Capping wealth .... That just seems wrong to me. I have to stop earning because I hit some arbitrary threshold .... Count me out on that one. I've already stated that corporations should be the target on several occasions - the fact that they contributed a meager 7% of the total taxes collected last year is a damn joke. You guys are barking up the wrong tree on this one .... none of this crap seems constitutional to me.
Um .... if Bernie's getting 30% of the vote , that means the rest of the field is getting 70% and the rest of the field - Warren included - are much more moderate than Bernie. The only reason he's leading this thing is the volume of moderates.
That's fine. I don't think you will hit the Billion dollar threshold. And Nobody should. I think it's immoral to make that kind of profit. The money could be used to pay workers more, provide better benefits, etc. I don't think it's that you have to stop earning. You just need to restructure the wages so that the workers share in the wealth so the profit is still huge but not greedy. Nobody needs one billion dollars. It is more healthy for workers to get more wages and the owner/CEO to not get to one billion. I also agree with you that corporations should pay more too. They aren't mutually exclusive. We can do both. Our debt is huge. The needs to fix healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. are also huge. It isn't like there isn't enough to places to use the money. That's true even if some of it is used to reduce the debt.
Citizens United was just more oil into the fire. Buckley v Valeo (1976) is where the ball started rolling into legalized corruption. But even before the legalization of corruption money has always carried with it enormous political and economic power when concentrated. This is a universal issue that has come up time and again throughout societies.
Voters don't generally vote on clean ideological lines. The only person that comes close beating Bernie head to head is the 2nd most progressive senator in the race.
I voted for George and I wasn't a fan. I knew Nixon was a crook, and while I thought McGovern had the charisma of a turnip, I knew he was at least honest. George lost.
Most people with a billion dollars don't have it in cash or in a big safe like Scrooge McDuck. Its the value of a business. Someone like Warren Buffett has never sold stock but continued to own his stock. This stock allows him to define the destiny of his business. If he was capped at a billion, he would own $1 billion of a $500 billion dollar company and would probably have been thrown out of the company he built due to proxy voting of shares. A proposal like this basically says that if your company grows to over a billion in value you will lose it as you have to give parts of it away to other people or not let it grow. If the business doesn't grow you don't have large enough capital to invest in long-term capital intensive projects that can change the world. Amazon was valued at a billion when it was just selling books. So would Bezos have to then limit the growth of his business. Or i'm sure in this scenario the business is turned over to bureaucrats appointed by government and labor bodies to run the business for the benefit of all stakeholders. Do you think Amazon would ever have been anything more than a bookstore if this was the case? Most billionaires have ownership in a business they built (or inherited though those dilute and drop off over time). They don't have cash sitting around but its in the ownership of a company. Basically no one would be able to own a sports team like the rockets, no one could create or raise capital to valuations over a billion in fear of losing the business to god knows who's hands. If that was the case we wouldn't have the amazing products services and companies and life we have today as every entrepreneur would lose his business. Not sure this is a place i'd like to live in.
Not really. I'm genuinely curious about how his supporters see his health plan working, because I truly don't see it happening in four or eight years. I'd love to see it happen. I think universal healthcare is a basic right. I think it needs to happen. I just see it taking a long, long time and getting there in slow increments. We are too much of a capitalistic society. As far as the other comments. Eh. Maybe they were a bit much. I misunderstood the whole billionaire argument. I can see what he's saying, though I don't agree with it. I think billionaires obviously got their money because they built something great, for the most part. Many are starting to give their money away en masse. But they should be taxed like crazy. That tax should be redistributed into many things. Their companies should not be able to go tax free, as well. Sorry if this came across as flippant. I'm genuinely trying to learn of others opinions. I realize they're not professional, as I'm on a basketball message board, but I respect most people here. I'm trying to come to grips with the fact that Bernie may win the nomination, and that's hard considering my views kind of straddle political lines. I won't ever give a vote to Trump, because it goes against every principal I value in life. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the guy that I've long dismissed as too old, too frail, and too extreme.
I don't know if you know any producers who have products that sell on Amazon. They would all rather you bought them from somewhere else because they aren't making the money off of their products on Amazon. The reason why Amazon was operating at a loss for so many years as a public company is that they were building up to corner the market. They've done that. So the producers figure it's better to make a little bit of money than almost no money. Amazon can do that because they were able to operate at a loss for so long starting off. But if you ask people where they would like you to buy their product it isn't from Amazon. They make next to nothing but Amazon gets its money. I'm not a fan of their model of business. I love the convenience and I need to use Prime for my own business. They don't pay their share of taxes despite making a killing. So yes, I would love to change the model of Amazon's business long before it got this big. That is still different than reducing the money of Billionaires.
Climate change needs to start with pressuring China and India, through whatever means we can, into developing actual sanitation programs and waste removal, as well as air pollution restrictions. It in no way needs to start with trillions of American dollars being spent.
Are you referring to them influencing American politics? I think there are already some protections that exist. I am in favor of doing more to limit foreign money in American politics. I think one thing would be eliminating the idea that money is free speech would be one thing that would help that and help in general. Give each candidate a certain amount. They would all have that. Eliminate other contributions and cut out all of the influence can by. Then representatives are truly beholden to the voters and people in their districts and not to lobbyists and fat-cat billionaires. I know that isn't going to happen, and it isn't an original idea from me, but something I think I first read on these boards. I like that. As far as billionaires in other countries having billions, that's up to those nations.
I would be happy with this as a compromise even though I still disagree that Billionaires should exist. I think anything good they do could be done without them.
don't worry about what Berniw wants to do, worry about what he can do. Personally, I think he should push his agenda as a hard correction to free market capitalism run wild because at the end of the day I think a middleground is ideal.
I'm talking about their influence in general..... it's a global economy. What's the point of capping wealth if they can bypass it by going outside US borders?
I believe that doing things like capping wealth will reduce the chance for billionaires from any nation to exploit their workers. I also trust that a president who does apps billionaire wealth is more likely to push for human rights which will aid in that exploitation as well. Our economy is strong and part of the world economy. We will have a say in what our money buys and can use that leverage to provide some check on the most dubious of foreign billionaires too. With our middle class growing our economic say would increase. We use that as leverage as much as possible.
