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Kid Berwyn

(14,651 posts)
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 01:42 PM Jan 2023

Billionaires 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.
21 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Billionaires are collectively adding $2.7 billion to their fortunes daily. So. Trickle down. (Original Post) Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 OP
We're on an unsustainable trajectory in so many ways, it's scary. -nt CrispyQ Jan 2023 #1
Somewhere the US Government stopped doing what's best for We the People. Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #2
+1 2naSalit Jan 2023 #11
...and it's the ENTIRETY of us that are suffering EarthFirst Jan 2023 #3
"Trickle Down" economics was a "Trojan Horse" -- David Stockman Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #4
Recent GOP response Pantagruel Jan 2023 #5
Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #6
+++++++++++++++++++++++!! 2naSalit Jan 2023 #12
Fox News keeps us fighting with each other over bullshit culture war issues... Initech Jan 2023 #7
The top 1% of America holds 40% of the wealth. Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #8
Workers in UK are striking. moondust Jan 2023 #9
Thank you for the heads-up! Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #10
+1 moondust Jan 2023 #15
K&R 2naSalit Jan 2023 #13
Uncle Sam should tax wealth, not just income. Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #16
It makes more sense... 2naSalit Jan 2023 #19
I don't feel like getting in trouble today... WarGamer Jan 2023 #14
What about the Great Bankster Raid of '08? Kid Berwyn Jan 2023 #21
All those tax breaks they paid for with campaign donations. We have to get money out of government. lindysalsagal Jan 2023 #17
adding staggering amounts to their own fortunes and... MissMillie Jan 2023 #18
At least we... 2naSalit Jan 2023 #20

Kid Berwyn

(14,651 posts)
2. Somewhere the US Government stopped doing what's best for We the People.
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 01:58 PM
Jan 2023
Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America

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 policy—but as this book demonstrates, America’s 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 elections—especially presidential elections—and 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 we’re running out of time.

EarthFirst

(2,877 posts)
3. ...and it's the ENTIRETY of us that are suffering
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 01:59 PM
Jan 2023

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: you’ll never be one of them; nor do they intend on inviting you to sit at that table…ever.

Kid Berwyn

(14,651 posts)
4. "Trickle Down" economics was a "Trojan Horse" -- David Stockman
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 02:04 PM
Jan 2023

EXCERPT...

In the 1980’s 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 Reagan’s 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)
5. Recent GOP response
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 02:17 PM
Jan 2023

"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)
6. Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 02:30 PM
Jan 2023
The Dark Age of Money

by JAMES C. KENNEDY
CounterPunch Oct. 24, 2012

EXCERPT...

Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s 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 Smith’s free market capitalism and Friedman’s ‘free market capitalism’ is that Friedman’s 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 money’s interests. Everywhere the Financial Class is openly lording over sovereign nations. Ireland, Greece and Spain are subject to ultimatums and remember Hank Paulson’s $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.

Initech

(99,915 posts)
7. Fox News keeps us fighting with each other over bullshit culture war issues...
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 02:36 PM
Jan 2023

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)
8. The top 1% of America holds 40% of the wealth.
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 03:22 PM
Jan 2023

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. It’s just spun that way to keep the proles in the dark.

moondust

(19,917 posts)
9. Workers in UK are striking.
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 03:33 PM
Jan 2023


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 Britain’s 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)
10. Thank you for the heads-up!
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 04:09 PM
Jan 2023

The US of A could use some organized action. Here in Detroit, we’ve 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 Who’s Enabling Putin's Enablers:



A: The Carlyle Group and Friends.



Who’s Enabling Putin’s Enablers?

BY SAM PIZZIGATI
CounterPunch, March 29, 2022

Where would Vladimir Putin be without the Russian oligarchy? Without Russia’s oligarchs, political leaders of the Western world have concluded, Putin would be tottering. Western leaders have made squeezing Russia’s richest a central piece of their strategy to end Putin’s Ukraine cross-border assault.

These same Western leaders, unfortunately, have failed to take seriously what ought to be an equally pressing question: Where would Russia’s 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 we’re paying the price. Those Ukraine sanctions against Russia’s oligarchs? They come with a huge loophole. The Western world’s 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, hasn’t just been helping Russian oligarchs hide their fortunes. America’s money-handlers have for years been helping them pile up ever grander fortunes. They’ve 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?”

Kid Berwyn

(14,651 posts)
16. Uncle Sam should tax wealth, not just income.
Tue Jan 17, 2023, 09:23 AM
Jan 2023

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 government—federal, state and local—is 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/

WarGamer

(12,106 posts)
14. I don't feel like getting in trouble today...
Mon Jan 16, 2023, 04:36 PM
Jan 2023

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)
21. What about the Great Bankster Raid of '08?
Tue Jan 17, 2023, 10:14 AM
Jan 2023
The Banksters who Stole Uncounted Trillions Should PUT IT BACK.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10025093415

And while we’re 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 nation’s 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 nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"

SNIP...

Historically, the CIA and society’s 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.

MissMillie

(38,456 posts)
18. adding staggering amounts to their own fortunes and...
Tue Jan 17, 2023, 09:44 AM
Jan 2023

next to nothing to the economy. The falsity of "trickle-down" has shown it's face time and time again.

2naSalit

(86,061 posts)
20. At least we...
Tue Jan 17, 2023, 09:48 AM
Jan 2023

Finally have a president who openly admits that trickle down economics was always a farce.

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