Zohran Mamdani says 'I don't think we should have billionaires'

Hoarders are drawn to hoard certain things that make sense to them - cats, newspapers, old cars, guitars (my personal issue), etc.

If whatever you are hoarding starts impacting those around you, you are encouraged to get professional help, but if you are a business person, and hoard money, then you are considered successful, and they put you in charge.

If Cats could become legal tender, weird old ladies would take over the world.

Trickle Down Economics was a huge success for the Aristocrats, and a disaster for the working class. Obviously, they want to keep the system that has worked so well for them, but it is unsustainable, and it is coming to an end. They are facing two choices:

Trickle UP Economics, in which more money is given to the workers, who will then spend it, stimulating the economy. Every time this has been tried (such as during Covid), it was wildly successful. The money eventually makes its way into the hands of the Sociopathic Oligarchs and Transnational Corporations anyway, but at least it greases the cogs of the economy on its journey upwards.

That would be the best way to handle the economy for everybody. The workers have more spending power, and the rich get richer. Everybody's happy.

OR

Robin Hood Economics, which is "Take from the Rich, and give to the Poor." This usually follows a brutally violent rebellion in which the wealthy do not prevail. It is usually very uncomfortable for them and their families. The wealthy would rather avoid this one.

Of course, they want to keep on going with the plan that has made them wealthy, but we have to show them that the gravy train has come to an end, and we will not be indulging their hoarding mental illness any longer.

There’s evidence that being wealthy does indeed change your brain

I think its more a "we shouldn't have billionaires right now" rather than a blanket prevention of billionaires. They are being a cancer on our politics in the bribery scheme we have from Citizens United in that they are paying politicians to prevent the American people from getting their basic needs met. The existence of billionaires isn't inherently wrong. Hell, if we ever figure out asteroid mining, there'd be quadrillionaires. But, its the psychotic system we have of having billionaires is by them bribe the politicians to deny the people their basic needs. At this point, such behavior is parasitic.

Private jets, for one.

Also yachts.

The pollution comes from millions of cars, an industry forced on the people through decades of lobbying and bribery to eliminate the possibility of free public transportation, so that they could become richer. The pollution comes from products for clothing that are made cheaply as possible - at the cost of the environment - and extreme amounts of ad campaigns that purposefully change contemporary fashion ideals in order to keep fast turnaround on product and maximize profit so that they can become richer. Agriculture is corrupted by the rich so that it gets government subsidies in addition to maximizing profits by basing crop choice on profitability instead of sustainability, disregarding native species and planting unfathomably large fields of monocultures, squeezing the farmers themselves and funneling all the money to agri-business execs, i.e. they can become richer. Then they run ad campaigns saying 'everyone needs to do their part to save the environment!' which is clearly bullshit when the system itself is made to maximize profit, and not to maximize caring for the earth. Polluting the earth is profitable, and the profits flow ever upward.

Im not saying that. Its the wealth inequality that stunts society. People don't have the resources to make decisions based on whats best and have to deal with what they can afford. Lack of infrastructure and regulators results in more pollution.

How much do those cost?

I'm actually against a wealth tax, but think one of the only ways that taking their unrealized assets can work is if we do as you suggest.

If you own stock in something, taxing unrealized gains isn't good. it's not like were going to pay them for unrealized losses.

But we MUST stop them from being able to actualize those unrealized gains without taxing them like when they use their unrealized assets as collateral. It's like a loophole for the ultra wealthy where they can just borrow against their assets for their entire life without paying taxes on it.

And really... who cares if this way might be more expensive to do, they're rich as fuck, and can pay for it as part of that tax. Also assets can be very nebulous and hard to know what they actually have. But when you see that new house, new yacht, donation to a SPAC or whatever, the IRS can come knocking and be like how'd you pay for that.

Wealth includes assets. If you can borrow against it, it can be taxed.

In fact, taxing the assets makes borrowing against them even more expensive.

That's why accountants and auditors exist.

If you're suggesting that it shouldn't be done because its too hard -- it's not. That's just a dumb excuse.

Yes, that's the current situation, thanks for pointing that out. I don't think people understand how much tax evasion they do, for instance as of 2016 there was £36 TRILLION in offshore tax havens, UK GDP is £25 trillion for comparison. Murder in the first degree can get you prison for life, but letting countless people die from poverty related issues at home while getting rich off of starving and killing kids overseas makes you a billionaire. Why do we accept that?

Thing is, that ability to evade that is intentionally built in. It has to be. We have KYC laws here and anything over 10K is tracked.

The fact that the ultrawealthy are able to manipulate money in ways so that it's not tracked and/or not taxed has to be by design.

Huh, curious, I could swear we Germans (and most other countries I'm sure) used to do just that until a glorious neoliberal government came along and abolished the tax.

The rich can do it without civil or criminal consequence?

They can live where ever they want. The assets are here and we can tax them here.

It doesn't matter where they live. If the US exerts pressure on whatever country the money is in they can and would get that money back. They're somehow able to freeze the accounts of Russian oligarchs so they's no reason to believe they couldn't do it with Bezo as well.

That's the neat thing, they won't. It's pretty easy to apply a high tax on moving away. In fact the USA of all places do just that.

Also, what do rich people possess? Assets. Physical assets. A big part of that is real estate, owned privately or by companies they own. There's no taking that with you. They can sell their assets and try to take the money with them, but that means the society they leave gets it's assets back.

Lol, no. This is a strawman argument. Billionaires will absolutely not give up their precious connections and real estate to live on a private island or move away. Even if 50% would do that (lmao never) the tax would still be a huge benefit. Even without the money, not having these greedsacks meddling with local politics and laws would be a dream.

That's fine, billionaires do not add to an economy, they drain it. So if they leave it will remove a useless burden on the economy and whatever country is dumb enough to take them in can deal with them instead. Meanwhile, if they are pulling money from our country we can find ways to tax it and prevent them from draining our resources (and yes, money is a resource like any other).

That’s the idea I think.

As long as they stop siphoning money from us, I'm fine with that

Hopefully the corrupt ones go to China or Vietnam because they're not afraid to give corrupt billionaires the death penalty.

The natural-born limitation only applies to the President/VP, there is no such requirement for cabinet positions, Governorship, or Congressional seats.

Now, this guy still has a general election to win, and if he wins, he still has to prove he can do the job. But assuming he does all that, and he's as capable as he says he is, then maybe in a decade New York will have this guy and AOC in the Senate instead of Chuck and Kirstin....

But New York is probably the most world-wide well known city, and he's running for mayor in it with some rather European-left sentiments. That's no small thing.

Possible, but we'll happily take that chance. Candidates like this are rare and you will face the same worry about anyone. I dont think we can just give up. Theres nothing down the road of letting the cynicism win, except maybe fleeing to another country.

Yes, but all those other politicians tend to not be so... "extreme" with their crowd-pleasing language.

This is after he won the election, though

Then do surprise-Pikachu-face.jpg when the same is done against them.

Popular American politician starts saying radical but good things tends to end in a certain way.

Just because the US has only 2 real options to vote for doesn't mean people can have different opinions. It isn't for nothing that in a country like The Netherlands we have like 40 parties, including centre parties.

I'm pro LGBTQ, anti-israel, against consumerism/capitalism, pro socialism. Pro government control on key infrastructure (water, gas, electricity) and better housing and support services. Pro climate policies, pro taxing the rich.

But I'm also against fossil fuel bans, against bans on firearms, pro military for defence, pro free-speech, pro strict immigration, against 'PC' culture, against trans-women in women's sports, pro merit success.

Am I left or right? ...Or centrist?

no way. Kinda cool, and no judgement at all, tell us about the imaginary friend?

I think you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm saying that centrists worship and obey billionaires.

It's a lot harder when it's part of their very identity.

Agree. They had a choice. They shunned taxes and played at fake philanthropy. They have now dropped that and started playing like they are god. They are fragile mortals that need a reminder of revolution, I would like to see it done the French way but any way should do.

And you'll have it. They have enough money to pay an army and you bet they will use that to stop you from taking their wealth. Understand that they have rationalized their immense wealth to the point where they trully believe they deserve it. You can see it sometimes in how they consider themselves hard working geniuses, or decide God somewhat chose them to be ridiculously rich.

Yes, they will resort to violence (but not themselves, of course). But they won't need to get their hands too dirty.

They'll fund campaigns, they'll own law enforcements and will wield it against the people, meanwhile they'll buy propaganda to convince as many people as they can it's all for the best. That's easy to predict because they already do exactly that.

Violent repression of demonstrations, violence and intimidation against activists and journalists. Owning of all the mainstream medias and a large share of the less mainstream ones. All of that is slowly normalized.

You have to ask yourself: Is fulfilling that desire for retribution worth the lives of the millions of vulnerable people who would be killed due to lack of medical treatment, potable water, food, etc?

As far as I’ve understood, billionaires typically don’t have a billion liquidized and ready for spending. Rather, their value is distributed in ownership of several companies. How would the 100% taxes on ownership in companies be applied?

If you can leverage assets to apply for a loan to buy twitter, then you can levarage assets to pay your taxes.

That's what conservatives always claim. Most of them won't move and even if they do, good riddance. Simply tax their wealth beforehand.

Than they have to sell their stock or property to either not be above the threshold or to liquidate it. It's not untouchable.

People have to stop believing that wealthy people will leave instantly once they begin getting taxed. This is just a lie.

They are wealthy because of their assets and connections. They have houses, appartements, offices and factories. They have a network of influencer in the country they live in, in the city they live in ! They have a big family, kids. It's actually harder for these people to move out than you and I.

The money is already escaping. They use any loopholes (fiscal optimization they call it) to pay much lower tax than anyone else proportionally.

They won't leave ! Let the tax begin ! The loopholes have to be eliminated so that they cannot convert their wealth to escape tax artificially.

Let them, they don't generate anything.

Fine by me, they weren't paying taxes anyway.

Ok great.

IDK even they don't seem happy. Elon seems fucking miserable. I mean, I don't feel bad for them, but knowing that literally everyone thinks the world would be a better place without you can't feel great.

lol. I don't think she is as innocent as you make it seem 😂

"Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them." -Rule of acquisition #211

She was working for a hedge fund when she met him and they were married for 26 years. She may have given away $19 billion of her fortune, but her net worth is still $36 billion, the same as the original divorce settlement.

I live nowhere near NYC and I donated.

I absolutely am