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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow the Super-Rich Are Abandoning America
The wealthiest Americans who hate "takers" enjoy $2 trillion in special tax carve outs, more than double the entire annual budget of Social Security.
As they accumulate more and more wealth, the very rich have less need for society. At the same time, they've convinced themselves that they made it on their own, and that contributing to societal needs is unfair to them. There is ample evidence that this small group of takers is giving up on the country that made it possible for them to build huge fortunes.
They've Taken $25 Trillion of New Wealth While Paying Less Taxes
The 2013 Global Wealth Databook shows that U.S. wealth has increased from $47 trillion in 2008 to $72 trillion in mid-2013. But according to U.S. Government Revenue figures, federal income taxes have gone DOWN from 2008 to 2012. Even worse, corporations cut their tax rate in half.
American society has gained nothing from its massive wealth expansion. There's no wealth tax, no financial transaction tax, no way to ensure that infrastructure and public education are supported.
Just how much have the super-rich taken over the past five years? Each of the elite 5 percent -- the richest 12 million Americans -- gained, on average, nearly a million dollars in financial wealth between 2008 and 2013.
- See more at: http://thecontributor.com/economy/how-super-rich-are-abandoning-america#sthash.hFTfR2xW.dpuf
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)they don't live in any one country...nor do they have to care about anyone else this way...
TBF
(31,922 posts)and they will live wherever they think they are welcome and can get away with this nonsense.
We've got to tax the hell out of them and make it very hard for them to move their plants and $$$ overseas imo - we are making it far too easy for them currently.
Ian_rd
(2,124 posts)They're grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, and then they'll hide with it behind concrete and barbed wire.
If America were a corporation, the 1% would be embezzling all the company's wealth into their own checking account - the wealth that everyone in the company worked to earn. And then they'll pack it in a briefcase and live in Costa Rica behind bodyguards on their private beach, feeling all the while that they're justified because their daddy was the CEO.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)companies in the past. When all the wealth is gone from the company they close the doors and leave.
The only answer I can think of is the close our boarders to imports from former American companies and reopen local factories run by the workers. Once upon a time we survived as a nation by both making and purchasing our own goods. We still have the ability to do that - just not the will. .
dotymed
(5,610 posts)give them back when they have paid the same %of taxes that working people pay.
DFW
(54,056 posts)It's not difficult to get a second passport (Costa Rica was famous for "adopting" rich people for a while).
I met one guy who ditched his US passport (and thus, nationality) because he found some great-grandfather who was a Prussian nobleman. The Germans gave him a passport, even though he speaks no German and lives in Switzerland.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)It's in the Bible for Christ's sake.
God speed the year of jubilee, the wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th' oppressed shall vilely bend the knee
And wear the yoke of tyranny, like brutes, no more
That year will come, and Freedom's reign
To man his plundered rights again, restore.
William Lloyd Garrison, 19th-century abolitionist
"We read the gospel as if we had no money," laments Jesuit theologian John Haughey, "and we spend our money as if we know nothing of the gospel." Indeed, in most North American churches today, it is exceedingly difficult to talk about economics. This topic is more taboo than politics, more even than sexa subject with which our churches have recently become all too preoccupied. Yet no aspect of our individual and corporate lives is more determinative than the economy. And few subjects are more frequently addressed in our scriptures. ...
(Now we have) a trickle up" (economy): the transfer of wealth from the increasingly poor to the increasingly rich. And neoliberal policies of "structural adjustment" are not only hardening this income polarization, they are deepening psychic and social alienation. Whether through plant closings, the demise of the local grocery store, or the crisis of the family farm, we in the First World are now witnessing the epidemic of communal displacement that has already devastated local culture, institutions, and environments in the Third and Fourth Worlds.
Any theology that refuses to reckon with these realities is both cruel and irrelevant. We Christians must talk about economics, and talk about it in light of the gospel. "Churches," asserts Cornel West, "may be the last places left in our culture that can engage the public conversation with non-market values." Yet those who would challenge postmodern capitalism and its self-reflexive market discourses are struggling to find an alternative language and practice, particularly with the apparent discrediting of state socialism. This ideological vacuum offers a unique opportunity for the church to rediscover a radically different vision of economic and social practiceand one that lies right at the heart of its scriptures.
The Bible recognizes that inequalities will inevitably arise in "fallen" societya realism it shares with the worldview of modern capitalism. Unlike the social Darwinism of the latter, however, the biblical vision refuses to stipulate that injustice is therefore a permanent condition. Instead, God's people are instructed to dismantle, on a regular basis, the fundamental patterns and structures of stratified wealth and power, so that there is "enough for everyone." This socioeconomic vision is articulated in a variety of ways in both testaments: through Exodus storytelling (Exodus 16), Levitical legislation (Leviticus 25), Deuteronomic exhortation (Deuteronomy 15), prophetic pronouncement (Isaiah 5), gospel parable (Matthew 25), and apostolic pleading (2 Corinthians 8-9).
http://sojo.net/magazine/1998/05/god-speed-year-jubilee
closeupready
(29,503 posts)So not likely that's going to change anytime soon, with corporo-Democrats working with party-line Republicans.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)At a trough that they know is running out
BillyRibs
(787 posts)Parasites. what we need here is a little bit of antiseptic to clean house.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)...until they need its military.
otohara
(24,135 posts)i wouldn't vote.
It's easy to step back from society's problems when you live in a bubble, surrounded by pools, first-class vacations, boats,
designer everything and a congress/lobbyists who only look out for the rich.
Initech
(99,915 posts)Saviolo
(3,270 posts)than they could possibly ever spend in a lifetime. Vast ridiculous amounts of wealth that aren't in the economy. The money is not trickling down (how many yachts can you buy, anyway?), it's just sitting there making them more money. Meanwhile they watch their bottom lines and find that the biggest things they can change to save money are the size of their workforces (layoffs) and the amount they're paying them (outsourcing).
De Leonist
(225 posts)We need a worker's party. A political party backed by worker run unions who's sole purpose is to fight the class war on the behalf of middle class and working class people. Lets be honest here the Democrats have been as corrupt as the GOP. The sooner we are willing to wage class war on our own behalf the better.
De Leonist
(225 posts)a song I believe is very relevant to this particular point and the popular resistance currently emerging.
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)The people of power in this world may be citizens of various nations, but they have no country, they do not need one. They are the puppet masters they have no use for borders and sovereignty.