cSc61 Loc: Austin

I'm noticing that the rise in popularity of American democratic socialism is directly proportional to the increased hatred of the rich and the battle cries from our elected officials to relieve them of their wealth. I'm not talking about the "few-million-dollars" rich, I'm talking about "billionaires-owning-100'-yachts" rich -- the uber wealthy ... Bezos, Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Page, etc.

After all, if some of the newly elected Representatives are to be believe, we are all poor because they are rich. We are all down because they are up. If we could just get our hands on some of what they've got, we could all be much happier...much more equal. Bringing them down, just a little, will somehow raise us all up. That's how the argument goes. And that's how the argument has gone for nearly 100 years; since the the Bolsheviks rose up to eliminate the wealthy upper class in Russia. Just look how equal everyone is in Russia today. Why, the President, a lifelong government employee, is reported to have a net worth of at least $50 Billion. But I digress ... they're just not doing it right over there. Our elected officials would be much smarter, much more ethical about spreading the wealth around. After all, we don't have any life-long politicians who have somehow amassed large fortunes while serving we the people. Oops, I'm still digressing...

I say let's forego the steady drip drip drip of an annual wealth tax. Let's just take it all at once. Then we the little people can finally live happily ever after like the Russians, Chinese, Venezuelans, Cubans, North Koreans, etc. Here's how it would work:

As of 2018, there are 585 billionaires living in America. Those 585 people have a combined net worth of just under $3T (the top 400 hold $2.48T). That's Trillion with a T - and that's a lot of money. According to the OMB, the Federal Government spent $4.094T in fiscal year 2018 .... $4.094T. That's also a lot of money. So if we can just stop all the billionaires from all their charitable giving and confiscate every penny they own, we could run the Federal Government for the next 9 months without having to borrow any more money from the Fed. That sounds great to me. Sure, we'd still be $20T in debt ... and the billionaires would now all be be penniless .... but the Government won't have to borrow any money for the next 270 days! Woo-Hoo!

Now come October 2019, if we don't want to go un-governed, we'll have to find someone else's money to take. After all, we are still going to have $40B interest payments to make every month.

Let's see ... who's left out there ....

People, the reality is that it's all a big lie. We aren't poor because they are rich. Our elected officials need a straw man, somebody we can all blame for our troubles. If we're busy hating the rich, then we won't question our politicians on how they've manage to whittle away 98% of our currencies value in just under 100 years. We won't take to the streets when they tell us the Pentagon has Trillions of dollars unaccounted for. We won't ask Speaker Pelosi how she managed to amass a $200 million fortune while working a $187K job. And by hating the rich, we'll keep electing them on the premise that they are the only ones with the power to pry a few billion dollars out of the coffers of the rich ... and that that will somehow make life better for us all.

Don't buy the lie of socialism. It doesn't work. Can not work. Will never work. Making the rich less rich will not change your lot in life one iota. You will still be required to take responsibility for your own life. No one is going to champion a better life for you -- YOU must do that for yourself. Everyone thought they were going to get all kinds of free s**t when Obama got elected. Life was finally going to get good ... especially for the long-oppressed black community. Well, except for a few party favors like a flip phone or the occasional refrigerator, the only advancement people will ever realize is what they manage to do for themselves. There is plenty to go around for everybody. We don't have to take other people's stuff. YOU just have to GO out there and get it for yourself.

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

Be kinda like blaming a fat person cause you’re to skinny.

Hadenough

Very well said! Too many sick lame and lazy.

pafret Loc: Northeast

The problem is neither the rich nor the sick, lame and lazy. The poor have always been with us and the rich are doing nothing more than they have ever done. Their wealth is derived from investments not the sweat of their brow. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and if I had been more successful in those endeavors I would gladly have exchanged my form of labor.

The problem lies with a government that has given control of our money to a private for profit
Cartel and reduced us to a nation of neer-do-well borrowers and beggars. The incessant over-budget spending necessitates borrowing and the interest on those borrowings acts to devalue the money the wage earner receives. A hundred dollars in 1960 is equivalent in purchasing power to $848.76 in 2019, a difference of $748.76 over 59 years.

The government is culpable in removing all legal restraints on these banking Cartels and in essence, allowing them to gamble with their depositor's funds. When they lost their gambles, instead of bearing the pain and going out of business we, the taxpayers were saddled with their losses. We did not share in any of their profits however; those were the property of the stockholders and investors.

Another factor is the exportation of jobs. Trade Agreements like NAFTA were immediately obvious in their effects. It did not take rocket science to understand that industry will move to where the labor and other costs of doing business are less. Businesses have an obligation to their owners to produce maximum profits; they have no national loyalty. Couple this with the insane rules and regulations to make what industry remained "Green" and you have eliminated their ability to compete in the marketplace thus driving them out of existence.

Town after town that had a single dominant employer has gone to wrack and ruin when that employer was forced to close their doors. These were the jobs that anyone could go get. If that labor didn't suit you the next town over had other work. Now we talk about the "rust belt and flyover country" and speak of its citizens as deplorable. In reality they were our neighbors who worked for their daily bread, supported their families, churches and community and were the individuals who provided the fighting men and women, for our more or less, just wars.

All of this desolation of Middle America is the result of government intervention. The mountains of regulations that were economically impossible to implement k**led them off. New startups by entrepreneurs nose-dived because these regulatory burdens required mountains of cash just to prove compliance with the rules. This left next to no new innovations to keep our technology pre-eminent. The only notable exception has been Elon Musk but he is more adept at getting government grants and subsidies than producing jobs or useful product.

This over regulation is the same rock Socialism founders on. No Central Planning (Socialism) can ever be as prescient as the operations of the unfettered Free Market Place. Socialism inevitably leads to Totalitarianism and Serfdom. It cannot deliver the goods and services, in abundance, at affordable prices, as does free-market Capitalism.

The final knife in the back is the immigration problem and as you might have guessed this too is contrived by our government. Starting with Kennedy's laws establishing chain migration as well lottery immigration we have created a free-for-all climate. We are permitting unlimited immigration under the ridiculous guise of asylum when these people are seeking economic betterment. Everyone seeks this but in our case, their betterment is taken directly out of our pockets whether we wish it or not. These people have survived and grown into adulthood in their native countries so why the sudden necessity of going to the United States? They have all heard of the free lunch that allows them to live as well without the necessity of working.

In addition to not being able to afford the support of the masse of people who are entering legally and illegally we also have the distortion of our labor markets. These invaders monopolize all of the low paying jobs and the employers do not care that they are illegal. They work cheap and in the restaurant industry, can be hired for a couple of hours, then sent home to be called back later and used for another couple of hours. We have failed to demand and implement a system to prevent i******s from working at all and more specifically off-the-books.

These i******s eventually develop sk**ls that make it profitable for the employers to use them in better work but at depressed wages. Ultimately some will progress into the ranks of the sk**led, still at a lower wage and they will compete with citizens who have trained and educated themselves for the jobs. When the citizens are not fired and replaced with cheaper illegal labor, they have reduced incomes because the presence of so much low cost labor drives wages down.

The H1B programs were intended to allow employers who could not find sufficient American technical employees to hire foreigners and get them temporary green cards. What has actually happened is that these H1B people do not go home, they stay here and occupy the top echelon of high-tech good paying jobs. It is not simply too much competition. Companies like Disney have wholesale fired Americans an replaced them one-for-one with cheaper H1B’s even going so far as to require the Americans to train their replacement or lose their severance benefits. Our Government again, working at doing things to make your life better.

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

I was listening to am interview of a California billionaire on Larry Elder's radio show a while back. He started a computer chip business and it was, obviously, very successful. He lamented the l*****t attitudes of the Californians. In his mind he is exactly what the American dream is all about. He also described how much of the excessive cost of things in California ia all due to their laws. He cited for example the cost of homes. he said the laws make it nearly impossible for individuals to build homes. He is building his new home at a cost of about $200/sqft. But the average cost is about $900/sq/ft simply because the builders know they have laws preventing the common folk from doing their won building. aka-it has been monopolized. Point being that the i***tic laws as fashioned by the powers that be prevent the common man from rising above the struggle.

I wanted to post a link to the interview. It was TJ Rodgers, an American Scientist and Businessman and the founder of Cypress Semiconductor. The interview was the thrid hour of the 1/29 show.

cSc61 Loc: Austin

Sounds like you strengthened my point pafret. It's the government not the wealthy that is to blame. The "rich" is just the straw-man the government sets up to distract the masses from the real culprits - themselves. Sadly it seems to be working. Every where you turn today someone is talking about soaking the rich. As if somehow that's going to do anything for anyone.

DaWg44

While we baby boomers were working our butts off trying to send our kids to college, we did not pay enough attention to what they were learning. Now we have X’s & millennials dumb as a box of rocks about reality.