No. I never agree with anyone using engagement bait titles.
And yet you engaged
America is deeply, heavily in debt
Normally when this happens the rich are forced to take a haircut
25% of the global assets of anyone worth over 250 million
If they do much as complain seize their entire global assets and imprison them and their families
That’s America’s money take it back
Dont even need to give the familys the 12,000… just use it to pay down the debt
Yep, its a haircut
You profited, now we need that money back, thanks for your patriotism
No, it should be 10% at least.
We could tax a billionaire 95% of their wealth, and they would still have more money than you or I could reasonably spend in a lifetime.
Oh yeah, I’m a big proponent of no more billionaires. But it appears to a lot of average people smaller amounts are more palpable because they think they’ll ever be that rich.
I think 99% of people agree with this - that Bernie Sanders wants to do it. Do they support it, though?
It’s so crazy to me that people eat stuff like this up. Pages like this make BANK slapping some text on a bunch of image while adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.
Everything they make exists not to make a difference but to drive page views to their stupid accounts. It’s so, so transparent.
And in this house, we hate all ads
I have the same amount of power to make this happen as Bernie Sanders has.
I hate using this term because I don’t think he’s stupid but the phrase is “useful idiot”
If you think of the machine that is politics he serves a purpose. Allowing him to vocalize this message essentially is a pressure release valve. His existence and beliefs although not wrong are keeping more aggressive views at bay. He’s basically keeping a segment of the population docile by making them think “he speaks for me. I don’t have to do anything”
Hate to say it but AOC as well. They’re part of the machinery. They are not disruptors at all.
They keep the left in the Democratic Party so that a viable alternative doesn’t form.
Americans need him but more agressive
Disagree. Mamdami is a good example. They just need someone new and fresh without baggage. You go back far enough you will find inconsistencies in any politician. A fresh face benefits all.
Why America only wants geriatrics is beyond me.
They don’t want geriatrics, but being an incumbent comes with a massive fund raising and name recognition boost. Making it a huge accomplishment to break into the debate. AOC was a major upset for a reason when she took office. That was not a small accomplishment.
You seem to be advocating that no one American even talks about taxing the wealthy so that there isn’t a “pressure relief valve”?!
In the world of shit that is American politics right now, your solution, out of all the things that possibly change, is to silence anyone suggesting that just maybe there’s a better way?
THIS?! This is what you would change? Remove even the discussion of anything even slightly left of the Clintons?!
Are you insane? Are you Nancy Pelosi? Are you JD Vance?
Do you hate the Democratic party so much that you want to remove all traces of progressive politics from it?
I’ve got news for you. The water is boiling and the lobster isn’t climbing out. Putting the lid on and turning up the heat isn’t going to work. Throwing younger lobsters in the pot isn’t going to work. And silencing the only people talking about turning the heat down isn’t going to fucking help.
I don’t know… why is medical care so expensive in the first place? Why are teachers wages so low? Why is there such a huge wealth disparity?
Seems like these are systematic problems which need to be solved with a full system restructuring rather than throwing money at it. Not to dunk on Bernie, but If I were American, I’d be hoping for more concrete solutions.
5% tax sounds nice (imo, its no where near nice enough lol) but what are we taxing here exactly? Billionaires don’t actually have any money. There’s a systematic problem to solve right there… how can people be filthy rich, yet have no actual money to tax?Like this, a very ‘American idea’ to me is ‘student loan forgiveness’. You borrow money from a bank (for profit institution), you pay it to get educated at a university (for profit institution) and get the loan forgiven by the government (tax payers). Systematic problem. Just make universities public and they get funded by the tax payers directly.
Feels like a band aid on a dismembered limb imo…
I get your misgivings but… Changing it for the better has gotta start somewhere.
Even this idea is way too “progressive” to have any chance of coming to pass
Yeah the underlying problems have to do with market power granted by certain laws and the systemic prevention of competition. In land markets there’s massive amounts of money going into keeping us from building more housing so that owners in scarce locations can stay rich. Land value taxes would solve that.
5% tax sounds nice (imo, its no where near nice enough lol) but what are we taxing here exactly? Billionaires don’t actually have any money. There’s a systematic problem to solve right there… how can people be filthy rich, yet have no actual money to tax?
I believe most of billionaire’s wealth are in intangible assets like stocks. Then I hear billionaires and their bootlickers defend themselves, by reasoning that the government can’t tax those intangibles unless the investors sell the shares and cash in on the gains. However, Ireland already tax those with unrealised gains from investment funds every eight years. There is no reason for other countries not to follow suit.
Feels like a band aid on a dismembered limb imo…
Would you rather bleed to death?
Just make universities public and they get funded by the tax payers directly.
Public universities are cheaper than private, but still too expensive to pay for using saving from a minimum wage summer job. There is no doubt that tuition costs are inflated, but the idea of how you make schools charge less money is complicated.
The Trump administration is claiming that reducing the amount of money students are allowed to borrow from the government will somehow force universities to lower their costs. In reality it’s simply creating a bigger divide in education based on socioeconomic factors, and increasing the amount of private debt students are forced to take on if their family cannot cover the cost of tuition.
Universities in the U.S. are typically portrayed by the right as elitist and left-wing institutions that exist to indoctrinate young minds with marxist ideas. However, many of the right’s most vocal “anti-elitists” (Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, Adrian Vermeule, even Donald Trump himself) hold degrees from the most prestigious institutions within the United States.
Despite their leftists reputation, the board of trustees that actually govern public and private higher learning institutions in the U.S., are often made up of wealthy and well connected right-leaning individuals.
In Bed with the Right does a really good podcast episode on Boards of Trustees, but my main point is that (as is the case with the majority of problems in the U.S.), when you ask a question like “why does it have to be so expensive/complicated?” The answer is that these overly complicated systems are often not a consequence of incompetence or poor planning. They’re the very intentional results of a country that has been locked in a never ending struggle between democracy and oligarchy since the very beginning.
It’s no accident that the changes Trump is making will not result in universities suddenly offering cheaper tuition, or students taking on less debt to get an education. It’s the system working as it was intended. It just makes it more believable to have an incompetent buffoon serving as the public face behind “failed” policy.
Many of the poorest and uneducated Americans voted for him, and they make for great photo ops when they cheer loudly at his rallies. Many of the wealthiest Americans with degrees from the “elite” institutions he so often attacks, were the ones who quietly invested their own money and paid for those rallies.
Just make universities public and they get funded by the tax payers directly.
Public universities are cheaper than private, but still too expensive to pay for using saving from a minimum wage summer job. There is no doubt that tuition costs are inflated, but the idea of how you make schools charge less money is complicated.
I don’t want to take away from your other excellent points about the American economy, but I think you missed the point about public.
Public like schools. Public like free education for anyone bright enough to pass the entrance exams. Public like investing in the future talent of the nation. Public like genuinely free tuition.
It’s cheaper than forgiving private loans because the banks don’t earn any interest in the first place.
It won’t happen in the USA of course, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea.
That check would be life changing for me, a billionaire somewhere just made the same amount in less time than it took me to type this out.
What’s with the obsession for each side to promise a big check for everyone? Surely the money is better spent on public services rather than bribery…
Conceptually, from a crapitalism standpoint, it’ll jump-start spending. It’d be ‘good’ for the economy. Realistically, they’ll just raise the price on all big ticket items by 6k.
And it’s a one time short term “boom” (for billionaires) that they will happily take credit for (as if it helped your average joe schmoe), even though, if you invest it in useful infrastructure (as an example) instead, you’d see the dividends for decades.
Only 5%? Mine is approaching 30% and I can’t afford shit.
Also sending out checks is fucking stupid. Just lower our taxes.
It’s 5% of wealth, not income. But still, anything short of 100% will not stop the parasites. But its a nice gesture, if nothing else
But its a nice gesture, if nothing else
Not particularly. 5% is nothing to them.
Yes.
Polish government decided to send check to all parents as a way to promote having kids.
You know what happened? All the products needed by young kids suddenly rose in price. Sending checks to americans will do the same - all necessities will just become expensive exactly by amount of money they got.
Want to change the world? Tax the debt machine (5 or 10% of every transaction involving stocks and obligations, including using them as a loan security) and treat companies like people (as in - tax them on income, not on profit).
It’s supply and demand, if your raise the demand of course the products cost more. What did they expect?
If supply is, for example, 10.000 units a day, and demand rises from 5.000 to 8.000, there is no reason why the price should increase, other than corporate greed.
This isn’t what was happening. Supply was 10k, and demand was 10k. They gave out money to people, and supply stayed 10k. Of course prices increases under these conditions.
There was no increase to amount of kids conceived after the “financial help” was redistributed. Prices of child necessities grew after the funding was passed, before first money reached the parents.
And we are surprised? That exactly how the market works.
And, as I said, this will exactly happen in the USA - they will give handouts, necessities will grow and all the handout money will just pass back to billionaires with interest.
That exactly what would happen. I agree.
Things only cost more if the people pay more. With spending discipline, people could have had actually more. Most things are industrially produced. Supply likely was no bottleneck and the increased demand could have been matched.
The implication is that people already own everything that they can buy. Wage increases only increase inflation. Fighting for higher wages only increases the prices.
The fact they had to ask says a lot.
No more “tax”, only “take”. Take their fucking money away. They got so much money, it’s literally an existential threat to humanity.
Just want to point out that would be more than enough money for Universal Healthcare, something which might very well make more money than it costs since Healthcare in the US at 13% - 14% of GDP is using twice as much a fraction of the resources created in American as countries with Universal Healthcare use in theirs, so Universal Healthcare would free up a big chunk of the country’s GDP for other uses.
The other thing that also needs fixing (and that’s not just in the US) is house prices, which means Public Housing, though I suspect that would be “crazy Communism” for the average American given how stupidly brainwashed and undereducated they are in average.
