U.S. Politics: Attaquer son cul orange!

[Bonnot OG]

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

24 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

lol, it took me waaaay too long to get that joke.

I had a brilliant Belarussian student a couple of years ago who wrote a splendid essay presenting progressive taxation as a means of population control.
She told me such a perspective was rather standard in Eastern Europe.

Bah, I figured that would be a layup in the context of what I was discussing.

And your student was only half right. You’d need that plus a massive redistribution of wealth to developing countries, especially in Africa, which I support. But population control is a whole other can of worms that needs its own thread.  

[Rippounet]

My bad. By "population control" I mean political control of the masses, not demographics.

[Durckad]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That’s fair.  Without Musk, can we say with confidence that SpaceX would still exist?
 

This whole discussion seems to be a derivation of the “great person” idea of history about which there has always been a great deal of debate. 

Without NASA, would SpaceX exist?

[Fez]

6 minutes ago, Durckad said:

Without NASA, would SpaceX exist?

Without the Wright brothers, specifically Orville (Wilbur died young), would the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor to NASA, exist?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

Without the Wright brothers, specifically Orville (Wilbur died young), would the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor to NASA, exist?

Without da Vinci, would the Wright brothers ever dared to try and fly?

[sologdin]

 6% still sounds like a terribly small percentage to me.

nonono.  think cappy.  a 6% tax will quickly reduce persons with assets of $1,000,000,000 to penury, not for quantitative reasons, but for the qualitative rationale that they will have lost their incentive to remain productive members of society and therefore will immediately find a gutter in which to drown themselves, which is by the bye the true intention of johngaltism.

 

a great deal of debate

just like climate change.

[TrueMetis]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m not sure I understand your point.  Private enterprises can and should take a hand in curbing human impacts on Climate Change even if Governments are unwilling to take such actions.  Is the fact that some private actors will act responsibly even without coercion from the State a bad thing?

The State is not the only mechanism by with things can change.

What Horse said. Yes some may, but relying on them to do so is not a good idea. Because most won't. And a lot of those who do won't do so responsibly.

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying. There are thousands and thousands of new businesses being started by people every year who are not billionaires or part of the 1%. Surely that will continue.

Bill Gates and his buds started their business in his parents’ garage. Are there no more garages? Michael Dell started his business in his dorm room. Are there no more dorms? 

Let's not forget that the biggest threat to new business, is the existence of megacorps. Microsoft kills more new businesses than government intervention ever could. There are three big OS's Microsoft's Windows, with ~78% Apple's MasOS with ~13%, and Google's ChromeOS with ~6%. They all suck but there aren't really any other options. Note there that the only companies that can even hope to compete in this field are already multi-billion dollar giants. It took Google kind of money just to breach 6%.

Someone wanting to make a new business isn't going to be thinking "If I get successful the government may take away some of that" because that's not the concern. The concern is that if you start seeing real success one of the big guys you are taking from is just going to fucking crush you. The point where you'll get the government's attention is long after you've already gotten the big competitors attention.

[Bonnot OG]

 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Being at the head of a corporation whose profits are higher than most countries' GDP isn't "doing something well."
At some point super-wealth isn't about entrepreneurship anymore, it's only about power.

Also it seems that these corps aggregate the wealth to themselves, less and less going into investment -- except into things that addict and poison -- even kill -- people such as opioids and vaping -- and if it is of public benefit such as a medication that can save lives, make so expensive as to out of the reach of anybody but themselves.

Space exploration and other excellent programs such as those dealing with the environment have been progressively starved of funding, due to combination of less and less means to tax the over-rich, as they hide and and transfer their wealth outside of taxation zones, and due to the pressures of politicians and misinformation pr efforts that these over-rich have paid for -- to protect and increase their holdings, while giving nothing back.  (Maybe they are all in favor of national military spending to protect the locations of their estates etc. -- for the estates themselves, they all have their private armies now too.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'd be in favor of a Constitutional amendment prohibiting NY mayors running for POTUS: Guiliani; de Blasio; Bloomberg . . . .

Just sayin'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Caption from the NY Daily News:

Quote

" ’Yo runningo!’ El Bloombito is back because we really need someone to translate Michael Bloomberg’s White House run into bad Spanglish. '

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quote

"Because why not, here's Bloomy, Rudy, Trump, and Bill Clinton playing golf together in 2008"

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Further --

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billionaires-democratic-primary-bill-gates-mike-bloomberg_n_5dc4f07fe4b00927b2308d5dQuote:

Quote

 

"....The problem for all of the candidates ― from Sens. Cory Booker to Kamala Harris to Amy Klobuchar ― is that what makes billionaires swoon makes 99% of the country furious. As a result, nobody has come close to matching Sanders and Warren’s collective appeal. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg remains in the realm of respectability, and former Vice President Joe Biden continues to float on name recognition, but neither candidate looks like a solid winner. With the rest of the gang mired in the single digits, the super-rich are beginning to panic. First, billionaire Tom Steyer and now, fellow plutocrat Michael Bloomberg decided to abandon the kingmaker facade altogether and get in the race themselves.

Their [the billionaires'] desperate bids for the presidency make one thing crystal clear: The 2020 Democratic primary is a referendum on billionaire control of the Democratic Party. At least we can all stop shadow-boxing with the word “moderate....

But the fact that so many super-rich folks are even trying to get into the primary has surfaced a long-brewing contradiction at the heart of the modern Democratic Party, one that’s made the party uniquely vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s buffoonish demagoguery. Most Democrats think of themselves as champions of the little guy. We’re the party of working people and people of color. The Republicans, we like to tell ourselves, are the party of the rich ― silver-spoon 47%-bashers like Mitt Romney and racist rentiers like Trump.

That story papers over the fact that both parties have courted and favored America’s super-rich, over and against the interests of the rest of the country.”....

 

Also, recall, Bloombito has been a registered rethug more often than an indie or a Dem.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

8 hours ago, SerTarod said:

As a matter of interest, how many of the current billionaires (or the "1%") are indeed the original founder / innovator / original job provider / original economy saviour (type A for ease of reference)? and how many are simply finance people like hedge fund and investment types (type B etc)?

 

I appreciate the argument that a comparatively punitive taxation of the 1% (but specifically of the economic saviours) will (or at least may) impact on the economy (some spurious arguments here about layoffs and reduced R&D) but I don't buy into it.

 

So my question to Free Northman Reborn (and possible Ran): do you feel the same love for hedge fund guys and investment types like the senior management at Goldman Sacks (who got a free ride out of the 2008 crash) that you appear to have for Gates and Musk et al?

I have yet to read or see convincing evidence that the type B set have positively influenced the economy and have merely manipulated and benefitted from it at the severe expense of the bulk of humanity.

If you don't think the finance sector has a positive influence on the economy you can look right back at the year 2008. That was when the financial system briefly stopped functioning, and the world economy had to do without it. 

You probably noticed a difference. 

[DanteGabriel]

15 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

If you don't think the finance sector has a positive influence on the economy you can look right back at the year 2008. That was when the financial system briefly stopped functioning, and the world economy had to do without it. 

You probably noticed a difference. 

Lol the finance sector in 2008 got drunk on its own cleverness, choked on its own vomit and the rest of the world paid the price for their fuckups.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Also it seems that these corps aggregate the wealth to themselves, less and less going into investment

Yes, stock buybacks are a major issue related to this. I know Warren has targeted them as something to regulate. 

The regulatory climate in the U.S. have created ugly distortions in the market. Corporatiote boards are given incentives to boost shareholder returns to the point of mania. A lot of it comes down to a rule change at the SEC in the Reagan years that really needs to be rolled back. Buybacs are just a cynical way of manipulating the stock price.

[Zorral]

38 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

If you don't think the finance sector has a positive influence on the economy you can look right back at the year 2008. That was when the financial system briefly stopped functioning, and the world economy had to do without it. 

You probably noticed a difference. 

Yah -- they caused it by stock manipulations, insider trading over valuing and undervaluing and sponsoring / propping up numerous ponzi schemes like bad risk mortagages.

[TrueMetis]

38 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

If you don't think the finance sector has a positive influence on the economy you can look right back at the year 2008. That was when the financial system briefly stopped functioning, and the world economy had to do without it. 

You probably noticed a difference. 

Bold move to use the finance sector fucking us all over as evidence to its positive influence.

 

The financial system stopped functioning because the shit the finance sector had been doing finally caught up to them. And we got caught up in the blast.

[Zorral]

How it rolls:

Preliminary testimony, safe space, confidential from witnesses called in the quid pro quo investigation:  "Bad, evil, unamerican, unfair, witch hunt, lies -- must have transparency and public testimonies -- rethugs storm the safe room, howling screaming, trying to record, trying to take it over, even though there are rethugs on the committee who ask all the questions they want -- which now we see from released transcripts they didn't ask about the purpose of the investigation but about the Bidens and Dems.

Public testimony, plus transcripts of what happened behind closed doors released every day -- now rethugs yell No No No! public testimony is show trial, witch trial, bad, evil, unamerican, unfair, witch hunt, lies. 

So -- nobody can testify because this is all lies and illegitimate, and we need to shut it all down RIGHT NOW.

Heads spin around and around like the demon possessed in horror flix.

You betcha a billionaire is gonna fix this ....

[Impmk2]

6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

This thread is so exasperating, it reminds me why I take periodic breaks from this forum. It’s a socialist “twilight zone” pocket universe. 

This got me wondering exactly how popular the wealth tax is in the US. Was thinking it'd probably break down on a partisan basis. So 40% or so support.

But no. A wealth tax enjoys overwhelming public support. Popular across party lines.

So far from a pocket universe I think you need to look at your own bubble.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I wonder if CNN’s website is trolling me. They have three stories in a row about homelessness and then the next story is a picture of a disheveled Steve Bannon. That can’t be an accident.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Without da Vinci, would the Wright brothers ever dared to try and fly?

We all “stand on the shoulders of giants”.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

What Horse said. Yes some may, but relying on them to do so is not a good idea. Because most won't. And a lot of those who do won't do so responsibly.

 

I don’t disagree.  But impeding those who attempt to help seems a poor idea as well. 

You appear, please correct me if I’m wrong, to want to impede private space exploration.