"The Business Roundtable is an association of more than 200 CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, their most powerful voice in Washington.
Last Wednesday, its chair, Joshua Bolten, told reporters that his group planned to drop 'eight figures' while 'putting its full weight behind protecting and strengthening tax reform.'"
"Translated: It’s going to pour money into Trump’s campaign to ensure that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — most of which benefit big corporations and the rich — don’t expire in 2025, as scheduled.
On Thursday, Trump met at the Business Roundtable’s Washington headquarters with over 80 CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, and Walmart’s Doug McMillon."
Why does NYTimes relentlessly attack Biden? 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼
@rbreich What the people who say "I worked hard for what I've got" always miss or ignore is that simply having the opportunity to work hard and be fairly rewarded is itself a privilege denied to many. #wealth#economics#inequality
"Billionaire money is now gushing into the 2024 election. Just 50 families have already injected more than $600 million into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of it is going to the Trump Republican Party."
"What are we to make of the fact that Trump can be re-elected, that the Supreme Court is full of reactionary fanatics, and Congress isn't acting on the will of the American people? For starters, we have a political system that acts like a dam, blocking the 'main stream' of where this country is today. …
Our political system has been rigged by corporate lobbyists, lawmakers, and judges to hold public office hostage to big money—intentionally excluding the working-class majority from its rightful place at America’s policy table."
The wealthy want to rule/CONTROL Everyone and Everything. The middle class/working class that has always held society together is virtually nonexistent now, choked out gradually for years by the entitlement of the affluent. Soon, there will only be the Rich and the Poor left.
🤔What comes thereafter is EXTREMELY unsettling to ponder.......
🏡🏠🏚
The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2% tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise about $313 billion a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality & global heating
Trump stands to gain billions… from the merger between TrumpMedia & Tech & the blank-check co [#SPAC] #DWAC, which took the parent company of #TruthSocial public.
In total, the doc showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to #Postolnikov’s acct….
The reason for the #ESFamilyTrust’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the #money that went to #TrumpMedia, the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money w/only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a #VC firm, & $1m to Wedbush Securities, a #wealth management firm.
@rbreich
🥥 We are conditioned to associate wealth with some combination of unusual skills possessed exclusively by the wealthy.
Based on a random sample of highly wealthy tech bros, Eye submit the hypothesis that these skills are in fact mainly sociopathy, greed, lack of empathy, and absence of scruples.
Convince me that Eye'm wrong. 🥥 #Wealth, #Wealthy, #Billionaires, #Musk, #Zuckerberg, #Gates, #Apple, #Google, #AI, #EatTheRich, #TuckersBalls
Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation.
For centuries, oligarchs were viewed as empowered by wealth, an idea muddled by elite theory early in the twentieth century. The common thread for oligarchs across history is that wealth defines them, empowers them and inherently exposes them to threats. The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense.
I'm done trying to reason with the #GenocideJoe crowd now after they're still on their anti-USA bandwagon after Russia and China rejected our #Ceasefire resolution at the UN.
It seems clear that to them it's just always been about:
Nina Burleigh comments on the acquisition of Trump Media & Technology Group yesterday, making him some 3 billion richer on paper:
"This is the deus ex machina - the hand of a god - coming down from above to save Trump just as New York State prepares to seize his properties for nonpayment of a nearly half-billion dollar bond."
"It is also a classic Trumpy long con, the essential Trumpworld business practice. In every way, it is the essence of Trumpism, a textbook example of how the fake businessman’s businesses operate, all empty gilded shells, branding over substance, entities that, once established, operate like pyramid schemes run by Mafiosi, attracting get-rich-quick sharps whose base instincts are only held in check by threats of blackmail and revenge."
"In a news interview in 2011, when he was ostensibly mulling a run for president, Donald Trump said that 'part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That's a huge advantage. I must tell you, that's a huge advantage over the other candidates.'"
Then when he came down the golden escalator with applause from people hired to clap, he announced his presidential candidacy and talked about how he has the "greatest assets" worth millions.
And now he's in a bind. He needs to declare bankruptcy to shield those "greatest assets" and make bond, but if he does so, he admits his blowsy boasting about how rich he is has all been smoke and mirrors, a huge lie.
"In other words, declaring bankruptcy would not be simply a legal and financial strategy to buy him time, it would be a loud and clear message of the bankruptcy of the bill of goods he’s been dishing out all these years. A winner, a top businessman, a multi-billionaire can’t come up with half a billion to avoid financial disaster."
@rbreich
I first thought this was "golden age" but gilded, yes interesting...
(disclaimer: haven't gone to watch the link on the other platform)
Hm...
Do gilded ages go along with golden ages? it seems to be that having pools of near infinite wealth opens space for people to be paid to think, to art, to create.
Keen to figure out having the golden without gilding (or with less extreme wealth and poverty). Maybe bringing back guilding?
Today in Labor History March 11, 1850: French anarchist Clément Duval was born. His theory of individual reclamation, which justified theft, and other crimes, as both educational and legitimate ways to redistribute the wealth, influenced the Illegalists of the 1910s, including Jules Bonnot, of the Bonnot Gang. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon."
Limitarianism The Case Against Extreme Wealth by Ingrid Robeyns
"A powerful case for limitarianism—the idea that we should set a maximum on how much resources one individual can appropriate. A must-read!"
—Thomas Piketty, bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
An original, bold, and convincing argument for a cap on wealth by the philosopher who coined the term "limitarianism."