Ultra-Rich: Divest Heavily or Get Eaten

[Jimmy Higgins]

The argument is, “they don’t have a lot of liquidity in their wealth and therefore it is not grotesque?”

The argument is that Buffet needs to hold onto that wealth so that he can continue to weild dramatic power?
And that is somehow a “must”? All of it?

I’m sure that kind of argument was compelling to the revolutionaries throughout history.

He's doing a lot of good with that wealth--a good you would destroy by taking it away.

So we've got a boatload of fat cats and one golden goose. Therefore... our tax law must be designed to pretend the fat cats are golden gooses. It isn't as simple as you want to pretend it is. The tax code can be modified to allow golden gooses to do their golden goose thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Are you doing good if you take far more than you give?

What has he taken?

Wealth that could have benefited both workers and consumers, higher pay and lower prices....if naked greed was not the driving force in the high end of town.

There can be no wealth without workers selling their time, skill and effort....more often than not, for too low a price. It is the workers who make it possible.

Thereby creating a two tiered society, those at the top with most of the world's wealth and power, with vast numbers of people struggling to make ends meet.

Once again, preaching rather than an answer.

 

[Angry Floof]

Wealth that could have benefited both workers and consumers, higher pay and lower prices....if naked greed was not the driving force in the high end of town.

There can be no wealth without workers selling their time, skill and effort....more often than not, for too low a price. It is the workers who make it possible.

Thereby creating a two tiered society, those at the top with most of the world's wealth and power, with vast numbers of people struggling to make ends meet.

Once again, preaching rather than an answer.

No, preaching is where you moralize people into thinking they deserve to be treated like unworthy slaves. DBT is talking about the people who actually do the work to generate the wealth of the rich and corporations while the rich and corporations treat them like unworthy slaves.

 

[DBT]

Wealth that could have benefited both workers and consumers, higher pay and lower prices....if naked greed was not the driving force in the high end of town.

There can be no wealth without workers selling their time, skill and effort....more often than not, for too low a price. It is the workers who make it possible.

Thereby creating a two tiered society, those at the top with most of the world's wealth and power, with vast numbers of people struggling to make ends meet.

Once again, preaching rather than an answer.

Ample information and evidence has been given.You don't accept answers. You reject anything that doesn't conform to your hard right wing business ideology where workers exist only to serve the business class.

 

[Metaphor]

I often think of the grotesque wealth of these people and what should happen in the context of the game of "Settlers of Catan." That is, they _say_ they are good people (Gates, e.g. or Buffet) but they still have grotesque amounts of money. Not lots of money, but grotesque amounts that continue to grow in unfair and unfairly protected ways.

So I feel that I'd like to see them divest themselves in a way they claim they consider fair. Don't dribble out amounts to vaccines, but really dump it - spin off a huge chunk that does vast good. And have a less grotesque amount remaining. And reduce your income to below grotesque levels. Let your people who produce for you keep more of the fruits of their labor. Don't take it just because you can.

And if, after 5 years, you haven't found a way to do this, then half gets taken (or 80%, even,) until you are below a grotesque amount. Just like the Robber Baron send half your resources back to the deck if you are holding more than 7 cards in "Catan" when someone rolls a 7. There's a parallel in history to this, when the inequity becomes too egregious, the uprising causes heads to roll. So pro-tip to the grotesquely wealthy - better to not wait for heads to roll.


Anyway, just something I think about. That change can have a sort of saw-tooth pattern, and it ain't pretty getting caught in the saw. When people are fed up, they are far beyond their sense of forbearance - far beyond.

The robber is really unfair. When you're holding five sheep because that's the hexes you've got and your saving them up to trade them in 4:1, then that fucking robber fucks you up.

 

[Rhea]

I often think of the grotesque wealth of these people and what should happen in the context of the game of "Settlers of Catan." That is, they _say_ they are good people (Gates, e.g. or Buffet) but they still have grotesque amounts of money. Not lots of money, but grotesque amounts that continue to grow in unfair and unfairly protected ways.

So I feel that I'd like to see them divest themselves in a way they claim they consider fair. Don't dribble out amounts to vaccines, but really dump it - spin off a huge chunk that does vast good. And have a less grotesque amount remaining. And reduce your income to below grotesque levels. Let your people who produce for you keep more of the fruits of their labor. Don't take it just because you can.

And if, after 5 years, you haven't found a way to do this, then half gets taken (or 80%, even,) until you are below a grotesque amount. Just like the Robber Baron send half your resources back to the deck if you are holding more than 7 cards in "Catan" when someone rolls a 7. There's a parallel in history to this, when the inequity becomes too egregious, the uprising causes heads to roll. So pro-tip to the grotesquely wealthy - better to not wait for heads to roll.


Anyway, just something I think about. That change can have a sort of saw-tooth pattern, and it ain't pretty getting caught in the saw. When people are fed up, they are far beyond their sense of forbearance - far beyond.

The robber is really unfair. When you're holding five sheep because that's the hexes you've got and your saving them up to trade them in 4:1, then that fucking robber fucks you up.

Truth. The existence of the robber due to grotesque hoarding sometimes has a terrible effect on others who are not grotesquely hoarding. Seems like everyone should play to avoid the need for the robber mechanism! (Pssst: make a trade with the player to your left: give them three of your sheep if they agree to give you back the two you need at your turn. They keep one, you don’t get robbed.)

 

[Elixir]

The argument is, “they don’t have a lot of liquidity in their wealth and therefore it is not grotesque?”

The argument is that Buffet needs to hold onto that wealth so that he can continue to weild dramatic power?
And that is somehow a “must”? All of it?

I’m sure that kind of argument was compelling to the revolutionaries throughout history.

He's doing a lot of good with that wealth--a good you would destroy by taking it away.

You're basically saying that rich people are more likely to spend money in ways that benefit the poor, than the poor would if you allowed them means to elevate themselves out of poverty.
It's a tired, extremely old argument that has failed virtually every test to which it has been put throughout history.

 

[ZiprHead]

The argument is, “they don’t have a lot of liquidity in their wealth and therefore it is not grotesque?”

The argument is that Buffet needs to hold onto that wealth so that he can continue to weild dramatic power?
And that is somehow a “must”? All of it?

I’m sure that kind of argument was compelling to the revolutionaries throughout history.

He's doing a lot of good with that wealth--a good you would destroy by taking it away.

You're basically saying that rich people are more likely to spend money in ways that benefit the poor, than the poor would if you allowed them means to elevate themselves out of poverty.
It's a tired, extremely old argument that has failed virtually every test to which it has been put throughout history.

The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity
The right yearns for an era when churches and local organizations took care of society's weakest—an era that never existed and can't exist today.

This vision has always been implicit in the conservative ascendancy. It existed in the 1980s, when President Reagan announced, “The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern,” and called for voluntarism to fill in the yawning gaps in the social safety net. It was made explicit in the 1990s, notably through Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, a treatise hailed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and William Bennett, which argued that a purely private nineteenth-century system of charitable and voluntary organizations did a better job providing for the common good than the twentieth-century welfare state. This idea is also the basis of Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to devolve and shrink the federal government at a rapid pace, lest the safety net turn “into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” It’s what Utah Senator Mike Lee references when he says that the “alternative to big government is not small government” but instead “a voluntary civil society.” As conservatives face the possibility of a permanent Democratic majority fueled by changing demographics, they understand that time is running out on their cherished project to dismantle the federal welfare state.

But this conservative vision of social insurance is wrong. It’s incorrect as a matter of history; it ignores the complex interaction between public and private social insurance that has always existed in the United States. It completely misses why the old system collapsed and why a new one was put in its place. It fails to understand how the Great Recession displayed the welfare state at its most necessary and that a voluntary system would have failed under the same circumstances. Most importantly, it points us in the wrong direction. The last 30 years have seen effort after effort to try and push the policy agenda away from the state’s capabilities and toward private mechanisms for mitigating the risks we face in the world. This effort is exhausted, and future endeavors will require a greater, not lesser, role for the public.

 

[Angry Floof]

The argument is, “they don’t have a lot of liquidity in their wealth and therefore it is not grotesque?”

The argument is that Buffet needs to hold onto that wealth so that he can continue to weild dramatic power?
And that is somehow a “must”? All of it?

I’m sure that kind of argument was compelling to the revolutionaries throughout history.

He's doing a lot of good with that wealth--a good you would destroy by taking it away.

You're basically saying that rich people are more likely to spend money in ways that benefit the poor, than the poor would if you allowed them means to elevate themselves out of poverty.
It's a tired, extremely old argument that has failed virtually every test to which it has been put throughout history.

Apparently when you "take away" money from the rich, you just then throw it in the garbage instead of using it and it goes nowhere. lol

 

[TV and credit cards]

I often think of the grotesque wealth of these people and what should happen in the context of the game of "Settlers of Catan." That is, they _say_ they are good people (Gates, e.g. or Buffet) but they still have grotesque amounts of money. Not lots of money, but grotesque amounts that continue to grow in unfair and unfairly protected ways.

So I feel that I'd like to see them divest themselves in a way they claim they consider fair. Don't dribble out amounts to vaccines, but really dump it - spin off a huge chunk that does vast good. And have a less grotesque amount remaining. And reduce your income to below grotesque levels. Let your people who produce for you keep more of the fruits of their labor. Don't take it just because you can.

And if, after 5 years, you haven't found a way to do this, then half gets taken (or 80%, even,) until you are below a grotesque amount. Just like the Robber Baron send half your resources back to the deck if you are holding more than 7 cards in "Catan" when someone rolls a 7. There's a parallel in history to this, when the inequity becomes too egregious, the uprising causes heads to roll. So pro-tip to the grotesquely wealthy - better to not wait for heads to roll.


Anyway, just something I think about. That change can have a sort of saw-tooth pattern, and it ain't pretty getting caught in the saw. When people are fed up, they are far beyond their sense of forbearance - far beyond.

I do not agree that the wealth of current billionaires should be pulled down in such an abrupt fashion. Without arguing about how the money was obtained, there are charitable foundations that keep giving for many years after the donor has passed. Consider Andrew Carnegie and his charitable foundations that exist to this day more than one hundred years after his death. The Pew family who's trust was set up over fifty years ago and is still giving. Kellogg, Ford, Robert Wood Johnson of J&J, Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, etc. These foundations do much good for many years. They just do it quietly. When our great grandchildren are old and tired and sitting down to their favorite PBS show, Lawrence Welk 2112 brought to them by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they may have to look up who these people were but they'll know they have left something for humanity that outlasted their time on earth. No, not Lawrence Welk!

For those who would not pass their wealth to charity, it should be done so by the government upon their death through donor advised funds. Of course the donor would no longer be around to advise the direction of the funds but fiddle-de-dee, this gets the money into established entities with the administration in place to handle it.

As far as "heads rolling". I think those days may have passed. China has shown it's people who the boss is. The US or most any prosperous nation could do the same if the will was there. Law enforcement training, weaponry, surveillance capabilities are all too advanced now. Any uprising can be quelled long before it is allowed to get out of hand.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The argument is, “they don’t have a lot of liquidity in their wealth and therefore it is not grotesque?”

The argument is that Buffet needs to hold onto that wealth so that he can continue to weild dramatic power?
And that is somehow a “must”? All of it?

I’m sure that kind of argument was compelling to the revolutionaries throughout history.

He's doing a lot of good with that wealth--a good you would destroy by taking it away.

Are you doing good if you take far more than you give?

It would help if you would quit basing your arguments on things not in evidence.

Reality: Buffet lives an upper middle class life.

Reality: His focus on long term gain rather than short term gain increases productivity of his companies. I would be very shocked if his spending exceeds this increase in gain. Thus his net take is less than zero.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A growing concentration of wealth at the top end, where a small percentage of the nations or worlds population have more than the rest combined is a case of taking more than you give. It doesn't matter whether or not Buffett lives a frugal lifestyle.

[Citation needed]: "growing".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Are you doing good if you take far more than you give?

What has he taken?

Wealth that could have benefited both workers and consumers, higher pay and lower prices....if naked greed was not the driving force in the high end of town.

There can be no wealth without workers selling their time, skill and effort....more often than not, for too low a price. It is the workers who make it possible.

Thereby creating a two tiered society, those at the top with most of the world's wealth and power, with vast numbers of people struggling to make ends meet.

You have some evidence he's paying below-market rates???

He does well because he runs things better than average--that is value he is creating, not value the workers are creating.

 

[Elixir]

A growing concentration of wealth at the top end, where a small percentage of the nations or worlds population have more than the rest combined is a case of taking more than you give. It doesn't matter whether or not Buffett lives a frugal lifestyle.

[Citation needed]: "growing".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Religious speaking detected.

He's distributing that vast income to the betterment of society--a far better outcome than if it were simply distributed to the people.

Nobody is saying 'distributed to the people' - the issue is, and always was, fair pay for work performed. Pay that reflects the market value of goods produced and services performed.

You are building Strawmen.

People = his workers. You're pretending 7 days isn't a week.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Wealth that could have benefited both workers and consumers, higher pay and lower prices....if naked greed was not the driving force in the high end of town.

There can be no wealth without workers selling their time, skill and effort....more often than not, for too low a price. It is the workers who make it possible.

Thereby creating a two tiered society, those at the top with most of the world's wealth and power, with vast numbers of people struggling to make ends meet.

Once again, preaching rather than an answer.

No, preaching is where you moralize people into thinking they deserve to be treated like unworthy slaves. DBT is talking about the people who actually do the work to generate the wealth of the rich and corporations while the rich and corporations treat them like unworthy slaves.

Preaching--you're taking it as a given that this is happening.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The argument is, “they don’t have a lot of liquidity in their wealth and therefore it is not grotesque?”

The argument is that Buffet needs to hold onto that wealth so that he can continue to weild dramatic power?
And that is somehow a “must”? All of it?

I’m sure that kind of argument was compelling to the revolutionaries throughout history.

He's doing a lot of good with that wealth--a good you would destroy by taking it away.

You're basically saying that rich people are more likely to spend money in ways that benefit the poor, than the poor would if you allowed them means to elevate themselves out of poverty.
It's a tired, extremely old argument that has failed virtually every test to which it has been put throughout history.

Giving money to the poor ends up with current qualify of life spending, it's the equivalent of giving a man a fish.

Buffet/Gates put billions in Covid vaccine research. That's teaching the man how to fish.

 

[Angry Floof]

No, preaching is where you moralize people into thinking they deserve to be treated like unworthy slaves. DBT is talking about the people who actually do the work to generate the wealth of the rich and corporations while the rich and corporations treat them like unworthy slaves.

Preaching--you're taking it as a given that this is happening.

What is so mysterious about this to you?

 

[DBT]

A growing concentration of wealth at the top end, where a small percentage of the nations or worlds population have more than the rest combined is a case of taking more than you give. It doesn't matter whether or not Buffett lives a frugal lifestyle.

[Citation needed]: "growing".

It's strange that you ask. You have ignored everything that has been provided. It's like its invisible to you.

 

[DBT]

Religious speaking detected.

He's distributing that vast income to the betterment of society--a far better outcome than if it were simply distributed to the people.

Nobody is saying 'distributed to the people' - the issue is, and always was, fair pay for work performed. Pay that reflects the market value of goods produced and services performed.

You are building Strawmen.

People = his workers. You're pretending 7 days isn't a week.

Being payed a decent wage for productive work at market value (wealth generated) is not the same as ''simply distributed to the people,'' which is what you said.

That is your Strawman.