Zone1 Should A Handful Of Billionaires Own More Wealth Than The Bottom 50% Of All Americans?

[marvin martian]

Not everyone is born with the same hand of cards. When one falls through the cracks, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible to get back up. As a society, we could eliminate homelessness and poverty. We have the technology to do it today.

Your communist/fascist idols just murder all the homeless and poor people. Is that your "final solution", too?

 

[Red Front]

Your communist/fascist idols just murder all the homeless and poor people. Is that your "final solution", too?

Only in your little mind did that happen. If it's true that us communists are like that, then like I said earlier, maybe assholes like you will get the gulag, but practically everybody else with a modicum of common sense and decency will greatly improve their lives.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

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The commie video is going to explain how liberals fucked things up?

 

[Red Front]

The commie video is going to explain how liberals fucked things up?

The video presents the facts as to why we now need to pay tuition at public colleges. Don't watch it, others will.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Advanced 21st-century automation technology.

Automation is going to make me hungry?
Why?
Robots gonna eat all the food?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The video presents the facts as to why we now need to pay tuition at public colleges. Don't watch it, others will.

Liberals who run colleges keep making colleges more expensive.

Why are they so hateful?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Yes it does
They don’t obtain and protect that wealth by luck

Those are the only two possibilities, luck or monopoly?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

If you have a small business that you take a personal income above $1 million, you deserve to pay

Business owners with personal income above $1 million don't already pay?

 

[Anathema]

Not everyone is born with the same hand of cards

100% true. I understand that on a very personal level as someone born with both physical and neurological birth defects.

When one falls through the cracks, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible to get back up

The concept is not to fall through the cracks in the first place. Unfortunately we do a terrible job of setting a standard that prevents people from falling, or all too often intentionally jumping through the cracks that put them in such a position.

As a society, we could eliminate homelessness and poverty. We have the technology to do it today

I do not believe it is MY job to pull people out of a hole they’ve dug themselves into; whether I have the capability to do so or not. My job is to ensure I never become one of those people and to try to do the same for direct family members.

 

[Oddball]

At the urging of Republican Senators Hawley and Rubio, a new think tank is working out ways for the GOP to changetheir messaging.

They want to shift their rhetoric from support for corporations and the morbidly rich to pretending they care about working people. This new organization will, they say, “think differently about labor vs. capital than Republicans have in recent generations.”


It’s a cynical effort to capture Trump’s working class base. He’d promised he’d bring our jobs home from China, empower labor unions, raise taxes on the rich so high that “my friends won’t ever talk to me again,” and give every American full health insurance that cost less than Obamacare. Those promises helped win him the White House.

All were lies, but the GOP base bought it and gave him tens of millions of votes; now Hawley, Rubio, et al think they can bottle that populist rhetorical magic and repeat Trump’s shtick for 2024.

Which raises the existential question both economists and politicians have debated for centuries:


America has had two different but clear answers to that question during the past century.

From the end of the Republican Great Depression with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s until 1981 (including the presidencies of Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, who maintained the top 91% and 74% income tax rates), the answer was unambiguous: “The economy is here to serve average Americans.”

Income and wealth during that time rose at about the same rate for working class Americans as they did for the rich, something we’d never before seen in this country.

This was not an accident or a mistake. It was the very intentional outcome of policies put into place by FDR and then maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations for almost 50 years during that pre-Reagan era.

And then came the Reagan Revolution, when Republicans decided that the middle class wasn’t as important as giant corporations and the very wealthy after all, and that the rest of us are here to serve the rich.

Should a Handful of Billionaires Own More Wealth than the Bottom 50% of All Americans?

At the urging of Republican Senators Hawley and Rubio, a new think tank is working out ways for the GOP to change their messaging. They want to shift their rhetoric from support for corporations and the morbidly rich to pretending they care about...

m.dailykos.com

Im sure this will hurt the feminine sensibilities of certain moderators, so I expect it to be moved with not much intelligent input.

This greatly accelerated during the regime of your golden Boiking, and his "quantitative easing" printing up of over $4 trillion and pumping it into Wall Street.

You've met the enemy, and he's in your mirror.

 

[Red Front]

Automation is going to make me hungry?
Why?
Robots gonna eat all the food?

Unless you're a millionaire that doesn't depend upon wages to live, you're up the creek, because employers aren't going to need you anymore.

You might have needed 100s of people doing the work of all of those robots. Now the same warehouse might staff, ten or twenty people. That's being generous.





Working the docks? No, not really:

The Automation Effect At Ports Of LA And Long Beach

Working as a cook? No, you're not needed:

Robot cooks coming to a restaurant near you​

Even white-collar professionals are being replaced with technology. The only way for capitalists to stay in business is by being competitive, so they're going to automate as much as possible. Capitalism nullifies itself, with technology. When you eliminate wage labor, you get rid of the paying consumer and market. The market begins to shrink until society is forced to adopt a non-profit, socialized, democratized system of production, employing all of the automation technology. There's a word for that system and mode of production, it's called socialism or communism. American, democratic communism.

 

[Orangecat]

Should A Handful Of Billionaires Own More Wealth Than The Bottom 50% Of All Americans?​

If it was legally earned, yes. Only useful idiots and marxists want to limit a person’s earning potential.

 

[Red Front]

100% true. I understand that on a very personal level as someone born with both physical and neurological birth defects.

The concept is not to fall through the cracks in the first place. Unfortunately we do a terrible job of setting a standard that prevents people from falling, or all too often intentionally jumping through the cracks that put them in such a position.

I do not believe it is MY job to pull people out of a hole they’ve dug themselves into; whether I have the capability to do so or not. My job is to ensure I never become one of those people and to try to do the same for direct family members.

Well unfortunately we don't live in a vacuum, so when we're indifferent to this:

​

It not only hurts them but us as well. As a Bible-believing Christian, it's wrong for you to have the attitude you expressed, towards your fellow humans and compatriots. As an Atheist as well. Just from a utilitarian, practical point of view, we can't allow what you see in those videos to continue because it hurts everybody. It undermines everyone's safety. Perhaps the next deadly pandemic will begin at one of these homeless enclaves, killing not only them but us as well.

 

[expat_panama]

The thing is when the State gets to distribute the wealth, the percentages often don't change, it's just party apparatchiks that are now the "high" and own all the wealth.

Let's both be clear on something together here. Markets can only function if the state is there to maintain order and to enforce contracts. That and religion is needed to make sure all is morally good and everyone gets together to guide the whole process as best they can.

That's reality.

Sure, some clown tries to skew everything for their benefit and the state's supposed to keep it all in check, but we're talking real life on the Planet Earth. Things will ALWAYS be imperfect because perfection is always impossible.

So. Be specific and name names and dates. Just what is it u want changed?

 

[expat_panama]

Unless you're a millionaire that doesn't depend upon wages to live, you're up the creek, because employers aren't going to need you anymore.

You might have needed 100s of people doing the work of all of those robots. Now the same warehouse might staff, ten or twenty people. That's being generous.





Working the docks? No, not really:

The Automation Effect At Ports Of LA And Long Beach

Working as a cook? No, you're not needed:

Robot cooks coming to a restaurant near you​

Even white-collar professionals are being replaced with technology. The only way for capitalists to stay in business is by being competitive, so they're going to automate as much as possible. Capitalism nullifies itself, with technology. When you eliminate wage labor, you get rid of the paying consumer and market. The market begins to shrink until society is forced to adopt a non-profit, socialized, democratized system of production, employing all of the automation technology. There's a word for that system and mode of production, it's called socialism or communism. American, democratic communism.

Right now we got full employment w/ a labor shortage. Lots of folks are needed to make all that automation.

 

[expat_panama]

Well unfortunately we don't live in a vacuum, so when we're indifferent to this:

​

It not only hurts them but us as well. As a Bible-believing Christian, it's wrong for you to have the attitude you expressed, towards your fellow humans and compatriots. As an Atheist as well. Just from a utilitarian, practical point of view, we can't allow what you see in those videos to continue because it hurts everybody. It undermines everyone's safety. Perhaps the next deadly pandemic will begin at one of these homeless enclaves, killing not only them but us as well.

Right now there are about 580k homeless in the U.S. Total population of the U.S. is 331,900k. Let's make a deal, I'll say "ain't it awful" about the less than 2/10ths of a percent that are homeless, and u celebrate the 331,320,000 w/ homes.

 

[Anathema]

t not only hurts them but us as well. As a Bible-believing Christian, it's wrong for you to have the attitude you expressed, towards your fellow humans and compatriots. As an Atheist as well

I’m neither Christian nor Atheist. I believe our lot in life is to suffer, especially when we make mistakes.

Just from a utilitarian, practical point of view, we can't allow what you see in those videos to continue because it hurts everybody. It undermines everyone's safety

You’re right, we can’t allow it to happen. That’s why I’m in favor of euthanasia for any/every adult not able to portfolio themselves and without family/friends willing to support them.

Perhaps the next deadly pandemic will begin at one of these homeless enclaves, killing not only them but us as well

Maybe it will. I’m prepared to die, are you?

 

[Red Front]

Right now we got full employment w/ a labor shortage. Lots of folks are needed to make all that automation.

Unemployment today is at 3.7%, so we're OK right now. But as I mentioned earlier, within the next 20 years, 40 years, the unemployment rate is estimated to rise to 25%, 75%..etc. We're at the dawn of a new era in advanced automation. More and more jobs are going to be automated and when that happens we have to organize production in a way that meets everyone's needs. We'll transition from a capitalist, for-profit mode of production to a non-profit system.

 

[Red Front]

Right now there are about 580k homeless in the U.S. Total population of the U.S. is 331,900k. Let's make a deal, I'll say "ain't it awful" about the less than 2/10ths of a percent that are homeless, and u celebrate the 331,320,000 w/ homes.

It's not about saying anything, it's about doing. The homeless problem negatively affects everybody, undermining the quality of life for those who have housing. It hurts everybody.

 

[expat_panama]

Unemployment today is at 3.7%, so we're OK right now. But as I mentioned earlier, within the next 20 years, 40 years, the unemployment rate is estimated to rise to 25%, 75%..etc...

OK, I'll estimate that it will rise to 200% of the population. Then again, I can estimate that unemployment will fall to minus 30%.

Estimating is FUN!