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The Wealth Gap

Does it matter Millionaire - Billionaire?


  • Total voters
    42
Hmmm.... Maybe I should go into a little more detail about how this would work.
Each year, you do a new draw from the pool. The draw establishes a set of teams ("Watchgroups"?) that are randomly assigned elected officials. Each team is tasked with investigating any laws the pols. they are assigned have involved themselves in and they are examined to see if they have undue impact on the major campaign contributors for those pols.

There's no doubt that there would be some political gamesmanship, but exposing the issues that are driving this can only help things. You might have a politicized group watching someone for a year, but next year, they get a whole new group watching them. The pols. are never sure of who will be watching them and thus can never be confident that there would be a Watchgroup that would have their back. In fact, the possibility that there might be a Watchgroup that would pursue them for political reasons would actually be good thing. If they walk in a level of integrity that leaves them above reproach, they would have nothing to worry about no matter who was watching them.


BTW - VERY enjoyable discussion.

How would you account for false positives? If politician A is going to change his stance on policy B regardless of company C being known to find politicians with that position it looks like corruption but might not be. It's a hard problem. Especially since it's not one prone to evidence.

Also how do you define an advocacy group like the NRA within such a system? Do you just ban everything? I think that would throw out the baby with the bath water because it would again reduce the balance of power for the citizenry, which is the fundamental problem. Things are too intertwined.

We have to bypass it entirely and redesign this aspect of the system.
 
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I agree. We are headed in for nasty times I think. :(

I don't know if it's going to hit all at once, and typically civilization goes thru 'boom and bust' cycles.


Your video has been deleted. I'm an owner of Wal Mart too and I haven't given employees a raise either. That isn't my role, I'm a shareholder, not a manager of the company.

Keep on paying as little as possible and they'll be deleting your shares. ;)
 
What one thing would you advise people to do to cease support of owners of significant wealth?

The rest of your post is apologist nonsense, but this merits an answer, though it's more than one thing. We stop rewarding them. We prosecute them and lock them up when they hurt people. We demand that our congress no longer allow banks and financial organizations such absurd power and protection from liability. We put controls on the stock market so that it can benefit middle class Americans and not just the super wealthy, or possibly do away with it completely. We no longer allow corporations to so completely protect the wealthy from consequence, and stop conferring on them the benefits of "personhood" without any of the responsibilities and restrictions that come with it. We stop pretending that taxing these people is somehow immoral. We stop with the deregulation which has allowed them to consolidate and stagnate industry, especially the media. We prevent them from hiding so much money outside the country. We stop them from anonymously funding political campaigns. Hell, we stop them from publicly funding political campaign. And we stop listening to the advertising that they bombard us with.
 
How would you account for false positives? If politician A is going to change his stance on policy B regardless of company C being known to find politicians with that position it looks like corruption but might not be. It's a hard problem. Especially since it's not one prone to evidence.

Also how do you define an advocacy group like the NRA within such a system? Do you just ban everything? I think that would throw out the baby with the bath water because it would again reduce the balance of power for the citizenry, which is the fundamental problem. Things are too intertwined.

We have to bypass it entirely and redesign this aspect of the system.

This is why the Watchers would be informative and not judicial. There's no doubt that they could come up with some incorrect assumptions, so we limit them to a group which simply communicates their findings and allows the voters to decide what to do with potential offenders. If the voters are OK with Bob Gimmebux providing a company with favorable legislation because that company also employs 90% of that state's population, that's the voter's business. All I want is an objective group that can inform the voters of where potential issues could be.

Eliminating corruption will never happen no matter what we do. If we got rid of all campaign contributions, there is no Constitutional way to silence people from buying air time, ads, websites, etc. on their own and proffering their opinions on the candidates/issues. In that arena, the guy/corporation with the most money can most certainly have the loudest voice (not guaranteed with the web). Finding a way to silence one avenue of expressing one's opinion simply forces people to find others. If you took away corporate contributions, you would see the TV flooded with "commercials" in support of various candidates/measures. Laws that silenced corporations from supporting candidates/issues would be easily by-passed by paying someone a whole lot of money so that they could (strictly as a private citizen expressing their personal opinion) buy airtime/ads/websites to express their opinions. I would much rather we allow the contributions happen directly and with a HIGH level of transparency, instead of forcing these corps. to find ways to mask their influence.
 
This is why the Watchers would be informative and not judicial. There's no doubt that they could come up with some incorrect assumptions, so we limit them to a group which simply communicates their findings and allows the voters to decide what to do with potential offenders. If the voters are OK with Bob Gimmebux providing a company with favorable legislation because that company also employs 90% of that state's population, that's the voter's business. All I want is an objective group that can inform the voters of where potential issues could be.

Eliminating corruption will never happen no matter what we do. If we got rid of all campaign contributions, there is no Constitutional way to silence people from buying air time, ads, websites, etc. on their own and proffering their opinions on the candidates/issues. In that arena, the guy/corporation with the most money can most certainly have the loudest voice (not guaranteed with the web). Finding a way to silence one avenue of expressing one's opinion simply forces people to find others. If you took away corporate contributions, you would see the TV flooded with "commercials" in support of various candidates/measures. Laws that silenced corporations from supporting candidates/issues would be easily by-passed by paying someone a whole lot of money so that they could (strictly as a private citizen expressing their personal opinion) buy airtime/ads/websites to express their opinions. I would much rather we allow the contributions happen directly and with a HIGH level of transparency, instead of forcing these corps. to find ways to mask their influence.

Another flaw is that giving the voters knowledge doesn't really accomplish anything because the selection process is flawed still and that's not been addressed adequately in my view.

I agree removing free speech in terms if money it's the answer and it also causes harm and thus should be avoided.

I think the process shouldn't be dependent on citizen free speech or it should be minimized as much as possible this we can still preserve the role if advocacy and petitioning government as the founders wanted )and I think they got this one right) with much less downside.
 
The rest of your post is apologist nonsense,

It certainly was not nonsense, I was responding to a flood of extreme all-or-nothings from you.

We stop rewarding them.

Who is "we," and what specifically is meant by "rewarding?"

We demand that our congress no longer allow banks and financial organizations such absurd power and protection from liability.

Can you be more specific about this as well? You're not trying to win my vote here. Just be specific.

We put controls on the stock market so that it can benefit middle class Americans and not just the super wealthy, or possibly do away with it completely.

What on Earth does this mean?

We stop pretending that taxing these people is somehow immoral.

No one is calling taxation immoral. Let's assume I generally agree with you that it would be in everyone's best interests if we (somehow) reclaimed power from big centralized overgrown entities and relocalized said power. Now, note that I said "somehow." My question to you is... SPECIFICALLY, how?
 
Because I'm European. In Europe, we made that mistake generations ago. Today, we have aristocracies. Generational wealth. These people don't work for a living. They leave that up to the "working class" (so called for a reason).

The aristocrats live off their inheritance, the value of their land, and their inherited stock assets. They buy political power and they are above the law.

These people are a cancer to society, and you should stop it from happening before it infects your whole society.

What makes America great is that it's a land of opportunity where anyone can make it. Rags to riches. You are losing that.

Please explain what those people have or do affects you. Thanks
 
Wealth and success are laudable when they're earned in an honest way. If they're earned at the expense of someone else, or at the expense of the environment, then they're not so laudable at all.

Likewise, there's no pat on the back deserved for someone who merely inherited their wealth. Generational wealth does nothing to help society and, as a matter of fact, it can be quite destructive.

The truth is that nobody needs even 1 million dollars. Everybody can live in the same type of 1 bedroom apartment and have 1 chair and 1 televisión, but not a flat screen.

Everybody in the world can live on very Little money, but in the USA it is not mandatory to do that.

Whewre did you get the 50 million figure?

What do you think that figure would do to the small jet industry or the yacht industry, or even the real estate industry?
 
I don't think anybody is "too wealthy" however I'm beginning to think my preferred economic model is capitalism but where all employes are also allowed to become stock holders over time as the company expands.

Do you mean giving the employee free stock in the company?
 
I live in Dallas Texas, yes. It's very nice here especially this time of year. I was born in Sweden, even though my dad is from Italy, so I actually have two passports.

What I think we should do about billionaires is add a top tax bracket that is 100% on income, and also we should have a land tax.

I think the top shoud be 1 million and 1. Everybody can live on 1 million dollars.
 
Do you mean giving the employee free stock in the company?

Well, if they're working every day it would be part of their earnings. Compare to giving the employee "free money" twice a month.
 
Well, if they're working every day it would be part of their earnings. Compare to giving the employee "free money" twice a month.

So you reduce their earnings and force them to buy stock with that money?

How many employees would go for that plan?
 
So you reduce their earnings and force them to buy stock with that money?

How many employees would go for that plan?

Microsoft, Lowes, Home Depot and other companies did that for their employees. Many became wealthy. Its incentivizes a stronger work ethic because its "their company too." It gives hard working people a better shot at the American Dream. It reduces the level of political polarization and class warfare because the same people who see benefit in certain government policies are in the board room, the corner office and the cubical. It creates a more robust US economy because its less likely stockholders will vote to eliminate their jobs and use sweatshop labor in the third world. If they do, we have a lot of American investors with capital to invest to create new opportunities and back new ideas with less dependency on foreign investment.

Rome News-Tribune - Google News Archive Search
Secretaries get rich in the Internet age | ZDNet
 
Because I'm European. In Europe, we made that mistake generations ago. Today, we have aristocracies. Generational wealth. These people don't work for a living. They leave that up to the "working class" (so called for a reason).

The aristocrats live off their inheritance, the value of their land, and their inherited stock assets. They buy political power and they are above the law.

These people are a cancer to society, and you should stop it from happening before it infects your whole society.

What makes America great is that it's a land of opportunity where anyone can make it. Rags to riches. You are losing that.

I think it may already be too late.
 
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