General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBillionaires are collectively adding $2.7 billion to their fortunes daily. So. Trickle down.
The Picture of Progress over the last century.
Billionaires are collectively adding $2.7 billion to their fortunes daily and their growing share of wealth shows trickle-down doesn't work
* A new report from Oxfam looks at how much wealth billionaires have accumulated.
* The report finds billionaires are collectively adding $2.7 billion to their fortunes daily, as inflation eats up workers' wages.
* As top tax rates fell, billionaire wealth grew and Oxfam says wealth taxes are one solution.
by Juliana Kaplan and Madison Hoff
Business Insider, January 16, 2023
The rich are getting richer, and it's an ever-growing problem as everyone else sees their wages eaten up by rising inflation.
A new report from Oxfam, called "Survival of the richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality," finds that the richest 1% are increasingly capturing more and more wealth snatching up two-thirds of all new wealth in the world since 2020.
"That's astonishing, right? Because it's the richest 1% grabbing twice as much money as the rest of humanity, the 99% of us, put together," Nabil Ahmed, Oxfam America's director of economic justice, told Insider.
Snip
The report finds that billionaires' fortunes are collectively growing by $2.7 billion daily, "even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India."
That's based on the difference between billionaires' wealth from March 18, 2020, adjusted for inflation, and November 30, 2022. Oxfam's analysis showed that there was a $2.6 trillion increase in this wealth during this time.
Continues
https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-add-billions-fortunes-daily-shows-trickle-down-not-real-2023-1
Richest times in human history, rot.
CrispyQ
(36,231 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)Martin Gilens
Why policymaking in the United States privileges the rich over the poor
Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policybut as this book demonstrates, Americas policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections.
With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings are staggering: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not. Gilens shows that representational inequality is spread widely across different policy domains and time periods. Yet Gilens also shows that under specific circumstances the preferences of the middle class and, to a lesser extent, the poor, do seem to matter. In particular, impending electionsespecially presidential electionsand an even partisan division in Congress mitigate representational inequality and boost responsiveness to the preferences of the broader public.
At a time when economic and political inequality in the United States only continues to rise, Affluence and Influence raises important questions about whether American democracy is truly responding to the needs of all its citizens.
Source: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691162423/affluence-and-influence
The author rocked the boat with his research in 2013. His book has since been ignored by Corporate McPravda, including Rachel. Now were running out of time.
EarthFirst
(2,877 posts)The MAGAts have been duped into believing that they are empowered by the billionaires; because hey; you never know
you might become one of us one day!
Newsflash: youll never be one of them; nor do they intend on inviting you to sit at that table
ever.
Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)EXCERPT...
In the 1980s Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era in American economics as he cut the top tax bracket from 70% down to 50% and then down again to 28%. In order to get support for doing this from the people, and also from politicians, a very crafty set of lies were produced. As David Stockman, then Reagans budget director, put it: giving small tax cuts across the board to all brackets was simply a Trojan Horse that was used to get approval for the huge top tax bracket cuts. Trickle-Down was a term used by Republicans that meant giving tax cuts to the rich. Stockman explains that:
"It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."
"Yes, Stockman conceded, when one stripped away the new rhetoric emphasizing across-the-board cuts, the supply-side theory was really new clothes for the unpopular doctrine of the old Republican orthodoxy."
" the Reagan coalition prevailed again in the House and Congress passed the tax-cut legislation with a final frenzy of trading and bargaining. Again, Stockman was not exhilarated by the victory. On the contrary, it seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, as though the democratic process had finally succeeded in shocking him by its intensity and its greed. Once again, Stockman participated in the trading -- special tax concessions for oil -- lease holders and real-estate tax shelters, and generous loopholes that virtually eliminated the corporate income tax. Stockman sat in the room and saw it happen."
"'Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront?' Stockman asked with wonder. 'The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control.'"
CONTINUED...
http://rationalrevolution.net/war/trickle_down.htm
Wealthiest times in human history, put into the pockets of the few.
Pantagruel
(2,580 posts)"As part of their rules package for the new Congress, Republicans put a rule in place that exempts tax cuts from having to be "paid for" in order to be enacted. These are the only items exempted from the "pay as you go" package, and even increases on social safety net programs would have to be offset - but NOT by raising taxes, as the new rules say. "Farron Cousins explains how this rule change is really an admission that the GOP has been lying about tax cuts for decades.
Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)by JAMES C. KENNEDY
CounterPunch Oct. 24, 2012
EXCERPT...
Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedmans collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Knowing that the term Fascism was universally unpopular; Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics masquerade these works as Capitalism and Free Market economics.
SNIP...
The fundamental difference between Adam Smiths free market capitalism and Friedmans free market capitalism is that Friedmans is a hyper extractive model, the kind that creates and maintains Third-World-Countries and Banana-Republics, without geo-political borders.
If you say that this is nothing new, you miss the point. Friedman does not differentiate between some third world country and his own. The ultimate difference is that Friedman has created a model that sanctions and promotes the exploitation of his own country, in fact every country, for the benefit of the investor, money the uber-wealthy. He dressed up this noxious ideology as free market capitalism and then convinced most of the world to embrace it as their economic salvation.
SNIP...
Monetary Fascism, as conceived by Friedman, uses the powers of the state to put the interest of money and the financial class above and beyond all other forms of industry (and other stake holders) and the state itself.
SNIP...
Money has become the state and the traditional state is forced to serve moneys interests. Everywhere the Financial Class is openly lording over sovereign nations. Ireland, Greece and Spain are subject to ultimatums and remember Hank Paulsons $700 billion extortion from the U.S. Congress. The $700 billion was just the wedge. Thanks to unlimited access to the Discount Window, Quantitative Easing and other taxpayer funded debt-swap bailouts the total transfers to the financial industry exceeded $16 trillion as of July 2010 according to a Federal Reserve Audit. All of this was dumped on the taxpayer and it is still growing.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/the-dark-age-of-money/
The video speaker does an excellent job of explaining the Voodoo Economics and The Red Ink Ronnie Rule - no money for Democrats ever.
2naSalit
(86,061 posts)Initech
(99,915 posts)While the rich consolidate all the wealth and power in this country. It's truly insane. I think Fox is largely responsible for a lot of the problems we face as a country currently, including the wealth gap.
Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)It's time the public understands how this happened and what we can do about it.
Robert Reich is doing something about the media coverage of Economic Inequality.
https://www.inequalitymedia.org/
How Come We Know? The Media Coverage of Economic Inequality
Andrea Grisold, Hendrik Theine
Abstract
Given the background of rising economic inequalities, the topic has reentered the field of economic science. Yet the problem of how economic inequality is being mediated to the public is not discussed in economics at all, and hardly mentioned in communication studies. Through an analysis of recent empirical studies on the coverage of inequality in the media, we debate the role mass media play as information providers. Assessing the underlying assumptions and the methodological approaches guiding the respective empirical findings, we can highlight the merits of this body of work and identify open questions for further research. The last part of the article provides a discussion of (currently rather neglected) political economy theories that offer rich theoretical approaches to study media, power, and inequality.
Source: https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/6669
Economics is not a dismal science. Its just spun that way to keep the proles in the dark.
moondust
(19,917 posts)It continues into January and probably beyond. Apparently inflation is making it difficult for lots of working people to pay their bills. I keep wondering to what extent this is the long-term effect of neoliberal economics that started 40+ years ago with Thatcher/Raygun.
Meanwhile...
Why Britains Tories are addicted to Russian money.
Britain is one of Putin's fiercest critics. Its politicians still get millions in Russia-linked cash.
Westminster Accounts: MPs earn £17.1m on top of their salaries since the last election - with Tories taking £15.2m
Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)The US of A could use some organized action. Here in Detroit, weve become accustomed to watching the UAW shrink and what remains increasingly go along with the program
What Thomas Carlyle wrote about the US Civil War still resonates:
There they are cutting each other's throats, because one half of them prefer hiring their servants for life, and the other by the hour.
Slaves or Servants they both may as well be property in the minds of many (if not most) of the Haves and Have-Mores.
So. Russia Russia Russia. Backing bastards strategically.
As for Whos Enabling Putin's Enablers:
A: The Carlyle Group and Friends.
Whos Enabling Putins Enablers?
BY SAM PIZZIGATI
CounterPunch, March 29, 2022
Where would Vladimir Putin be without the Russian oligarchy? Without Russias oligarchs, political leaders of the Western world have concluded, Putin would be tottering. Western leaders have made squeezing Russias richest a central piece of their strategy to end Putins Ukraine cross-border assault.
These same Western leaders, unfortunately, have failed to take seriously what ought to be an equally pressing question: Where would Russias oligarchs be without the West, without the Wall Streeters, wealth managers, and assorted other high-finance riff-raff paid millions, as Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins puts it, to help billionaires sequester trillions?
Western leaders have essentially been ignoring this question almost ever since the old Soviet Union collapsed. And now were paying the price. Those Ukraine sanctions against Russias oligarchs? They come with a huge loophole. The Western worlds opaque web of tax havens and anonymous corporations is essentially rendering much of those sanctions ineffective.
Snippe
The U.S. wealth defense industry, we need to remember, hasnt just been helping Russian oligarchs hide their fortunes. Americas money-handlers have for years been helping them pile up ever grander fortunes. Theyve steered the illicit funds of Russian oligarchs into U.S. real estate, investment funds, and even factories, says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein, a senior reporter on the 2016 bombshell Panama Papers tax avoidance exposé.
The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has used a network of banks, law firms and advisers in multiple countries, the New York Times just reported, to invest billions in American hedge funds. Along the way, he tapped the expertise and contacts of U.S. high-finance giants ranging from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to BlackRock and the Carlyle Group.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/29/whos-enabling-putins-enablers/
The Ownership Class whether Old Money or Newly Gotten look upon themselves as entitled, rather than fortunate. Like their camel authority asked, What needle?
Of course TFG had long been in "business" with Russian oligarchs, though I don't recall much reporting on it before the 2016 election:
Trumps businesses are full of dirty Russian money. The scandal is that its legal.
Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings
2naSalit
(86,061 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)From ITEP:
New York is home to the highest concentration of extreme wealth in the nation. Of all wealth over $30 million per household found in the U.S., more than 1 in 5 of those dollars can be found in New York. This finding points to the outsized importance of Wall Street as a source of extreme wealth in the U.S. and to the economic clout of New York City more broadly. (For more about the novel methodology behind this finding, see Appendix E.)
Snip
Snip
Revenue Potential of Net Worth Taxation
The U.S. is confronting staggering wealth inequality across economic and racial groups.[9] Tax policy at all levels of governmentfederal, state and localis falling short of its potential to curb this inequality. A recent analysis by economists at the White House Council of Economic Advisors and the Office of Management and Budget, for example, concluded that the wealthiest 400 families in the nation pay an average federal individual income tax rate of just 8.2 percent when measured against a relatively comprehensive measure of income that includes unrealized capital gains.[10] Recent investigative reporting by ProPublica has uncovered even lower tax rates for many billionaires.[11]
Source: https://itep.org/the-geographic-distribution-of-extreme-wealth-in-the-u-s/
2naSalit
(86,061 posts)Which is why we can't have that.
WarGamer
(12,106 posts)But I don't see anyone in DC doing much of anything to add fairness to the system.
I see Sen. Warren come up with outstanding ideas and saying the right words but it seems the rest of DC collectively pats her on the head and says "great idea"...
IMHO...
If you are adding millions or billions to YOUR bottom line, it must be taxable EVEN IF UNREALIZED.
The wealthy HOARD wealth which keeps it OUT of the hands of the public, in general.
Just think about the recent LOTTO... nearly 500m after taxes. They can park $450m into bonds, collect 4.7% and that money is sitting quietly.
Millions of Americans puilled $2 or $10 or $20 out of their pockets to buy the ticket and all that money basically went POOF.
Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)https://www.democraticunderground.com/10025093415
And while were on the subject of economic justice:
THE ORIGINS OF THE OVERCLASS
by Steve Kangas
The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.
The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.
SNIP...
How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nations elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nations rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"
SNIP...
Historically, the CIA and societys elite have been one and the same people. This means that their interests and goals are one and the same as well. Perhaps the most frequent description of the intelligence community is the "old boy network," where members socialize, talk shop, conduct business and tap each other for favors well outside the formal halls of government.
CONTINUED...
http://www.american-buddha.com/illum.originsofoverclass.htm
Capitalism's Invisible Army also employs a very generous amount of nepotism to keep the old lines in service. It's a legacy thing.
lindysalsagal
(20,444 posts)MissMillie
(38,456 posts)next to nothing to the economy. The falsity of "trickle-down" has shown it's face time and time again.
2naSalit
(86,061 posts)Finally have a president who openly admits that trickle down economics was always a farce.