#AMJoy
1/ Every billionaire represents a failure of public policy. Billionaires aren’t part of the solution. They are part of the problem.
1/ Every billionaire represents a failure of public policy. Billionaires aren’t part of the solution. They are part of the problem.
2/ Let me make my position clear. Economic structures and laws that allow a single unelected, unaccountable individual (or family) sole control over significant national wealth is as foolish and ultimately unproductive as the old hereditary monarchy system of governance.
3/ No one needs a billion dollars to meet their personal needs or to pass on to their heirs. Further, vast inherited wealth corrupts the inheritor by setting them apart from the mass of humanity.
4/ Extremely rich people use their excess wealth to amass and hoard further wealth, change rules in their favor and influence and control political and cultural institutions.
5/ Poverty is the creation of vast personal wealth. Generational, persistent, chronic poverty, especially in the richest nation in human history, is created and sustained by the activities of those with vast personal wealth.
6/ With massive excessive wealth at their disposal, the multi-millionaire and billionaire class search for additional investment vehicles in search of higher and higher returns on investment.
7/ The stock market run up since 2009 is a good example of the wealthy gambling to increase their assets, but other market bubbles can be created and exploited, to the detriment of the overall economy and capital market stability. A tip: get out before the 2021 Inauguration!
8/ The 1929 stock market crash which led to the Great Depression is the prime example of this, but the entire boom and bust cycle of capitalism is the real evidence of ultra-rich induced instability.
9/ One can be in favor of well-regulated capitalism and private property without ceding the bulk of national assets to the mental illness of extreme wealth hoarders. These few are granted privilege without responsibility and influence without accountability..
10/ Life, in reality, is not a game of Monopoly.. National wealth is built by the working and middle classes creating value, not by billionaires acquiring and hoarding assets. “Trickle down” has never worked.
11/ The history of wealth generation in the United States shows wealth building tools like slavery & wage theft, colonialism, extractive polluting industries pushing actual costs of production onto the public, monopolies & tendencies toward monopolistic competition or oligopolies
12/ Whether they inherited a financial head start, came up with a great idea to monetize, found a loophole to exploit or engaged in outright crime to amass their fortune, no person is entitled to the unaccountable power extreme wealth bequeaths.
13/ Billionaires are wealth hoarders. This does not mean they are evil or immoral themselves, though being unaccountable, they well may become that. I place the blame on the rest of us (public policy) for permitting economic rules, tax & inheritance laws, etc,...
14/ ...that allow some people to hoard wealth. If anything, I think wealth hoarders have a mental illness, like other compulsive hoarders
15/ Wealth “hoarding” assumes that there are people who, by their genius, intuition, force of character or through the exploitation of laws and business practices, manage to accumulate more wealth than they or their descendants could possibly need.
16/ If every wealth hoarder was a wise philosopher-king who knew how to use their control of their excess wealth for the general benefit of the polity, there would be no problem. Sadly, that is not usually the case.
17/ Many wealth hoarders use their wealth to gain advantages to hoard more wealth. Some seek higher returns through market manipulation, creation of bubbles or in instances like the Sacklers, the creation of a dependent or addicted population to further exploit.
18/ Other wealth hoarders use their advantages to promote public policy that benefits them or their personal ideologies, but harm the polity. Climate change deniers or polluters come to mind. Again, these are undemocratic and unaccountable activities.
19/ Those wealth hoarders who do give back to the polity, donate to charity, support medical research, endow schools, museums or other beneficial institutions create a society where it is accepted that those public “goods” can only exist at the whims of the elites.
20/ What is the solution? It’s not easy. We could spend a lifetime just making our taxes more progressive, insuring the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share, and creating regulations that don’t permit them to dump the true costs of their activities on the public.
21/ I’m not advocating the elimination of all wealth. Just the extreme, excessive wealth in the richest country in human history which still has a significant part if its population living in poverty.
22/ This situation is more common in human history than not. Most human civilizations have been controlled by the 1%. A promise of our democratic Republic is the potential to address this imbalance, perhaps for the first time in history.
23/ There’s an old Yiddish proverb: “With money in your pocket you are wise, you are handsome, and you sing well too.”
We have to get over our idolatry of the excessively wealthy and see them for the OCD wealth hoarders that they really are.
We have to get over our idolatry of the excessively wealthy and see them for the OCD wealth hoarders that they really are.
@threadreaderapp unroll
