Biden spanks billionaires

[BH]

I have a question.

Lets say Harris beats Trump in November and Trump with many billionaires and religious fanatics do try to take the government for themselves by force. Biden actually grows a pair and Harris does after January 20th and invokes the insurrection act and authorizes the military to actually kill some of the these billionaires and religious leaders and not just their poor deluded followers. Nor does he give the big wigs a pardon after its all over and lets them go about their business like nothing happened. What would happen afterwards?

Those poor billionaires, BH I really think you are mistreating the billionaires! After all we would be so so much worse off if George Soros and other banksters were tarred, feathered, and hung (not really).

But rather than going after said billionaires, would it not make more sense just to change our political structure where said billionaires would not be so politically powerful? Like making it illegal to buy out congress for example? Like making stock trading illegal for Nancy Pelosi and other congress people?

We really don't want to lose the billionaires (excepting George Soros of course) what we want to lose is their political influence. Without our billionaires we also lose progress and our way of life because the billionaires were the ones who took the risks to invent and produce the things we enjoy. Without our billionaires we become exactly like Africa is today, the continent that has no billionaires and everyone else living in squalor.

Hmm. I like the idea of each billionaire having a little dwarf slapping them like the king in game of thrones.

 

[Tigers!]

On a more serious note which billionaires would you not have killed and why?

I wouldn't kill the ones who behaved themselves and did not break the law trying to overthrow the government.

I admit I personally lean in favor of a Marxist economic setup but Marxism was based on being a democratic movement. If your workers don't want it,

Which implementation of Marxist economic setup was ever democratic? Marxism has been authoratian or dictotrial since its birth.

Marxism that is, who am I to force it on them? I'll work within a capitalist frame if that is what most people want in this country. I mean a nice wood floor is better than carpet but I'm not going to want a law saying everyone has to have wood flooring. So I'm not in favor of shooting the rich just because they rich and so forth.

What crime would you shoot them for?

I did not realise you are in favour of capital punishment or "summary street justice".

 

[Tigers!]

By participating in insurrection I'm talking about helping plan, buy and importing weapons, ect. Any billionaire who has nothing to do with insurrection would be safe. Lol

If you come for some billionaires eventually you will come for them all. They will not be safe.

 

[Tigers!]

Two things:

1) I'm going to need 24 hours notice of this purge, so I can move all of my money into gold.

What rate can you get on $AUD into gold?

 

[Bomb#20]

I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Most people would gladly suffer the burden of a 9-10 figure income, even if they only got to keep 5-10% of it.

Is that how you judge questions of fairness? By which person's situation most people would rather be in? If you were mugged by a one-armed man, you feel it would be fair for the mugger to get to keep your wallet because most people would gladly choose to be down a wallet rather than down an arm?

But even the most progressive tax schedule wouldn’t make billionaires pay their true “fair share”* due to their vastly disproportionate use of ‘public’ infrastructure, facilities etc., unless the tax was on wealth rather than income.

Why do you believe that? If a rich man has a twenty-seven times bigger bank account than yours, does the fire department come to his house twenty-seven times faster? Does the city deliver twenty-seven times hotter water to him?* By what mechanism do a billionaire's billion dollars cause him to use public infrastructure and facilities vastly disproportionately, or even proportionately, to how much his taxes are paying for their maintenance? The average federal tax bill is $13,000; Musk paid $11 billion in 2021. How do you figure Musk used 850,000 times more public infrastructure and facilities than the average American, let alone "vastly" more than 850,000 times more? You appear to be engaging in magical thinking.

(* West Wing allusion. Yes, Tom, I'm dating myself. )

 

[bilby]

The problem is the growing wealth imbalance. I don't think there is much debate over that.

(Source: nih.gov)

No real American cares about the world.

They care about the USA:

 

[Elixir]

Is that how you judge questions of fairness? By which person's situation most people would rather be in?

“Situation” covers a lot of ground, so no, not practical. Almost anything that can be proposed to institute “fairness” is impractical and/or based on “soft” subjective perceptions of value. In any event, rather than “the situation most people would want to be in”, we would want to look at the situation that each individual aspires to and what resources are available to them to pursue it. Fairness can be achieved in increments, but life ain’t fair, period.
Those who say inequality is a major driver of progress, creativity etc., are probably right.
My question is whether the long term HSS species survival prognosis is positively or negatively affected by the inequality index.

It’s fortunate that people’s tastes and desires vary somewhat; it might help (evolutionarily) with the odds in some situations.

 

[BH]

By participating in insurrection I'm talking about helping plan, buy and importing weapons, ect. Any billionaire who has nothing to do with insurrection would be safe. Lol

If you come for some billionaires eventually you will come for them all. They will not be safe.

Absolutely not. Only those guilty of the crime of trying to overthrow the government.

This is like saying the police put average citizens in jail for breaking the law and committing crimes so to avoid the police from eventually coming and getting everyone else we should let the average citizen criminal go.

 

[Bomb#20]

No real American cares about the world.

They care about the USA:

Consequently, no real American cares about the opinion of an Englishman as to who's a real American.

(But of course since I care about the world I can't be a real American, so I'm forced to admit that in spite of your tragic* Englishness your opinion is correct. Americans griping about inequality don't care about the world, because although the griping is window-dressed as a moral objection to inequality, their actual objection appears to be to middle-income people in their monkeysphere getting richer more slowly than rich people and poor people outside their monkeysphere. Tribalism is virtue signaling.)

(* Scott Pilgrim allusion. That's not dating myself so badly, is it?)

 

[Derec]

A good start would be paying their fair share of taxes rather than using their wealth to purchase lawmakers to ensure they don’t have to pay their fair share.

Define "fair share"?

 

[Bomb#20]

Define "fair share"?

More services to "us". More of the bill to "them".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1) Eat the rich doesn't work, it's never worked and it never can work. The problem is that the vast majority of that money is in productive things. It needs to remain in those things, trying to divert it is a form of eating your seed corn. I do agree the tax rate probably should be higher. (Although what I would actually like is a progressive consumption tax, no income taxes. Normally a consumption tax is regressive, but what if you make it scale based on how much someone spends that year?)

2) We do not want the French Revolution solution. That set France back about 30 years--it would relegate us to at most a second rate power.

3) I think the MAGA crowd would find themselves much less effective than they think. They probably have the majority of the guns--but they're short on competence (just look at 1/6) and they would be an army of cats. The only way they could win is if the army followed them.

 

[Elixir]

The problem is that the vast majority of that money is in productive things. It needs to remain in those things

Eliminating owners of those productive things doesn’t automatically cause the productive things to cease to exist or to cease being productive.

 

[Bomb#20]

The problem is that the vast majority of that money is in productive things. It needs to remain in those things

Eliminating owners of those productive things doesn’t automatically cause the productive things to cease to exist or to cease being productive.

And yet every time a society tried eliminating owners of those productive things the productive things to ceased to exist or ceased being productive. It's almost as though there are more automatic cause and effect relationships in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in communists' philosophy.

 

[Elixir]

And yet every time a society tried eliminating owners of those productive things the productive things to ceased to exist or ceased being productive.

Every time that didn’t happen, the non-event didn’t make history.

 

[Elixir]

The problem is that the vast majority of that money is in productive things. It needs to remain in those things

Eliminating owners of those productive things doesn’t automatically cause the productive things to cease to exist or to cease being productive.

And yet every time a society tried eliminating owners of those productive things the productive things to ceased to exist or ceased being productive. It's almost as though there are more automatic cause and effect relationships in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in communists' philosophy.

Societies tend to be very hamfisted in their direct eliminations of current ownerships. They usually break things in the process.
Antitrust actions are more like what I had in mind.

 

[BH]

1) Eat the rich doesn't work, it's never worked and it never can work. The problem is that the vast majority of that money is in productive things. It needs to remain in those things, trying to divert it is a form of eating your seed corn. I do agree the tax rate probably should be higher. (Although what I would actually like is a progressive consumption tax, no income taxes. Normally a consumption tax is regressive, but what if you make it scale based on how much someone spends that year?)

2) We do not want the French Revolution solution. That set France back about 30 years--it would relegate us to at most a second rate power.

3) I think the MAGA crowd would find themselves much less effective than they think. They probably have the majority of the guns--but they're short on competence (just look at 1/6) and they would be an army of cats. The only way they could win is if the army followed them.

I was not talking about a French Revolution. I was talking about how to deal with people actively breaking the law trying to overthrow the government or surrender and are tried and found guilty of it.

You may not have been thinking about me in your number 2 Loren, but some folks here judging by their posts here seem to think that is what I'm implying.

 

[BH]

On a more serious note which billionaires would you not have killed and why?

I wouldn't kill the ones who behaved themselves and did not break the law trying to overthrow the government.

I admit I personally lean in favor of a Marxist economic setup but Marxism was based on being a democratic movement. If your workers don't want it,

Which implementation of Marxist economic setup was ever democratic? Marxism has been authoratian or dictotrial since its birth.

Marxism that is, who am I to force it on them? I'll work within a capitalist frame if that is what most people want in this country. I mean a nice wood floor is better than carpet but I'm not going to want a law saying everyone has to have wood flooring. So I'm not in favor of shooting the rich just because they rich and so forth.

What crime would you shoot them for?

I did not realise you are in favour of capital punishment or "summary street justice".

Dude, I'm not in favor of street justice. You flat out shoot people engaged in active rebellion but those who surrender or are later charged with such a crime once the fighting stops should get a trial.

As for Marx he was very much in favor of democracy.

 

[TomC]

Which implementation of Marxist economic setup was ever democratic? Marxism has been authoratian or dictotrial since its birth.

Unfortunately for humanity, Marxism has only taken hold in a few places that were rather primitive and had no traditions of freedom and democracy. Unsurprisingly, the powerful elites in Russia, China, and Cambodia took advantage of that and turned Marxism into the state religion. With all the usual problems of an authoritarian theocracy, like genocidal disasters.

Here in more democratic places we used socialism to improve things.

But the Communist authoritarians sold out Marx and his dream of "the withering away of the state" because humans tend to do that.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

The usual lack of confusion between any and all economic strategies beyond the fictive veil of "capitalism"...