639 Billionaires In America Won't Tell You: 2020 Is The Oligarch-Minigarch Year

[ancianita]

Last edited Sun Dec 29, 2019, 01:49 PM - Edit history (3)

1.
Everything will get more expensive under MF45 and his GOP billionaires. That's what they want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_number_of_billionaires

Take Florida, for example.

52 billionaires -- some on Billionaire Row in Palm Beach -- in Florida will make sure MF45 wins.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-bz-forbes-billionaires-south-florida-20170320-story.html

Florida's top five list:

Thomas Peterffy -- #22 in Forbes, lives in Palm Beach; a Hungarian, self-made; owns the biggest digital brokering firm out of Chicago; the source of ads against "creeping socialism
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Peterffy

David Tepper -- Pittsburgh/Jersey origins, lives in Miami; owns SC Panthers and Appaloosa Hedge fund; coarse, Big Trump Guy who rubs a set of brass balls on his desk whenever he's trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Tepper

Micky Arison -- Israeli born, lives in Bal Harbour (Miami Beach), owns Miami Heat, prz of Carnival Cruise Lines, US Sugar Charitable Trust; big donator to Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micky_Arison

Shahid Khan-- Pakistani born, lives in Naples, owns Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL), Fulham F.C. of the English Football League Championship, and professional wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW), Muslim Repub who loves Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahid_Khan

Charles Johnson -- Jersey, lives in Palm Beach; owns Franklin-Templeton, top partner of SF Giants; donates heavily to Tea Party and Repubs across the country, particularly to keep the South red
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_B._Johnson

Seven more...
-- Dirk Ziff N. Palm Beach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Edward_Ziff
-- Robert Rich, Jr. Islamorada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Rich_Jr.
-- Reinhold Schmieding, Naples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Schmieding
-- J. Christopher Reyes, Hobe Sound & Jude Reyes, Palm Beach
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Christopher_Reyes
-- Russ Weiner, Delray Beach
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Weiner
-- Dick Schulz (Best Buy founder) Bonita Springs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Schulze

2.
Billionaires are bad for America. Not at all because they made money making products and services. That's fine.

There's financial investment, and there's human investment. Even philanthropic billionaires concentrate on the former at the expense of the latter. Billionaires now contribute to the loss of HUMAN economic growth in this country.

What we are experiencing is the slow rollout of a shit hole country with infrastructure -- 40% un- and underemployed Americans, uncomplaining, keeping-up-appearances people, working two non-living wage jobs. That's what a tax haven looks like.

Corporate control of government -- fascism -- exists even in the progressive states that see the exodus of youth, because these states are just too expensive to live in. Youth are fleeing CA, NY, IL and Delaware, the tax haven capital of our tax haven country. (One example link) https://calmatters.org/explainers/california-population-migration-census-demographics-immigration/

America is almost officially a corporate campus. You don't get a democratically run economy on a corporate campus. On the campus we have so far, they even gauge our voting tendencies in more digital realms than social media (one example link). https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/this-new-app-lets-you-express-your-feelings-with-video-memes-not-gifs/

3.
Billionaires are bad for America because they espouse win-lose economics AND corporate personhood OVER the Founders' constitutional personhood for humans' governance.

We can have democracy, or we can have billionaires. But we can't have both. (Of course country size matters.)

Most of us know this but don't want to believe it.

In class war terms, is it that we can't convince ourselves that class war surrounds the current impeachment war?

Can we convince our working class and Republican friends that their interests and billionaires' interests have nothing in common?
That everything their billionaires and senators have told them is wrong?
That we can't face that billionaires are making this country into a foreign business-friendly campus?

If we can't, is it because of billionaire propaganda?
Or that we cannot bring ourselves to fight them back?
Because they don't fight fair?
Because they see themselves as beyond and above the law?
Because money is speech?
Because ideas cannot beat money anymore?

My son, a non-profit IT/Maker business owner, lives in New Mexico, a dependably solid blue state. He says MF45 will win in 2020, and only Bernie can beat him there in the primaries. (Neither he nor I are Bernie fans.)

If my son's right about NM, the country's second poorest state; and I'm right about FL, one of the country's richest ...

4.
How does the Democratic Party win in 2020?


The last ten years of the "Club of 2,153":

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/geography-worlds-50-top-billionaires/

[dweller]

1. another take on this

posted here last evening, you might enjoy it
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017563183

✌🏼

[ancianita]

2. Thanks. I read his book, Winners Take All (2019). But how do his findings inform how we win in 2020?

What do you think about the election, given both OP's ideas about the wealthy?

[Sherman A1]

3. This is why I support Andrew Yang and his Humanity First Campaign

featuring a Universal Basic Income. He has figured out their game creating a mindset of scarcity and wants to replace it with a mindset of abundance.

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/

[ancianita]

5. I don't get how you can say that anything I said is "why" you're for Yang.

I really don't want this OP to be a scaffold for a primaries discussion.

But if you really think Yang would answer my questions above, then tell me what he and his donors would answer.

How does his UBI eliminate a climate of scarcity and the problematic mindset that scarcity causes?

[Sherman A1]

7. Well,

As the billionaires who are grabbing the benefits of the rules they helped to write through the tax code creating a mindset of scarcity for the rest of us I believe it is pretty self evident. How we are doing as a country is focused on the Stock Market, GDP and things that good for the 1% class.

Yang has proposed a Universal Basic Income and a campaign of Humanity First (amongst a myriad of other policy proposals) where we look at changing the measurements of how society is doing based upon how people are doing in the areas of mental health, physical health, education and alike.

[Loki Liesmith]

4. Billionaires don't bother me at all

Billionaires will happen in a free market and I just can’t be bothered to care. Their politics can and often does bother me though.

[ancianita]

6. That's exactly what this OP is about. Their politics.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. billionaires buy corrupt people, and install them to corrupt the system

Billionaires control enough to distort the system in their favor. This is to the detriment of all others.

[ancianita]

9. To my last question: how do we win in 2020?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

10. we have to overwhelm with GOTV

We know the game is rigged, so we have to set some records in turnout. The only way to reform the system is to 'own' the system via elections. Each person has to be convinced to become the voter who turns the tide.

Voters in 2018 made a world of difference -- they put the brakes on our skid into autocracy. We have to let them know the war of disinformation and the war of oligarchy versus democracy is ongoing. 2020 is crucial.

[ancianita]

11. GOTV will have to be at the Obama levels. I hope they are.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. This is why we need to illuminate GOPer obstruction.

Democrats are the only ones trying to help.
Russiapublicans are the party of assault.

[ck4829]

17. "Free market"? Ha.

[Farmer-Rick]

13. Capitalism creates extreme poverty that enables extreme wealth

You can't have billionaires without having lots and lots of poor people. If the national wealth were divided evenly, I think I read we would all be making over $100,000 a year. But because the filthy rich grab up more than their fair share we get hungry children and homelessness.

Concentration of wealth in the filthy rich is a feature of Capitalism as it was of feudalism. It is one step removed from feudalism. We need a much better economic system than feudalism by proxy.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. We need to stop supporting their businesses

Which burger chain is largely owned by a billionaire? Do you know? Which supplier of building materials?

When a company's prices are high, or the product meager for the price, you know the money's going somewhere.

Many companies are not even publicly traded, so common folk can't participate even if they wanted to. Public companies become at times an incubator, driving the company into bankruptcy so private equity can scoop it up for pennies on the dollar. Stripped of equity and loaded with debt, they refloat the company in public offerings so the public can buy the carcass. Too often another bankruptcy results, dragging public shareholders with it. Billionaires flip companies like kids with trading cards.

I don't worry about how I get in on it. I know I never will. I worry about developing strategy so I contribute as little as possible to the system. Trouble is too many others don't even have any idea what is going down.

[TryLogic]

15. Have you heard the term, middle class morals?

Most "billionaires" (the super wealthy) have different values - values based on greed and power.

Many poor persons cannot afford to rank moral values above survival although many come pretty close to doing so.

It is among the middle class where most persons can afford morality, although many do not. Many work in amoral corporate environments where the value system is that of the greedy class.

So, I agree. Billionaires are a serious problem even if some are philanthopists.

[ancianita]

16. Sure! In terms of class war, I call middle class monetary morality "The Economics of Enough."

Enoughonomics negates living by market values, and instead lives by the Golden Rule.

Enoughonomics is moderate, not greedy, never believes that "those who die with the most toys win."

Enoughonomics comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable rich.

Enoughonomics does not ascribe to the philanthropic rule of giving to the "deserving;" therefore it doesn't ascribe to philanthropy.

The middle class enoughonomics goal is to accomplish as much for others as for themselves, and leave a modest inheritance that their descendants can use to buffer their struggle to live debt free, comfortably, and within their means.

Enoughonomics invests in human society up front -- everybody in, nobody out.

Enoughonomics promotes up front human investment through single payer healthcare, lower college tuitions and tuition support, and the fundamental constitutional right to K-14 education -- none of which exist right now or in the foreseeable future.

Our party would be stronger for adopting these more moral economic values.

Most billionaires of OECD countries gladly pay much higher taxes, because they want to be the riches of well-off countries. They don't want to be the richest of shit hole countries, and they laugh at our billionaires who do.

That's why our billionaires know Liz Warren is a threat.

It's not socialism. It's Enoughonomics.