidates are getting isn't the majority or reflective of the country as a whole either.
I just want to point out one thing here - Most of these billionaires are connected to very large corporations who generally hire highly educated people who are well paid , these aren't guys hiring people at $7.25 or even $15.00 hr for the most part. To say they exploited their workers is being rather disingenuous , consider that many made their wealth in tech , media and brand building (L'Oreal , Louis Vuitton). Honestly targeting these very wealthy individuals isn't getting to the root of the problem which is a centralization of power be that goods , services , information or intellectual property in the hands of a few. We saw something similar with the invention of the telephone and Ma Bell holding a virtual monopoly for nearly a century .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System There are several companies who today exist with comparable virtual monopolies - Facebook , Google , Amazon among many others tho not true monopolies they wield the economic power of such. Then you throw in Citizens United (worst decision the high court has made in modern times) and they are free to use their economic power as political will ..... There comes a point where these companies are just too damn powerful and their reach just too broad. They have their fingers in so many pies that their revenue and profits are staggering. But the anti-trust laws don't seem to apply being that they aren't true monopolies. Then you have to understand that this is how the free market works - These people aren't the robber barons of the past , they created something the world wants and people who create what these companies provide are going to compile a larger share of the comparative pie. With the rise of the internet , the reach of these companies is extended greatly. Demonizing these people isn't the answer .... not when what they have done is what we would all , for the most part like to do / accomplish. You look at Bezos - That guy stared as an online bookstore run out of an apartment and turned it into being the riches man on the planet - If that's not the epitome of the American dream , I don't know what is. Taxing these people out of existence isn't the answer .... I think a solution might be legislation requiring these companies to spread the wealth more , a greater share of the profits to employee compensation , better pay their employee's rather than windfalls for the top few and investors. I don't know how the hell you would implement that ..... but it sounds a whole hell of a lot more palatable to me than something so Un-American as taxing people because they have been successful.
coming in a bit late to the conversation, but the statement about doing "30 thousand times the labor of x or y" reminds me of the Wilt Chamberlain argument in Robert Nozick's work. Here's the quick summary: Let’s say a bunch of poor kids all pay to see Wilt Chamberlain play basketball. Wilt gets the money, the kids get to see the game. At the end of the day Wilt is richer and the kids are poorer. Since we wouldn’t object to any one of these transactions, why should we object to the resulting pattern? Robert Nozick went further and argued that any "pattern-based" notion of justice would require continual and unjustified interference in personal liberties. That was one of the most famous claims in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia . . . . And here's a slightly more detailed summary: Nozick illustrates and defends the entitlement theory in a famous thought-experiment involving the basketball player Wilt Chamberlain. Imagine a society in which the distribution of wealth fits a particular structure or pattern favored by a non-entitlement conception of justice - suppose, to keep things simple, that it is an equal distribution, and call it D1. Nozick's opponent must of course grant that this distribution is just, since Nozick has allowed the opponent himself to determine it. Now suppose that among the members of this society is Wilt Chamberlain, and that he has as a condition of his contract with his team that he will play only if each person coming to see the game puts twenty-five cents into a special box at the gate of the sports arena, the contents of which will go to him. Suppose further that over the course of the season, one million fans decide to pay the twenty-five cents to watch him play. The result will be a new distribution, D2, in which Chamberlain now has $250,000, much more than anyone else - a distribution which thereby breaks the original pattern established in D1. Now, is D2 just? Is Chamberlain entitled to his money? The answer to these questions, Nozick says, is clearly "Yes." For everyone in D1 was, by hypothesis, entitled to what he had; there is no injustice in the starting point that led up to D2. Moreover, everyone who gave up twenty-five cents in the transition from D1 to D2 did so voluntarily, and thus has no grounds for complaint; and those who did not want to pay to see Chamberlain play still have their twenty-five cents, so they have no grounds for complaint either. But then no one has any grounds for a complaint of injustice; and thus there is no injustice. What this shows, in Nozick's view, is that all non-entitlement theories of justice are false. For all such theories claim that it is a necessary condition for a distribution's being just that it have a certain structure or fit a certain pattern; but the Wilt Chamberlain example (which can be reformulated so that D1 is, instead of an egalitarian distribution, a distribution according to hard work, desert, or whatever) shows that a distribution (such as D2) can be just even if it doesn't have a particular structure or pattern. Moreover, the example shows that "liberty upsets patterns," that allowing individuals freely to use their holdings as they choose will inevitably destroy any distribution advocated by non-entitlement theories, whether they be socialist, egalitarian liberal, or some other theory of distribution. And the corollary of this is that patterns destroy liberty, that attempts to enforce a particular distributional pattern or structure over time will necessarily involve intolerable levels of coercion, forbidding individuals from using the fruits of their talents, abilities, and labor as they see fit. As Nozick puts it, "the socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults." This is not merely a regrettable side-effect of the quest to attain a just distribution of wealth; it is a positive injustice, for it violates the principle of self-ownership. Distributive justice, properly understood, thus does not require a redistribution of wealth; indeed, it forbids such a redistribution. Accordingly, the minimal state, far from being inconsistent with the demands of distributive justice, is in fact the only sure means of securing those demands. Point being, it's really difficult to justify radical redistribution of wealth on the scale of what's being discussed here and in other Democratic circles. Note: this is not to suggest or say that wealthier individuals shouldn't pay more in the way of legitimately justifiable taxes; but rather that a disproportionate seizure and redistribution of wealth from society's haves to the have-nots would be extremely difficult if not entirely impossible to justify.
Correct. It's not either which is why I've yet to say I'm fully supporting any of the Democratic candidates in the primaries but would support any of them in the general. If we're looking at ideological positions we have to look at the recent elections and see how ideological positioning did. I've made my argument and presented the evidence that the Democrats flipped the House running moderates. That said Biden isn't Conor Lamb, Buttegieg isn't Melissa Slotkin, Klobuchar isn't Angie Craig, and Bloomberg isn't Doug Jones. The individual candidate does make a difference which is why I think Sanders has a better chance of winning the election than flipping the Senate or even holding the House.
The exploitation of workers is only of the problems and legal manipulations used. Tech Billionaires and others have exploited tax loopholes and some labor exploitation as well. I do agree with you that getting them to spread the wealth more would be great. That is the key. One way of doing that would be capping the income or wealth holdings. They don't need the same profit margin if there is a limit on them. They can restructure their wages and benefits as well. Amazon is close to a monopoly but they are so diversified in their products that it's difficult to prove. They lost money for years because they had it to burn. Then they cornered the market... many markets and they haven't been paying their share of taxes. Amazon didn't pay taxes for years. Taxing them a reasonable amount won't tax them out of business.
