Bunch: U.S. needs to tax Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Billionaire Boys Club out of their misery

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Will Bunch
@Will_Bunch
Elon Musk's public meltdown reveals a panicked American kleptocracy, racing to control our free speech because they fear their $$$ will no longer buy our elections

It's way past time for the 330,999,400 to tax the 600 out of their misery. My new column

inquirer.com
U.S. needs to tax Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Billionaire Boys Club out of their misery | Will...
Billionaires like Musk and Bezos are losing their grip, embracing the far right and trying to buy elections. Let's tax their wealth to fix America.
10:57 AM · May 22, 2022

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/elon-musk-twitter-meltdown-bezos-20220522.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/pMsVN


America’s Billionaire Boys Club has been on the top of the world in the fraught-for-everyone-else 2020s — except when they’ve liquidated a few billion dollars here or there to climb into their spaceship and soar above it.

During a global pandemic that has killed one million of their fellow U.S. citizens, the nation’s roughly 600 or so billionaires saw their wealth spike by an estimated 55%, with the richest of the rich doing even better than that. What’s more, even 2021′s (just-barely) Democratic Party takeover on Capitol Hill can’t produce the votes to increase taxes on these high earners, even as the middle class struggles with the cost of health care, college ... and now everything else.

So why, all of a sudden, are America’s oligarchs so gosh-darned miserable?

Exhibit A, of course, has been the ridiculously public midlife crisis of the world’s richest human (at least as of this afternoon), the electric-car-and-space mogul Elon Musk, whose estimated $210 billion under his mattress is equal to 1% of the U.S. gross domestic product. In recent weeks, the just-turned-50 Musk has tried to prove that “poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything” is more than just a Bruce Springsteen lyric.

It has not gone well.

The Philadelphia-educated Musk’s scheme to buy Twitter with a combination of his obscene wealth and other people’s money, take the social media site that’s most beloved by the world’s intelligentsia private, and declare himself a hero of the brand of “free speech” that tends to be freest for privileged white men, hasn’t turned out like he’d planned. It’s not just that the love Musk has taken from conservatives for his plans to remake Twitter (and, among other things, bring back the banned Donald Trump) has not been equal to the enmity from so many others who don’t want their social media Musk-ed up.

*snip*

[BlueGreenLady]

1. Don't Musk It Up!

Too funny.

[2naSalit]

2. He's correct!

a panicked American kleptocracy, racing to control our free speech because they fear their $$$ will no longer buy our elections

[KS Toronado]

3. On a national level going into the midterms,

we should be educating the electorate about what the 600 wealthiest Americans want from all the
politicians they help elect & what party they belong to. They truly are the "Deep State" who
control to much of what happens in this country because of their $$$$$$$$$

[AntiFascist]

4. Please make this clear to the poorer MAGA voters...

sometimes I feel like the political campaign ad people aren't doing their jobs.

[KS Toronado]

5. I feel like the political campaign ad people

spend most of their attention pointing to trees and branches on the ground while ignoring the forests.
Granted, how do we educate people that the ultra-wealthy want people to stay poor and hungry in a
60 second ad can be quite the task. Now the Jan 6th "forest" gives them plenty of ammo to play with
and expect to see more of those type ads when the Select Committee starts their televised hearings.

[AntiFascist]

6. I fear that the political campaign ad people are often too motivated by cash...

Pay them enough cash and then they'll come up with the killer ad. Unfortunately its all too often the other guys who have the cash.

[Polybius]

7. They won't care

They will vote against their own rights, as long as their candidate opposes abortion, loves guns, and hates gays.