Is it moral to have this much of the world's resources?

[Taco]

No. I didn't say anyone who isn't a socialist is retarded. I said being paranoid abut socialism is retarded.

Truth? I know plenny.

I also know you didn't engage my examples of Ireland and Finland (just two of the latest and greatest). ..and did you know, they still also have private property and ownership?

This whole debate is happening on 3rd grade "they have cooties" sort of way, so I think my choice of insults is fitting.

There's nothing "idealist" about using two modern successful nations as examples of alternate models (nice try at the straw man fallacy though). Both are quire real, not ideal.

I get it. You have no clue. You never read about them, and you won't. You'd rather makecrude comments about fire hoses wilst dragging your knuckles around your apartment.

Whatever. Thankfully, we have smarter guys than you working on this stuff.

 

[editec]

Really? Hmmm...this old dinosaur does not give a crap what you think....get bigger teeth and move me out of the way if you think you can. Otherwise, quit whining.

Seems to me most of the whining going on here has to do with people bitching about having to pay taxes for police, military, roads schools and the host of other things that they enjoy, but don't want to pay for.

Seems to me that most of the self deluding libertarian wannabes here want what society has given them, but think they are self made men, and deluding themselves that welfare is costing them a hell of a lot of money.

It's a common enough conceit among young people who are still looking forward to advancements in their careers and lives, to think that everything they got they got on their own, I suppose.

I felt exactly the same way when I was very young and full of vim and vinegar, too.

The fact is that people do have to work hard to make it, but they tend to want to ignore the fact that they CAN work hard at some productive job or business ONLY BECAUSE because they live in a civil society with a fuctional government to keep it so.

Had Bill Gates been born in a truly libertarian society (i.e., in a state without a government, but one without taxes, too) he would NOT have become the amazingly successful person he became, he'd likely have ended up penniless like most people who live in anarchy.

Now he obviously recognizes his good fortune to have been born in a society with a fuctional gioovernment paid for by taxes, and he has the decency (and the enlightened self interest, too) to give most of his fortune back.

But you lil'puts, you radical libertarians who really apparently don't have a clue about how dependent you are on a functional society to be ABLE to work hard to make something of yourselves, aren't quite men (or women) enough to admit that you OWE your society something.

 

[CSM]

No. I didn't say anyone who isn't a socialist is retarded. I said being paranoid abut socialism is retarded.

Truth? I know plenny.

I also know you didn't engage my examples of Ireland and Finland (just two of the latest and greatest). ..and did you know, they still also have private property and ownership?

This whole debate is happening on 3rd grade "they have cooties" sort of way, so I think my choice of insults is fitting.

There's nothing "idealist" about using two modern successful nations as examples ofalternate models (nice try at the straw man fallacy though).

I get it. You have no clue. You never read about them, and you won't. You'd rather makek crude comments about firehoses wilst drasgging your knuckles around your apartment.

Whatever. Thankfully, we have smarter guys than you working on this stuff.

Yeah, that's me...the knuckledragging idiot.

What strawman? I mentioned no other countries or fictional situations. I stated my personal opinions. You don't like them then too bad for you.

What makes you think I am in an apartment? Don't use your standards to try to guess what my lifestyle is like.

I dont give a rats ass about Ireland or Finland and have no desire to live in either country.

I get it, you are a high school kid suffering from terminal acne who hasn't got a job and thinks its cool to live by the good graces of somebody elses hard work. Get back to me when reality enters into your thinking.

 

[CSM]

Seems to me most of the whining going on here has to do with people bitching about having to pay taxes for police, military, roads schools and the host of other things that they enjoy, but don't want to pay for.

You are partially correct. I dont want to pay for a bunch of no working, lazy assed folks who want to make welfare a way of life.

Seems to me that most of the self deluding libertarian wannabes here want what society has given them, but think they are self made men, and deluding themselves that welfare is costing them a hell of a lot of money.

You don't think working for what you get is a good thing? You think that no one can be self made? Do you really believe that none can survive unless there is a government to take care of you?

It's a common enough conceit among young people who are still looking forward to advancements in their careers and lives, to think that everything they got they got on their own, I suppose.

I suppose. I am well beyond that stage.

I felt exactly the same way when I was very young and full of vim and vinegar, too.

Too funny. Your implication that I am a younger person is so far out in left field that it makes me laugh. From such remarks I can imagine that you have tried and failed and now want Mom and Pop government to rescue you.

The fact is that people do have to work hard to make it, but they tend to want to ignore the fact that they CAN work hard at some productive job or business ONLY BECAUSE because they live in a civil society with a fuctional government to keep it so.

I agree with that, but all the laws in the world dont make society civil. It is kept civil by those willing to do violence for the common good...police and soldiers for example.


Had Bill Gates been born in a truly libertarian society (i.e., in a state without a government, but one without taxes, too) he would NOT have become the amazingly successful person he became, he'd likely have ended up penniless like most people who live in anarchy.

I disagree. Folks like bill Gates are successful because they provide a service or commodity that other people place some value upon.

Now he obviously recognizes his good fortune to have been born in a society with a fuctional gioovernment paid for by taxes, and he has the decency (and the enlightened self interest, too) to give most of his fortune back.

How nice.

But you lil'puts, you radical libertarians who really apparently don't have a clue about how dependent you are on a functional society to be ABLE to work hard to make something of yourselves, aren't quite men (or women) enough to admit that you OWE your society something.

I have paid my supposed "debt" to society several times over. The problem is you and others like you want MORE payment because you weren't around when I paid it.

You know a rising tide does indeed raise all boats (except those that are sinking) but a lowering tide just the opposite. Lowering everyone to the same standard may make you feel better but it doesn't really solve the problem.

 

[sealybobo]

More proof America is becoming a third world nation due to republican voodoo economics. A hard question: Is it moral (not legal) to make that much money?


"Piketty and Saez’s top bracket comprises 0.01 percent of U.S. taxpayers. There are 14,400 of them, earning an average of $12,775,000, with total earnings of $184 billion. The minimum annual income in this group is more than $5 million, so it seems reasonable to suppose that they could, without much hardship, give away a third of their annual income, an average of $4.3 million each, for a total of around $61 billion. That would still leave each of them with an annual income of at least $3.3 million.

Next comes the rest of the top 0.1 percent (excluding the category just described, as I shall do henceforth). There are 129,600 in this group, with an average income of just over $2 million and a minimum income of $1.1 million. If they were each to give a quarter of their income, that would yield about $65 billion, and leave each of them with at least $846,000 annually."

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You? Peter Singer

"What is a human life worth? You may not want to put a price tag on a it. But if we really had to, most of us would agree that the value of a human life would be in the millions. Consistent with the foundations of our democracy and our frequently professed belief in the inherent dignity of human beings, we would also agree that all humans are created equal, at least to the extent of denying that differences of sex, ethnicity, nationality and place of residence change the value of a human life."

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?, by Peter Singer

At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy?

It's a debate we haven't had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and last week, by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn't be had again in this generation.

But it's a debate that's vital to the survival of democracy in America.

In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..."

In this, he was making the same argument that the Framers of Pennsylvania tried to make when writing their constitution in 1776. As Kevin Phillips notes in his masterpiece book "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich," a Sixteenth Article to the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights (that was only "narrowly defeated") declared: "an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness of mankind, and, therefore, every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."

Unfortunately, many Americans believe our nation was founded exclusively of, by, and for "rich white men," and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the super-rich. They would have us believe that the Constitution's signers didn't really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government.

But the signers didn't send other people's kids to war, as have two generations of the oligarchic Bush family. Many of the Founders themselves gave up everything, even risking (and losing) their lives, their life's savings, or losing their own homes and families to birth this nation.

The myth/theory of the "greedy white Founders" was first widely advanced by Columbia University professor of history and self-described socialist Charles Beard, who published in 1913 a book titled "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States."

Numerous historians - on both the right and the left - have since cited his work as evidence that America was founded solely for the purpose of protecting wealthy interests. His myth unfortunately helps conservatives support ending the "death tax" as "the way the Founders would have wanted things" so that the very richest few can rule America.

Every generation sees the past though the lens of its own time. Beard, writing as the great financial Robber Baron empires of Rockefeller, Gould, Mellon, and Carnegie were being solidified, looked back at the Framers of the Constitution and imagined he was seeing an earlier, albeit smaller, version of his own day's history.

But Beard was wrong.

The majority of the signers of the Constitution were actually acting against their own best economic interests when they put their signatures on that document, just as had the majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Beard thought he saw his own era's Robber Barons among the Colonial economic elite. And, had the Revolution not happened, he might have been right. But, during and after the Revolutionary War, the great fortunes loyal to the Crown were dispersed or fled, and while some of the wealthy British families of 1776 still hold hereditary seats in the British House of Lords, nobody can point to a Rockefeller dynasty equivalent that survived colonial times in the United States.

While there were some in America among the Founders and Framers who owned a lot of land, Pulitzer Prize winning author Bernard Bailyn suggests in his brilliant 2003 book "To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders" that they couldn't hold a candle to the true aristocrats of England. With page after page of photographs and old paintings of the homes of the Founders and Framers, Bailyn shows that none of those who created this nation were rich by European standards.

After an artful and thoughtful comparison of American and British estates, Bailyn concludes bluntly: "There is no possible correspondence, no remote connection, between these provincial dwellings and the magnificent showplaces of the English nobility..." After showing and describing to his reader the mansions of the families of power in 18th century Europe, Bailyn writes: "There is nothing in the American World to compare with this."

In "Wealth and Democracy," Kevin Phillips notes that: "George Washington, one of the richest Americans, was no more than a wealthy squire in British terms." Phillips says that it wasn't until the 1790' s - a generation after the War of Independence - that the first American accumulated a fortune that would be worth one million of today's dollars. The Founders and Framers were, at best, what today would be called the upper-middle-class in terms of lifestyle, assets, and disposable income.

Even Charles and Mary Beard granted that wealth and land-ownership were different things. Land, after all, didn't have the scarcity it does today, and thus didn't have the same value. Just about any free man could find land to settle, either where Native Americans had been decimated by disease or displaced by war.

In fact, with his Louisiana Purchase adding hundreds of millions of acres to America, Jefferson even guaranteed that the value of his own main asset - his land - and that of most of his peers, would drop for the next several generations.

When George Washington wrote his will and freed his slaves on his deathbed, he didn't have enough assets to buy the slaves his wife had inherited and free them as well. Like Jefferson, who died in bankruptcy, Washington was "rich" in land but poor in cash.

In 1958, one of America's great professors of history, Forrest McDonald, published an extraordinary book debunking Charles Beard's 1913 hypothesis that the Constitution was created of, by, and for rich white men. McDonald's book, titled "We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution," bluntly states that Beard's, "Economic interpretation of the Constitution does not work."

Over the course of more than 400 meticulously researched pages, McDonald goes back to original historical records and reveals who was promoting and who was opposing the new Constitution, and why. He is the first and only historian to do this type of original-source research, and his conclusions are startling.

McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich. "These [debt relief/bankruptcy laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard's hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent," says McDonald. He adds: "Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write."

While Beard theorized that the Framers of the Constitution were largely drawn from the class of wealthy bankers and businessmen, McDonald showed that, "The most common and by far the most important property holdings of the delegates were not, as Beard has asserted, mercantile, manufacturing, and public security investments, but agricultural property." Most were farmers or plantation owners, and owning a lot of land did not make one rich in those days.

"Finally," McDonald concludes, "it is abundantly evident that the delegates, once inside the convention, behaved as anything but a consolidated economic group."

McDonald then goes into an exhaustive and detailed state-by-state ana lysis of the state constitutional ratifying conventions that finally brought the U.S. Constitution into law. For example, in the State of Delaware, which voted for ratification, "almost 77 percent of the delegates were farmers, more than two-thirds of them small farmers with incomes ranging from 75 cents to $5.00 a week. Only slightly more than 23 percent of the delegates were professional men - doctors, judges, and lawyers. None of the delegates was a merchant, manufacturer, banker, or speculator in western lands."

In other states, similar numbers showed up. Of the New Jersey delegates supporting ratification, 64.1 percent were small farmers.

In Maryland, "the opponents of ratification included from three to six times as large a proportion of merchants, lawyers, and investors in shipping, confiscated estates, and manufacturing as did the delegates who favored ratification."

In South Carolina it was those in economic distress who carried the day: "No fewer than 82 percent of the debtors and borrowers of paper money in the convention voted for ratification." In New Hampshire, "of the known farmers in the convention 68.7 percent favored ratification."

But did farmers support the Constitution because they were slave owners or the wealthiest of the landowners, as Beard had guessed back in 1913?

McDonald shows that this certainly wasn't the case in northern states like New Hampshire or New Jersey, which were not slave states. But what about Virginia and North Carolina, the two largest slaveholding states, asks McDonald rhetorically. Were their plantation owners favoring the Constitution because it protected their economic and slaveholding interests?

"The opposite is true," writes McDonald. "In both states the wealthy planters - those with personality interests [slaves] as well as those without personality interests - were divided approximately equally on the issue of ratification. In North Carolina small farmers and debtors were likewise equally divided, and in Virginia the great mass of the small farmers and a large majority of the debtors favored ratification."

After dissecting the results of the ratification votes state by state McDonald sums up: "Beard's thesis... is entirely incompatible with the facts."

So what did motivate the Framers of the Constitution?

Along with the answer to this question, we may also find the answer to another question historians have asked for two centuries: Why was the Constitutional Convention held in secret behind locked doors, and why did James Madison not publish his own notes of the Convention until 1840, just after the last of the other participants had died?

The reason, simply put, was that most of the wealthy men among the delegates were betraying the interests of their own economic class. They were voting for democracy instead of oligarchy.

As with any political body, a few of the delegates, "a dozen at the outside" according to McDonald, "clearly acted according to the dictates of their personal economic interests."

But there were larger issues at stake. The people who hammered out the Constitution had such a strong feeling of history and destiny that it at times overwhelmed them.

They realized that in the seven-thousand-year history of what they called civilization, only once before, in Athens - and then only for the brief flicker of a few centuries - had anything like a democracy ever been brought into existence and survived more than a generation.

Their writings show that they truly believed they were doing sacred work, something greater than themselves, their personal interests, or even the narrow interests of their wealthy constituents back in their home states.

They believed they were altering the course of world history, and that if they got it right we could truly create a better world.

Thus the secrecy, the locked doors, the intensity of the Constitutional Convention. And thus the willingness to set aside economic interest to produce a document - admittedly imperfect - that would establish an enduring beacon of liberty for the world.

As George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, wrote to the nation on September 17, 1787 when "transmitting the Constitution" to the people of the new nation: "In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence."

He concluded with his "most ardent wish" was that the Constitution "may promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, and secure her freedom and happiness..."

Since the so-called "Reagan revolution" more than cut in half the income taxes the multimillionaires and billionaires among us pay, wealth has concentrated in America in ways not seen since the era of the Robber Barons, or, before that, pre-revolutionary colonial times. At the same time, poverty has exploded and the middle class is under economic siege.

And now come the oligarchs - the most wealthy and powerful families of America - lobbying Congress that they should retain their stupefying levels of wealth and the power it brings, generation after generation. They say that democracy doesn't require a strong middle class, and that Jefferson was wrong when he said that "overgrown wealth" could be "dangerous to the State." They say that a permanent, hereditary, aristocratically rich ruling class is actually a good thing for the stability of society.

While a $1.5 million trigger for the estate tax is arguably too low - particularly given the recent bubble in real estate prices - that doesn't invalidate the concept of a democracy defending itself against oligarchy. Set the trigger at 10 million, or fifty million. Make sure that family farms and small businesses are protected. And make sure that people who have worked hard and earned a lot of money can have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will live very comfortably.

But let's also make sure that we don't end up like so many Latin American countries, where a handful of super-rich families rule their nations, and democracy is more show than substance.

The Founders of our republic fought a war against an aristocratic, oligarchic nation, and were very clear that they didn't want America to ever degenerate into aristocracy, oligarchy, or feudalism/fascism. We must hold to their vision of an egalitarian, democratic republic.

Now the Estate Tax is before the Senate. Encourage your US Senator to fight against mega-millionaire and US Senate leader Bill Frist, and to keep the estate tax intact.

 

[Taco]

Yeah, that's me...the knuckledragging idiot.

What strawman? I mentioned no other countries or fictional situations. I stated my personal opinions. You don't like them then too bad for you.

What makes you think I am in an apartment? Don't use your standards to try to guess what my lifestyle is like.

I dont give a rats ass about Ireland or Finland and have no desire to live in either country.

I get it, you are a high school kid suffering from terminal acne who hasn't got a job and thinks its cool to live by the good graces of somebody elses hard work. Get back to me when reality enters into your thinking.

Wow. So much evidence of poor reasoning skill in one post...where to start!

So. You don't care about examples of how other systems work. You are content to make generalizations, though reluctant to EDUCATE yourself. That's retarded.

I used apartment as a handy word. So you have a house like I do. Big deal. (and how many high school kids are 35 and have homes?). Again: retarded.

The rest is a wash, because you refuse to educate yourself. You have a head full of fantasies about what you think 'socialism' is, but you don't take the time to read about how these other countries actually work.

Ya, retarded.

Willfully ignorant.

Sorry. I thought I was talking to an equal.

Clearly not.

 

[CSM]

Wow. So much evidence of poor reasoning skill in one post...where to start!

So. You don't care about examples of how other systems work. You are content to make generalizations, though reluctant to EDUCATE yourself. That's retarded.

I used apartment as a handy word. So you have a house like I do. Big deal. (and how many high school kids are 35 and have homes?). Again: retarded.

The rest is a wash, because you refuse to educate yourself. You have a head full of fantasies about what you think 'socialism' is, but you don't take the time to read about how these other countries actually work.

Ya, retarded.

Willfully ignorant.

Sorry. I thought I was talking to an equal.

Clearly not.

You are correct...you are NOT my equal and never will be.

You have no idea what I have educated myself about, made a bunch of conjectures about my mental state and in what can only be described as arrogance decided that you are enlightened and I am not. That is exactly why I refuse to consider a serious discussion about ANYTHING with you.

You are right; I do not give a damn about how socialism works in Ireland and Finland. That does mean I do not KNOW how they work, it means exactly what I wrote.

What you really mean is because I won't agree with you, I must be a knuckle dragging moron. OOPS I mean retarded individual.

 

[Taco]

You are correct...you are NOT my equal and never will be.

You have no idea what I have educated myself about, made a bunch of conjectures about my mental state and in what can only be described as arrogance decided that you are enlightened and I am not. That is exactly why I refuse to consider a serious discussion about ANYTHING with you.

You are right; I do not give a damn about how socialism works in Ireland and Finland. That does mean I do not KNOW how they work, it means exactly what I wrote.

What you really mean is because I won't agree with you, I must be a knuckle dragging moron. OOPS I mean retarded individual.

Nah, you don't care to know. And you don't stop lying.

 

[CSM]

Nah, you don't care to know. And you don't stop lying.

How do you KNOW I'm lying?

The bottom line is, you are making judgements based on my disagreement with your PoV and nothing else. You are not interested in serious discussion at all; that is evidenced by the backhanded insults in your every post so far in this thread. You are busy trying to impress "the internet" with your superior intelligence and enlightened philosophy.

I have no doubt that you think socialism is a great idea. I know that it is partially succesfull in some countries. That does not necessarily mean that it will work at all in a country with a much greater population, land mass and infrastructure not to mention culture.

The fact that you own a house (if true) means you obviously believe you should keep some of your hard earned money for yourself. Rather selfish of you, don't you think? How many "homeless" people living with you? How many of those starving show up at YOUR door for every meal; how much money are you giving to the government above and beyond what they tax you? All rhetorical questions but I bet the answer to each is: ZERO. The point is that when folks like you talk about socialism as a great idea, you mean FOR SOMEBODY ELSE.

 

[editec]

At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy?

The $64,000,000,000 question.

It's a debate we haven't had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and last week, by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn't be had again in this generation.

Of course they did. They're the party of the wealthy. That's their job.

But it's a debate that's vital to the survival of democracy in America.

Damned straight it is

In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..."

Written like the puaper he really was. Naturally, I quite agree with him.

In this, he was making the same argument that the Framers of Pennsylvania tried to make when writing their constitution in 1776. As Kevin Phillips notes in his masterpiece book "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich," a Sixteenth Article to the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights (that was only "narrowly defeated") declared: "an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness of mankind, and, therefore, every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."

The Founding Fathers understood the now vicious circle of inherited wealth could cripple a nation over the long run. they'd just escaped a nation so crippled by it.

Unfortunately, many Americans believe our nation was founded exclusively of, by, and for "rich white men," and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the super-rich. They would have us believe that the Constitution's signers didn't really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government.

Of course allowing the super-wealthy of their day (basically American slave owners) the right to continue to own wealth in the form of humanity makes that argument somewhat valid, doesn't it?

But the signers didn't send other people's kids to war, as have two generations of the oligarchic Bush family. Many of the Founders themselves gave up everything, even risking (and losing) their lives, their life's savings, or losing their own homes and families to birth this nation.

They were the last (and only) generation of well off men in American who actually risked life and fortune going to war EXCEPT the Slaveowning class of the South.

The myth/theory of the "greedy white Founders" was first widely advanced by Columbia University professor of history and self-described socialist Charles Beard, who published in 1913 a book titled "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States."


Numerous historians - on both the right and the left - have since cited his work as evidence that America was founded solely for the purpose of protecting wealthy interests. His myth unfortunately helps conservatives support ending the "death tax" as "the way the Founders would have wanted things" so that the very richest few can rule America.

It does seem they set it up that way, though, does it not?

Every generation sees the past though the lens of its own time. Beard, writing as the great financial Robber Baron empires of Rockefeller, Gould, Mellon, and Carnegie were being solidified, looked back at the Framers of the Constitution and imagined he was seeing an earlier, albeit smaller, version of his own day's history.

But Beard was wrong.

I must read this book. That much is obvious. Thank you for bringing it to attention, Seeleyboo.

The majority of the signers of the Constitution were actually acting against their own best economic interests when they put their signatures on that document, just as had the majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

True. They were risking being hanged. I'd say that falls into the "against you own best interests" catagory

Beard thought he saw his own era's Robber Barons among the Colonial economic elite. And, had the Revolution not happened, he might have been right. But, during and after the Revolutionary War, the great fortunes loyal to the Crown were dispersed or fled, and while some of the wealthy British families of 1776 still hold hereditary seats in the British House of Lords, nobody can point to a Rockefeller dynasty equivalent that survived colonial times in the United States.

I can.

With a considerable time for research (because family names change over time even when the fortunes remain largely intact) I can probably find MANY such fortunes which came over from England in colonial , stayed fortuneate during and after the Revolutionary war and are still among America's wealthy elite..

While there were some in America among the Founders and Framers who owned a lot of land, Pulitzer Prize winning author Bernard Bailyn suggests in his brilliant 2003 book "To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders" that they couldn't hold a candle to the true aristocrats of England. With page after page of photographs and old paintings of the homes of the Founders and Framers, Bailyn shows that none of those who created this nation were rich by European standards.

George Washinton was credited as being the wealthiest man in the colonies. Comparing wealth of the colonies to wealth of Europe is a misleading way of thinking of wealth. It's debatable, is my point.

After an artful and thoughtful comparison of American and British estates, Bailyn concludes bluntly: "There is no possible correspondence, no remote connection, between these provincial dwellings and the magnificent showplaces of the English nobility..." After showing and describing to his reader the mansions of the families of power in 18th century Europe, Bailyn writes: "There is nothing in the American World to compare with this."

True at the time of the revolution. But the wealthy of Settle colonies weren't exactly poor either. They wore clothes from Paris, had all they could possible eat, build fine masions and great estates, too.

In "Wealth and Democracy," Kevin Phillips notes that: "George Washington, one of the richest Americans, was no more than a wealthy squire in British terms." Phillips says that it wasn't until the 1790' s - a generation after the War of Independence - that the first American accumulated a fortune that would be worth one million of today's dollars. The Founders and Framers were, at best, what today would be called the upper-middle-class in terms of lifestyle, assets, and disposable income.

A bit of an understatment, I think. There were already slave holding fortunes and mercantile worth significantly more than an upper-middle class fortune even during the time of the Revolution.

Even Charles and Mary Beard granted that wealth and land-ownership were different things. Land, after all, didn't have the scarcity it does today, and thus didn't have the same value. Just about any free man could find land to settle, either where Native Americans had been decimated by disease or displaced by war.

Land was cheap. Labor was dear. That's why I pointed out the SLAVE HOLDING wealth as an example of enormous wealth in this nation at the time of the revolution. Even by EURO standards, these people were fabulously wealthy.

In fact, with his Louisiana Purchase adding hundreds of millions of acres to America, Jefferson even guaranteed that the value of his own main asset - his land - and that of most of his peers, would drop for the next several generations.

Good point. New England farmland lost value very quickly when the Western lands were open to them.

When George Washington wrote his will and freed his slaves on his deathbed, he didn't have enough assets to buy the slaves his wife had inherited and free them as well. Like Jefferson, who died in bankruptcy, Washington was "rich" in land but poor in cash.

In an agrigarian society cash (as theirs was) was not the final (or best) terminant of wealth.

In 1958, one of America's great professors of history, Forrest McDonald, published an extraordinary book debunking Charles Beard's 1913 hypothesis that the Constitution was created of, by, and for rich white men. McDonald's book, titled "We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution," bluntly states that Beard's, "Economic interpretation of the Constitution does not work."

Over the course of more than 400 meticulously researched pages, McDonald goes back to original historical records and reveals who was promoting and who was opposing the new Constitution, and why. He is the first and only historian to do this type of original-source research, and his conclusions are startling.

McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich. "These [debt relief/bankruptcy laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard's hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent," says McDonald. He adds: "Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write."

While Beard theorized that the Framers of the Constitution were largely drawn from the class of wealthy bankers and businessmen, McDonald showed that, "The most common and by far the most important property holdings of the delegates were not, as Beard has asserted, mercantile, manufacturing, and public security investments, but agricultural property." Most were farmers or plantation owners, and owning a lot of land did not make one rich in those days.

"Finally," McDonald concludes, "it is abundantly evident that the delegates, once inside the convention, behaved as anything but a consolidated economic group."

McDonald then goes into an exhaustive and detailed state-by-state ana lysis of the state constitutional ratifying conventions that finally brought the U.S. Constitution into law. For example, in the State of Delaware, which voted for ratification, "almost 77 percent of the delegates were farmers, more than two-thirds of them small farmers with incomes ranging from 75 cents to $5.00 a week. Only slightly more than 23 percent of the delegates were professional men - doctors, judges, and lawyers. None of the delegates was a merchant, manufacturer, banker, or speculator in western lands."

In other states, similar numbers showed up. Of the New Jersey delegates supporting ratification, 64.1 percent were small farmers.

In Maryland, "the opponents of ratification included from three to six times as large a proportion of merchants, lawyers, and investors in shipping, confiscated estates, and manufacturing as did the delegates who favored ratification."

In South Carolina it was those in economic distress who carried the day: "No fewer than 82 percent of the debtors and borrowers of paper money in the convention voted for ratification." In New Hampshire, "of the known farmers in the convention 68.7 percent favored ratification."

But did farmers support the Constitution because they were slave owners or the wealthiest of the landowners, as Beard had guessed back in 1913?

McDonald shows that this certainly wasn't the case in northern states like New Hampshire or New Jersey, which were not slave states. But what about Virginia and North Carolina, the two largest slaveholding states, asks McDonald rhetorically. Were their plantation owners favoring the Constitution because it protected their economic and slaveholding interests?

"The opposite is true," writes McDonald. "In both states the wealthy planters - those with personality interests [slaves] as well as those without personality interests - were divided approximately equally on the issue of ratification. In North Carolina small farmers and debtors were likewise equally divided, and in Virginia the great mass of the small farmers and a large majority of the debtors favored ratification."

After dissecting the results of the ratification votes state by state McDonald sums up: "Beard's thesis... is entirely incompatible with the facts."

Another fascinating book I must read. What a GREAT POST!

So what did motivate the Framers of the Constitution?

Along with the answer to this question, we may also find the answer to another question historians have asked for two centuries: Why was the Constitutional Convention held in secret behind locked doors, and why did James Madison not publish his own notes of the Convention until 1840, just after the last of the other participants had died?

The reason, simply put, was that most of the wealthy men among the delegates were betraying the interests of their own economic class. They were voting for democracy instead of oligarchy.

As with any political body, a few of the delegates, "a dozen at the outside" according to McDonald, "clearly acted according to the dictates of their personal economic interests."

But there were larger issues at stake. The people who hammered out the Constitution had such a strong feeling of history and destiny that it at times overwhelmed them.

They realized that in the seven-thousand-year history of what they called civilization, only once before, in Athens - and then only for the brief flicker of a few centuries - had anything like a democracy ever been brought into existence and survived more than a generation.

Their writings show that they truly believed they were doing sacred work, something greater than themselves, their personal interests, or even the narrow interests of their wealthy constituents back in their home states.

They believed they were altering the course of world history, and that if they got it right we could truly create a better world.

Thus the secrecy, the locked doors, the intensity of the Constitutional Convention. And thus the willingness to set aside economic interest to produce a document - admittedly imperfect - that would establish an enduring beacon of liberty for the world.

As George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, wrote to the nation on September 17, 1787 when "transmitting the Constitution" to the people of the new nation: "In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence."

He concluded with his "most ardent wish" was that the Constitution "may promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, and secure her freedom and happiness..."

Fascinating.

Since the so-called "Reagan revolution" more than cut in half the income taxes the multimillionaires and billionaires among us pay, wealth has concentrated in America in ways not seen since the era of the Robber Barons, or, before that, pre-revolutionary colonial times. At the same time, poverty has exploded and the middle class is under economic siege.

Yup!

And now come the oligarchs - the most wealthy and powerful families of America - lobbying Congress that they should retain their stupefying levels of wealth and the power it brings, generation after generation. They say that democracy doesn't require a strong middle class, and that Jefferson was wrong when he said that "overgrown wealth" could be "dangerous to the State." They say that a permanent, hereditary, aristocratically rich ruling class is actually a good thing for the stability of society.

Oh they're too politic to say that, but they believe it in all their tiny blackened skinflinted excuses they call their hearts.

While a $1.5 million trigger for the estate tax is arguably too low - particularly given the recent bubble in real estate prices - that doesn't invalidate the concept of a democracy defending itself against oligarchy. Set the trigger at 10 million, or fifty million. Make sure that family farms and small businesses are protected. And make sure that people who have worked hard and earned a lot of money can have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will live very comfortably.

You tell 'em, KingFish!

But let's also make sure that we don't end up like so many Latin American countries, where a handful of super-rich families rule their nations, and democracy is more show than substance.

Grand plan. Convincing the class traitors in America of this isn't easy though.

The Founders of our republic fought a war against an aristocratic, oligarchic nation, and were very clear that they didn't want America to ever degenerate into aristocracy, oligarchy, or feudalism/fascism. We must hold to their vision of an egalitarian, democratic republic.

Now the Estate Tax is before the Senate. Encourage your US Senator to fight against mega-millionaire and US Senate leader Bill Frist, and to keep the estate tax intact.

Best post written on this board to date that I'm aware of.


Finding that right balance where we do NOT suck the life out of capital formation, while at the same time, not allowing capital to suck the life out of the worker class is probably the hardest thing, and the most important thing this nation has to do, and worse, it's something we have to KEEP doing, too since capital has a propensity to aquire more capital.

 

[Taco]

standard nonsense.

btw- i didn't start by directing any comments to you at all. you decided to jump in (on me).

i'm sorry if my characterizations resembled you, and thereby raised your defenses. i guess how close to home i hit only you can know...but your reactionary response tells us plenty.

who said i don't believe in private property? and, btw, did you know socialism ALLOWS FOR PRIVATE PROPERTY?

who said I'm even a socialist?

my only point, is that people are reactionary against a thing they usually don't even understand very well. i try to point out countries with models that work well, and function as exceptions to their paranoid rules, and all you are good for is, "who cares about them".

ya. THAT'S a mind eager to learn.

and then you spout entirely unfounded nonsense about how "it can't work here"...based on...NOTHING....outside of your own prejudices and paranoia.

your type is a dime a dozen. I get it. you don't want to change, you're comfortable. that's natural. whiners, are as do.

 

[CSM]

....

Finding that right balance where we do NOT suck the life out of capital formation, while at the same time, not allowing capital to suck the life out of the worker class is probably the hardest thing, and the most important thing this nation has to do.

That is probably one of the few things you have posted that I agree with. Obviously (from my PoV), the issue is one of method and not ideology. I fear that this country is so divided on that single issue that it will be the downfall of this nation.

 

[CSM]

standard nonsense.

btw- i didn't start by directing any comments to you at all. you decided to jump in (on me).

i'm sorry if my characterizations resembled you, and thereby raised your defenses. i guess how close to home i hit only you can know...but your reactionary response tells us plenty.

who said i don't believe in private property? and, btw, did you know socialism ALLOWS FOR PRIVATE PROPERTY?

who said I'm even a socialist?

my only point, is that people are reactionary against a thing they usually don't even understand very well. i try to point out countries with models that work well, and function as exceptions to their paranoid rules, and all you are good for is, "who cares about them".

ya. THAT'S a mind eager to learn.

and then you spout entirely unfounded nonsense about how "it can't work here"...based on...NOTHING....outside of your own prejudices and paranoia.

your type is a dime a dozen. I get it. you don't want to change, you're comfortable. that's natural. whiners, are as do.

You are just plain full of crap. I dont have time for you arrogance or snobbery.

 

[Taco]

I waste less time reading the Op-Eds to my dogs.

You have it your way. Eventually, your way of thinking will be cleared like so many dead trees in a forest.

Enjoy your decline!

 

[editec]

That is probably one of the few things you have posted that I agree with. Obviously (from my PoV), the issue is one of method and not ideology. I fear that this country is so divided on that single issue that it will be the downfall of this nation.

In a nutshell my attitude is fairly innocuous.

If we intend to continue playing the game by capitalist rules, then we need many people with the capital to invest in risky projects.

However, we both know that nothing succeeds like success, too, right?

So if we don't ALSO protect the working class from the excesses of the capital class, then we begin a vicious cycle where the perfectly logical decisions of the individual players in the capital class (who are after all beholden to the stockholdrs to increase net worth whenever possible. That is their jobs,. They're not bad for doing so) then we set up conditions where various kind sof tragedies of the commons will inevitably negatively affect us ALL.

So how do we prevent capital from running roughshod over, not only the working class, but inevitably all other members of the capital class, as well?

Various ways...

1. by making the rules of business fair, that insure we don't become too monopolistic (for exampel) and transparent, too.

2. By setting minimum protections for the working class

3. By progressive income taxation which can (and must) change as macroeconomic circumstances change.

4. By imposing inheritence taxation on estates such that no capital formation becomes so large as to overwhelm other capital formations.


The degree to which we do any of these things is not set in stone because macroeconomic circumstances change which might make us want capital to keep more or less of that profit for reinvestment, or might demand that we tap that capital formation to insure that our working class is viable, too.


When capital runs amock, capitalist society fails.

When labor runs amock, capitalist society fails.

Finding that right balance is damned hard and we can never get it never perfect, either.

Right now, I'd say we're being too generous to capital. Right now it seems we're abandoning the working class which worked hand in hand with capital to make this nation so weathy and powerful in the XXth century.

We will pay for that excess over time if this continues. We will mark our losses by a diminuition of the GDP in comparison to nations which get the balance righter.

When the elite of a nation forget that the workers of the nation are the source of their wealth, then the aggregate wealth of that nation begins to decline, even though the elite themselves might benefit tremendously by the unfair advantages they sieze through manipulation of our government and laws.

Do the superwealthy of this nation , whose fortunes came out of this nation, have any obligation to this nation?

Or is wealth entirely portable, and they can just invest their money into a third world nation, where their ROI is better, and to hell with America. Americans and the social contract?

Ever since the communist bloc ceased being a threat to the capital class of the West, I have noted a hardened attitude of the monied class reagarding the working class here in the States.

Apparently they are somewhat ungrateful to the people who defended their right to become wealthy, now that the threat of communism waned.

It looks like, now that these Atlases don't need us (except to be used as Hessians, of course) they're turning their backs (Shrugging, perhaps?) on that social contract.

 

[Taco]

"full of crap"...


ah, you can smell the erudition....

was that your thesis back in school? why people who disagree with me are "full of crap"

Is that the name of your book?

Just curious...

 

[sealybobo]

The $64,000,000,000 question.



Of course they did. They're the party of the wealthy. That's their job.



Damned straight it is



Written like the puaper he really was. Naturally, I quite agree with him.



The Founding Fathers understood the now vicious circle of inherited wealth could cripple a nation over the long run. they'd just escaped a nation so crippled by it.



Of course allowing the super-wealthy of their day (basically American slave owners) the right to continue to own wealth in the form of humanity makes that argument somewhat valid, doesn't it?



They were the last (and only) generation of well off men in American who actually risked life and fortune going to war EXCEPT the Slaveowning class of the South.



It does seem they set it up that way, though, does it not?




I must read this book. That much is obvious. Thank you for bringing it to attention, Seeleyboo.



True. They were risking being hanged. I'd say that falls into the "against you own best interests" catagory



I can.

With a considerable time for research (because family names change over time even when the fortunes remain largely intact) I can probably find MANY such fortunes which came over from England in colonial , stayed fortuneate during and after the Revolutionary war and are still among America's wealthy elite..




George Washinton was credited as being the wealthiest man in the colonies. Comparing wealth of the colonies to wealth of Europe is a misleading way of thinking of wealth. It's debatable, is my point.



True at the time of the revolution. But the wealthy of Settle colonies weren't exactly poor either. They wore clothes from Paris, had all they could possible eat, build fine masions and great estates, too.




A bit of an understatment, I think. There were already slave holding fortunes and mercantile worth significantly more than an upper-middle class fortune even during the time of the Revolution.




Land was cheap. Labor was dear. That's why I pointed out the SLAVE HOLDING wealth as an example of enormous wealth in this nation at the time of the revolution. Even by EURO standards, these people were fabulously wealthy.



Good point. New England farmland lost value very quickly when the Western lands were open to them.



In an agrigarian society cash (as theirs was) was not the final (or best) terminant of wealth.




Another fascinating book I must read. What a GREAT POST!




Fascinating.




Yup!



Oh they're too politic to say that, but they believe it in all their tiny blackened skinflinted excuses they call their hearts.



You tell 'em, KingFish!



Grand plan. Convincing the class traitors in America of this isn't easy though.




Best post written on this board to date that I'm aware of.


Finding that right balance where we do NOT suck the life out of capital formation, while at the same time, not allowing capital to suck the life out of the worker class is probably the hardest thing, and the most important thing this nation has to do, and worse, it's something we have to KEEP doing, too since capital has a propensity to aquire more capital.

Almost all of Thom Hartmann's op ed pieces are AMAZING and right on point.

ThomHartmann.com - Democracy/Politics

I know, I'm a hack. LOL.

 

[bornright]

More proof America is becoming a third world nation due to republican voodoo economics. A hard question: Is it moral (not legal) to make that much money?


"Piketty and Saez’s top bracket comprises 0.01 percent of U.S. taxpayers. There are 14,400 of them, earning an average of $12,775,000, with total earnings of $184 billion. The minimum annual income in this group is more than $5 million, so it seems reasonable to suppose that they could, without much hardship, give away a third of their annual income, an average of $4.3 million each, for a total of around $61 billion. That would still leave each of them with an annual income of at least $3.3 million.

Next comes the rest of the top 0.1 percent (excluding the category just described, as I shall do henceforth). There are 129,600 in this group, with an average income of just over $2 million and a minimum income of $1.1 million. If they were each to give a quarter of their income, that would yield about $65 billion, and leave each of them with at least $846,000 annually."

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You? Peter Singer

"What is a human life worth? You may not want to put a price tag on a it. But if we really had to, most of us would agree that the value of a human life would be in the millions. Consistent with the foundations of our democracy and our frequently professed belief in the inherent dignity of human beings, we would also agree that all humans are created equal, at least to the extent of denying that differences of sex, ethnicity, nationality and place of residence change the value of a human life."

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?, by Peter Singer

I am just curious to what percentage of income a person should give that refuses to work. There are many that fit into this group. It would be an politically incorrect statistic to repeat the number we are talking about. It would even be politically incorrect to even collect the data. Other than the money these individuals recieve illegally their only income is welfare from the rest of us workers. Perhaps the only way to tax these individuals would be from labor. Liberals would not go for it as it sounds a lot like work. We all know what happens when people get a job and gain pride in themselves and pay taxes.......they become republicans.

 

[sealybobo]

I am just curious to what percentage of income a person should give that refuses to work. There are many that fit into this group. It would be an politically incorrect statistic to repeat the number we are talking about. It would even be politically incorrect to even collect the data. Other than the money these individuals recieve illegally their only income is welfare from the rest of us workers. Perhaps the only way to tax these individuals would be from labor. Liberals would not go for it as it sounds a lot like work. We all know what happens when people get a job and gain pride in themselves and pay taxes.......they become republicans.

Typical wrong wing spin. I thought the GOP already did Welfare reform? The only welfare reform that needs to be done now is Corporate Welfare.

Welfare isn't even an issue this year stupid. The GOP bankrupted the country. Why do you care that a small portion of your taxes go to the poor but you don't care that Iraq is costing each American $30K. And that $30 is collecting interest!

Why don't you care that the GOP and Corporate America caused the housing crash and the Federal Reserve bailed them out with your fucking tax dollars?

I'll tell you why. Because they haven't sent you the bill yet.

Republicans are your fun dad. They give you the credit card and let you go wild.

Democrats are like your responsible mother. Why does she have to be the bad guy just because she is the one that makes you pay your bill?

And you have the house slave mentality. Because you aren't working in the field, you try to tell the field slaves not to buck the system. Jerk.

This is why Liberals are much much better people than conservatives.

 

[CSM]

In a nutshell my attitude is fairly innocuous.

If we intend to continue playing the game by capitalist rules, then we need many people with the capital to invest in risky projects.

However, we both know that nothing succeeds like success, too, right?

So if we don't ALSO protect the working class from the excesses of the capital class, then we begin a vicious cycle where the perfectly logical decisions of the individual players in the capital class (who are after all beholden to the stockholdrs to increase net worth whenever possible. That is their jobs,. They're not bad for doing so) then we set up conditions where various kind sof tragedies of the commons will inevitably negatively affect us ALL.

So how do we prevent capital from running roughshod over, not only the working class, but inevitably all other members of the capital class, as well?

Various ways...

1. by making the rules of business fair, that insure we don't become too monopolistic (for exampel) and transparent, too.

2. By setting minimum protections for the working class

3. By progressive income taxation which can (and must) change as macroeconomic circumstances change.

4. By imposing inheritence taxation on estates such that no capital formation becomes so large as to overwhelm other capital formations.


The degree to which we do any of these things is not set in stone because macroeconomic circumstances change which might make us want capital to keep more or less of that profit for reinvestment, or might demand that we tap that capital formation to insure that our working class is viable, too.


When capital runs amock, capitalist society fails.

When labor runs amock, capitalist society fails.

Finding that right balance is damned hard and we can never get it never perfect, either.

Right now, I'd say we're being too generous to capital. Right now it seems we're abandoning the working class which worked hand in hand with capital to make this nation so weathy and powerful in the XXth century.

We will pay for that excess over time if this continues. We will mark our losses by a diminuition of the GDP in comparison to nations which get the balance righter.

When the elite of a nation forget that the workers of the nation are the source of their wealth, then the aggregate wealth of that nation begins to decline, even though the elite themselves might benefit tremendously by the unfair advantages they sieze through manipulation of our government and laws.

Do the superwealthy of this nation , whose fortunes came out of this nation, have any obligation to this nation?

Or is wealth entirely portable, and they can just invest their money into a third world nation, where their ROI is better, and to hell with America. Americans and the social contract?

Ever since the communist bloc ceased being a threat to the capital class of the West, I have noted a hardened attitude of the monied class reagarding the working class here in the States.

Apparently they are somewhat ungrateful to the people who defended their right to become wealthy, now that the threat of communism waned.

It looks like, now that these Atlases don't need us (except to be used as Hessians, of course) they're turning their backs (Shrugging, perhaps?) on that social contract.

Nothing there I have a problem with so far.

I have to ask however why you think the "Atlases" are indeed moving offshore. Also, are there no emerging "Atlases" to replace those who have abandoned the social contract to which you refer? Do you think the economic/social environment in this country is currently supportive of implementing your proposals? I would guess not so that leads to the question of what has to be changed to make it so?

The devil is always in the details, of course but in general I agree with your points.