How Billionaires Devoured The World | The Mehdi Hasan Show
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- The 10 richest men in the world doubled their wealth during the pandemic while millions sank deeper into poverty and sickness. In his book "Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World," author Peter Goodman of the New York Times explores with Mehdi how the ultra-rich are responsible for things like climate change, violence, and the crumbling of democracy.
The Mehdi Hasan Show: Insightful reporting and probing interviews that examine the day's events and provide a deeper level of context for the politics of our interconnected society.
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#Billionaires #JeffBezos #Amazon
The sad thing is we already had Monopoly laws on the books that were not being enforced and the GOP hobbled the IRS ability to go after THE 1%
And many other regulatory agencies. Lobbying jobs need to be unlawful for 20years after government work. Agencies need better communication to see bigger pictures. The grift of the 'upper class ' and how they 'value ' assets. Positive vibes from New Hampshire, remember to be kind to each other and yourself during this pandemic and social crisis
The FTC has no blocked a single purchase or merger since 1980! The US has not allowed 'vertical' integration..until 1980, and now a company can run an online store, a warehouse, and a delivery service, making it essentially impossible to compete against them.
But I've been audited twice and I'm a teacher....
@@GradyNickel because the IRS was underfunded, they spend more time auditing those who can't afford to keep a lawyer on retainer.
@Bogar hollar Butcher I'm sorry, I don't speak MAGAt. Can you get a translator please?
Because even reasonable taxes would be a hundred times more than they are donating in cash.
And we don't need another art museum or orchestra hall, we need well funded public schools. The private schools will be just fine. Not everyone gets to go to private schools.
exactly, was just going to comment that. People talk about Bezos' "generosity" giving 100 million to charities, but he made something like 36 billion in the last year alone. That would be like one of us expecting to get a photo-op with the mayor because we pull $100 bill out of our wallets to donate to the city (in lieu of paying actual taxes). Give me a break!
When I see someone like Bill Gates giving almost all of his massive wealth to philanthropy, and the causes are things like curing diseases, creating scalable clean-water and clean-energy technologies for 3rd-world countries, THAT I'm impressed by.
@@crtinde Agree!
Plus, they are able to use the “donation” as tax right-offs. It’s a win-win for them
When this much money (equals power) is transferred to a handful of megalomaniacs, checks and balances should be in place. Like in any decent government.
Second thing to consider: any society in history where wealth inequality became too big, ended up in revolution and downfall.
Unfortunately the idiots that want to attack don't have any wealth that I saw at the Capitol on the tube a year ago. They were like followers of the pied piper trump.
That's what the republicans want though. And they believe they all have the ability to get that way with just a little hard work. Blind to the truths of wealth inequality they continue to support laws and practices that shoot themselves in the foot because they want to be able to do those exact same things once THEY become big rich powerful people right after their 80th hour this week stacking boxes for their bosses that forget their names. Good job
Last I checked that looked like where we were headed!
@Kees de Vreugd let's start with taxes and close their many loopholes, benefits and all tax heavens. Cleaners, truck drivers, welders and all workers all pay taxes without trusts, tax heavens etc etc etc
Precisely. It's in everyone's interest, before the pitchforks come out. Revolution is very dangerous, even if it starts out as a noble cause, they have a tendency to be hijacked by autocrats and extremists. Off the top of my head: The October Revolution, the French Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, all started with ideas of liberty, equality and justice, but that's not how it went down in the end...the list goes on.
There has to be a point where this madness of oligarch billionaires getting richer and richer and richer, stops. Scandinavian countries have put in to law that the CEO or highest income earner of a company cannot make any more than 300 times the least-payed person in the company. So if the CEO or chairman wants a raise, that's fine, but everyone else gets one too. And if a CEO makes $1 billion a year, the janitor mopping the floors makes A LOT of money, along with everyone else in the company. This is how it should be.
It will - the planet will put them in their place. Unfortunately, we also will suffer.
@@debbie5128
The planet isn't their thing.
They are kings of space...
You also need to be able to enforce those laws against people who have the ability to shift legal jurisdictions. You pass that law? Ok. Now the company is legally relocating to Luxembourg. Or the CEO sets himself a $1/yr salary, and instead all his not-legally-income is being paid to a holding company in the Cayman islands that he happens to own.
@@vylbird8014 Exactly.i have an x-childhood friend whose business makes almost him over 200k a year.He took out an LLC & now pays himself an hourly wage,just to get around the taxes of paying himself 20k a month.
Now he has started a charity whereby he takes 5k from his rich friends & gives them a 10k donation receipt.
The minds of these people is warped.
Identical laws used to exist in the U.S. The limit used to be the CEOs couldn't make more than 200 times as much as the lowest-paid employee.
These are criminals who will never be held accountable for their crimes against humanity. Disgusting.
I also call them evil
Most criminals are sociopaths. These guys are Narcissistic Sociopaths. The difference between these guys, and the millions of average criminals, is that they refuse to accept that they are ever wrong.
@@kenenglish124 Very well said, truly their arrogance knows no limits. Even some of the most hardened criminals when asked "Did you know that what you were doing is considered wrong?" They replied "Oh yes even before I started I was aware that my actions are a crime." Bezos actually believes he is helping humanity, the slave state is in revival.
More than humanity. The planet.
@@alexbaum2204 thank you! They're killing the entire planet at large.
Okay, so "they're smart, and they work hard"...but do they work twice as hard as their janitor? 5 times as hard? 100 times as hard? How much time is there in a day that they should be "working so much harder than everyone else". I'd wager they don't work any harder than most people who put in a solid day's work. Should they get some "premium" because of the structural changes they make that people are willing to spend money on? Sure thing. But there's a limit, and that limit is: why should the janitor be on the verge of homelessness while they can't count their homes?
While billionaires have become wealthier and their behavior more disturbing, focusing on them is a mistake. The real threat is the cumulative growth of the entire wealth pool. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" is economic theory and accepted lay opinion, yet it does not apply to wealth accumulation. Cumulative wealth will grow whether or not real world economic underpinnings will support that growth. Last year, financial asset growth equaled 49% of our GDP, an impossible feat without several trillion "free lunches".
According to analysis, their worth is 400,000 times that of the average worker...
@@strezztechnoid - Their wealth or compensation may be 400,000 times that of the average worker, but their worth is debatable.
I don't know what the company is I only heard a short bit on NPR a few months ago, what the owner did was take a pay cut of a few million/year and bumped everybody, regardless of duties that wasn't at the new base pay, to $70,000/year. Some people became mad because they didn't think others deserved it and they had worked hard to get to the salary they were at and left the company. It had real consequences though, people started building houses and squeezing out puppies contributing to habitat loss and overpopulation. I am glad at least one owner of a business isn't as much of a sociopath as the majority.
@@james-faulkner Leaving the company because of sour grapes is really low. Whatever raise the lowest paid workers got is still peanuts compared to what the highest paid workers get. Greed is really a sick mentality. Imagine feeling resentment that struggling workers getting a leg up,
Also have them pay the crews who clean up the mess they left in the environment such as water pollution and carbon footprints leading to Climate Change. 4 Oceans is one company who cleans up the oceans.
Don't be absurd, Amazon didn't answer a "demand." It offered a loophole around sales taxes, until it put a whole bunch of people out of business, and made other sources of the same goods difficult or impossible to find. Now, it charges those taxes, and you have no place else to find things you used to get at the store.
My demand is for a bookstore where I can browse the shelves, sit down and read a book, get into conversations with other customers, and, when a book grabs my attention, buy it immediately, go into the park and read it. I'd even rather pay a little more for a book in order to have a comfortable bookstore like that. It was great to have a bookshelf full of books on computers, or poetry. Thanks to Amazon, all those old-style bookstores are gone -- even in Manhattan.
@@norman_5623 go back to the stone age
@@OGCHUCK1 Unlike you I have an attention span longer than 150 words.
@@norman_5623 I remember bookstore coffee shops where my wife and I often went and spent several hours just really enjoying the experience. Oftentimes the store owner would serve homemade treats, and usually would have a cat or doggo for company.
Additionally, Amazon is nothing special. I see their activity as the modern version of Sears and Roebuck, except more predatory and monopolistic.
Right, pension funds are quickly disappearing! These profits are going directly into CEOs' and executives' pockets!
Exactly,Comedian George Carlin echoed that statement about how our pension & social security is going to be taken away,given to the politicians criminal friends on Wall street.
The elephant in the room is this,the climate crisis is fueled by an over populated planet.But any working capitalistic model needs even more CONSUMERS,to keep the profits 📈coming.
Apparently, that is what at least some Americans want. They voted for massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and don't want to vote for infrastucture, climate or social programs.
Vote for one:
A. Republicans with massive tax cuts for billionaires
B. Democrats with massive tax cuts for billionaires.
@@norman_5623 exactly
@@norman_5623 the last two democrats in office wanted to increase taxes for the wealthy and thats why the Republicans bitched so much so idk what parallel universe you living in.
@@norman_5623 Nice excuse for voting for your favorite warmongering anti science orange cheetoh. Whatever you need to tell yourself I guess.
It’s a mad world. There’s enough of us to just take it back.
I would love to agree w/ you, but that would depend on our willingness to change: one example would be not using their products and services, even for a limited time (called a boycott). when I speak to 20-30 year olds, they tell me that they understand why it's bad, but they're not willing to give up ordering stuff through amazon. seems unlikely to me that we can be the change we want, given how hypnotized we are by 'stuff'. (I haven't used amazon etc in years, I say "we" to be polite.)
Wish it could be as easy as just taking it back. That might be accomplished peacefully by restructuring our government. Assuming our vote could become unified to such a degree. Far more likely is a spiral into violent revolution in which case there is not much left of the old world left over at the end of it all.
How many homeless families does it take to make one billionaire?
I did the math for that last year, so perhaps out of date for today. It takes 967 working age adults going homeless to mint each new billionaire. Oh and by the way, housing units are capital assets. As long as homes are seen as capital assets, the wealthy will get wealthier and more people will become homeless.
@@coolmodelguy6304
Thanks
@@coolmodelguy6304 but net homelessness across the world is decreasing while the number of billionaires are also increasing .
@@kaavi1391 - That cannot be. Housing in the UK is in crisis. Housing in France is in crisis. Berlin just seized 450,000 housing units from wealthy owners in order to house underpaid workers. Here in the USA housing is a capital asset, so continuing gains in housing prices are forcing people onto the streets. I don't know where you are getting your information, but it contradicts all reporting.
@@coolmodelguy6304 there is more to the world than these countries you have mentioned . Also usa's homeless population is also decreasing .
Tax the rich.
Puerto Rico is being invaded by bit coin “billionaires” who are only paying 3% in taxes while the rest of us pay 30%. They are buying properties left and right racking up home prices making it impossible for middle class families to buy a home. They are not even forced to provide jobs. It’s a horrible situation
Thank you for the information. What's happening to Puerto Rico is a tragedy. I still remember Trump throwing out paper towels.
That's a problem in a lot of places - property sales driven by speculation rather than people actually living in them.
Finally MSNBC is starting to catch up with what the rest of us have always known.
How billionaires *exploited* the world would be much more interesting to watch ✌️
how billionaires exploit WORKERS ......
Someone said that donations to charities are only a fraction of the taxes they would have to pay had Reagan not started a phase of multiple tax cuts for the haves and have mores in the last four decades. Each of those tax cuts had one result after a few years time: recession and the Great Recession. Of course, the same in the 1920s was partly responsible for the Great Depression.
Part of the reason for today's deteriorated social economics - the Ryan-Trump tax cuts for their filthy friends
Strangely after each recession (depression?), the elites got wealthier and the middle class got smaller.
actually the largest tax cuts have been under democrats (Carter and Clinton). This is not a party issue. It is a capitalist/worker issue.
I'm glad I grew up in the 1980's where all the movies taught me that corporations were my enemies.
They taught you corporations were amazing.
The movies are only a glimpse of the complexity of the real world.
They are.
I don't use Amazon. At all. In any way, ever. So, speak for yourself. I also don't shop at walmart.
Kate y u mad. Are we chilling or wut
Good for you. Locally, Walmart has driven two grocery stores out of business. And I notice that Walmart prices are higher in small towns than in larger towns. And they sell obsolescent Hi Tech products.
Finally! I am glad this is being presented on MSNBC.
The MSM has, sadly, not covered this topic enough. And *both* parties, Dems and the GOP, have coddled them.
And even worse, the corporate politicians, along with the corporate media, will continue to enable the billionaires.
No change. Oh well. 🤷
Because who owns the big media companies? Billionaires right?
I think we need the media companies to be managed by independent go betweens to help our country. The independent go-between needs to be a bi-partisan committee probably.
But then who watches the watchers...
@@luv2charlie not bi-partisan. Non-partisan
In the final analysis what causes revolutions isn't any "ism". It's people living twelve to a room looking up the hill and seeing a guy who has a twelve-room house all to himself.
So it's jealously? I don't look at a mansion and go "jeez whizz it would be neat if I killed the guy and took that mansion for myself".
I'm not religious, but maybe the envy being a deadly sin was on to something
@@apexcrypto01 if you think that's jealously im sorry i have to tell you that you're a bootlicker
actually I think it is about being able to feed their kids and not die of preventable diseases......The contract is broken.
"Bezos is a certifiable genius"
So was Lex Luthor.
Luthor was also far more charismatic than that serial killer-faced dweeb.
But no Superman to “regulate” him in our real life.
Dude looks like a mix of Lex Luthor and Marshall Applewhite. Was hoping he'd board the Mothership and never come back. 😄
I see a certifiable rich guy who wanted to be richer. The idea was obvious. His grandfather owned over 50 million dollars in land. He is just another rich capitalist. They take more, give less.....
@@letsRegulateSociopaths He created an incredible organization. It might have a place in our future. But at what price? These guys are so single minded they’ll run us off a cliff if we can’t get control of the greater picture.
He's right, the needs of the people don't matter to the people that run the country.
Welcome to reality this is being going own since the biginning of time.
The real heroes are the doctors, nurses, scientists, and others who risked or even forfeited their careers to act as whistleblowers during this pandemonium.
Bravooooo
I should be a billionaire.. I would actually save the world and do what is needed. Would never take a private jet.. nor would I be going to space for 10 minutes and pollute for fun. I've got the trees to grow
Unfortunately they all must have said that when they were a child. Power and money can easily corrupt someone. If that alone doesn’t then their clubs will.
Bezos isn’t a genius. Anyone could’ve thought of what he did & I’m sure some people did. But those other people just didn’t have the capital to do much with it. He had the money & was at the right place, at the right time. Money & luck, that’s all.
He's very very smart. i disagree. You're underestimating him and his management skills
You probably can't comprehend or understand nor want to. Probably never started a business
Jeff had like 4 degrees and wanted to be a professor but decided to join wall Street and be a Quant then left to start Amazon
His dad was Cuban and swan from Cuba to Miami FL
That was his father's genes. That drive is genetic
Bezos is incredibly intelligent. I'm not a big fan, but what he created is a remarkable system. I have my issues with it...however, I also use it from time to time. He's out of touch with the average person, but he is a driven individual.
The key to amazon success was 'free shipping', and NO SALES TAXES because of government 'socialism' for their business. They LOST MONEY for 10 years eating the cost of shipping, until they were able to have their own shipping system were they pay subcontractors low prices and cut out the fedex/ups expense. Now they jack up their prices and the profits come rolling in, same monopoly plan all the big corps have. Lose money and drive everyone else out, then raise prices and make billions for your investors.
@@murraymadness4674 who was driven out
Name them
@@beanabovethefrank1499 but who wouldn’t be driven if everything that they did produced them that much money? Think about it, if I knew that I could do anything I wanted on any given day, I would wake up everyday superbly driven too!
I wish I made in a year what these criminals make in a minute.
Yes, Scott, but you get to keep your soul.
Well, that's capitalism. The capitalism that America extols, right ?
Capitalism exists in many countries, and doesn't guarantee good government. It can be fascist like Mussolini or Nazi Germany.
Yeah that's apparently what America wants I'll never understand why we like living in a self entitled violent third world shithole but I was born here so I don't have a choice but to die here
@@nobodycares4321 lol so envious of others. Your user name suits you. That's how people think about you 😂
@@apexcrypto01 Wow, that's your best insult? To say nobody loves me? Lmao oh man it's been a long time since I was taunted by a 14 year old.
Unchecked capitalism is destructive.
We need to seize their excess wealth, one way or another.
abolish the stock market, just zero out all their 'wealth', and turn ownership to their employees.
Love you, Medhi. Thanks for all that you do. You're helping to educate the people that will bring the change we need. This piece was phenomenal! Davos Man, a must read. Peter Goodman is awesome.
These billionaires do talk about the humble backgrounds they come from. However, when you have that much money you have already changed.
Exactly it’s as if there trying to convince themselves there not some bottomless gluttony greedy pig that’s only satisfied after the lobster drenched in butter they crapped out and not letting go of 1 red cent to the normal working class even tho oh yaah sure I’m still same kid from Brooklyn like some goodfellas upbringing
And yet very few of them come from humble backgrounds. They like to think they earned their way to the top by hard work and talent, but (with very few exceptions) they all come from a quite wealthy family background. Because starting a business is a risk - and for most people, that risk means spending all your savings, taking out a mortgage, and risking losing everything you own and ending up on the streets if your business fails. That risk is a lot easier to take if you have some family wealth you can fall back on.
Peter Goodman makes a wonderful case for the solipsism of billionaires.
Watch your language!
Ha.
The corporate world needs a long needed intervention. They are sick.
At least Andrew Carnegie gave free libraries to towns.
Yes, but he got to pick and choose which books went into them.
There are entirely too many billionaires. That much wealth should never be in private hands.
Keep dreaming
It wouldn't matter so much if the treated everyone the same. And it was truly illegal to bribe politicians police judges etc. We would all still be on a decent playing ground if we had strong unions where when you work you get fair wages healthcare retirement etc.
@@lindamullins1446 Keep dreaming as time moves on people get more greedy .
Trump voters: be serious and write something intelligent like a counter-argument.
You suspect they know enough words to do that? 😅
Whatabout this and whatabout that .
@Solstice of Snow Billionaires loved the tax cuts that should tell you everything, prove they were good.
@Joe Biden Says: That's a very imaginative thought you had there.
@Solstice of Snow It is common sense. They gave the rich more money.
man i need this book. the insights of this man is outstanding
They need to be taxed 40% of their profits!
Let’s start at 90, like they were taxed in the 40s!
What profits? With a good accountant you can enjoy all the mansions and private yachts you want without ever making any taxable income.
4:13: “Abject failure” is putting it lightly. It’s been a repellent spectacle.
Love your show Hasan!
This was the most edifying twelve minutes of viewing for me since the new year began!
Thanks for the continuous great videos,....I feel those who would allow the market dynamism to determine when to trade or not are either new in space in general or probably jut naive, the sphere have seen far worse times than this, enlightened traders continue to make good use of the dip and pump even acquiring more equities towards trading sessions, I'd say that more emphasis should be put into trading, since it's way profitable than holding, Trading went smooth for me as I was able to arise over 6 btc when I started at 1.5btc in just 5 weeks implementing trades with signals and insights from Franklin Harper, I would advised y'all to trade your assets rather than hold for future you aren't sure about.
Would be nice to follow his instructions, where can I find him? Telegram?
@@collinsjames999 yes with his full name….just search his full name and you will find him
crap
One of the best ever interview i have seen recently. How he put it in sentance is amazing. not demonizing billnrs... finiding new way to tex..
Last Q&A was scintillating. We don't hear this in MSM
When AOC says they take it... she's referring to their exploitation of their workforse, their unwillingness to pay employees their actual value to the business.
well they certainly didn't do the actual work that was done, someone did. Then they took it.
Take 90% of billionaires net worth. It's only fair.
This was the marginal tax rate for the wealthy during WWII. I believe it might've even been higher. It's not THAT crazy.
The USPS should be allowed to offer competitive online services to the ones that are funding billionaires.
They love generosity ONLY because they keep a good image AND they get to write off when it comes to tax reporting... they are not generous when they pay their employees starving rates and pay themselves the exorbitant amounts of money at the expense of their workers. Charity is for them a way to save money... make no mistake about that.
Love this guest and the way he talks...
To all who point to "capitalism" let's be clear that this is not capitalism.
Capitalism should be the right to start business...the wealth needs to be more fairly distributed as does the tax burden.
capitalism was never good in theory or practice, cronyism is the only capitalism historically, plutocracy and monopoly is inevitable... this is what happens when people believe might makes right, and call it a "meritocracy"
No true capitalism, right? Just like no true Scotsman.
what about this isn't capitalism?
@@gunkwretch3697 Everything is toxic at its extremes.
We need more voices like Mehdi’s. He’s one of the few who sheds light on the truth of our modern era Gilded Age. Mahdi and very few others aside, corporate media has dropped the ball when it comes to its Fourth Estate role, critical to survival of our democracy. Thank you Mehdi.
Bezos is not a genius. Einstein was a genius, Bezos had a good idea.
Medical gowns for Amazon workers? Should have provided them with quality respirators, face shields, gloves - they all make sense but gowns don't.
this is the capitalist meritocracy, might makes right, greed is good, you dont get ahead paying taxes and paying your employees much... people refuse to unionize and buy from sweat shops instead
Mr. Hasan is one of the best JOURNALIST out there!
Thank you sir,
Trickle down economics is an old concept that used to be called "horse and sparrow economics". That will explain why we rely on their charity.
The big world 🌎 money banks are something we talked about in the 60's. They 💯 have taken the political stage. Can't stand it when the very richest of Americans whine about all that money. While the rest of us do without. Pay your fare share of taxes and the government will have enough money 💰 🤑 💸 for many programs and plans to help Americans.
Trump gave Amazon millions for PPP. Why??
Mehdi Hasan means something new something fantastic!
I find it interesting how they are avoiding calling it what it is....modern slavery.
Someone's being pi**ing on my back and Peter S. Goodman is telling me it's raining.
$15,000.00 a second. Let that marinate.
Amazon has been a net positive during the pandemic. Kept a lot of us crowding into stores for essentials including food. Quick and pretty much secure delivery. Way above instacart quality. We might be jealous of Amazon and Bezos' success and wealth but they have really set the bar high and innovated. It's a success story and I applaud them.
If one looks at these CEOs, one starts to realize the gap between them and everyone else. Even the CEOs that make less money than these billionaires don’t relate to or understand the average employee. At the company I work for, I would have to work 200 years to get the amount of money the CEO at my company made. It is insanity. There is nothing someone could do to actually deserve that absurd amount of money. These guys are counting on the complacency of the masses to maintain and grow their pile of toys. And make no mistake: The money they have consequently gives them a lot of power to wield. And they do wield it so very well. They quash anything that even remotely looks like it could result in collective bargaining. They lobby lawmakers so they can be sure to hang onto their money/power. They plunder our planets resources and pollute our planet, unchecked. And all because they can never get enough money. Their greed knows no bounds.
Let's cry for the rich. These people have no clue what milk cost, what Healthcare cost.
Charity is a five-sigma certain sign that you're living in a failed state.
Their charities are marketing schemes. Yes the organizations(their purposes/goals) receiving the donations are better funded but it's still just marketing scheme, i.e. a drop in their personal finances bucket which results in said bucket being refilled. They still treat their employees like shiz and they still profit from their political donations which pave the way for their reduced tax responsibilities and worker compensation/safety.
there is no society without social...no society without a responsibility toward society
God complex is rampant,get it right guys
Bezos giving $100,000,000 is like an average person giving $1 to the homeless guy at the intersection.
Most of them are quite lucky, and many also benefited enormously from the US government, the same gov they don't want to pay taxes to. It's weird, because the 'old way' was that the rich didn't pay taxes, and that everyone who was poor did, while the rich more or less just sat on assets in a stagnant economy that had no consumers other than the tiny population of rich people.
I don't know why so many poor people adore these people, they work hardest at not contributing to their own country, usually one that enabled them. Why is it acceptable that the wealth being generated by workers has skyrocketed, yet the pay per hour has not? Why is it okay that it all gets funneled up?
Customer service brought to you by those who don't believe in a public good, only a private one.
How billionaires took over the world and have purchased all the politicians to create laws beneficial for them.
Greedy people should be put in rehabilitation centers to recover from their greed.
And some of these guys fly off to space ...
I'm sorry, I don't care how hard Bezos works, you can't tell me he works a trillion times harder than me, that he's a trillion times smarter than me. You don't earn a trillion dollars, you get a trillion dollars by cheating and stealing and stepping on the people who got you there. Bezos is obscenely rich just not because he worked hard and made good choices, but because he exploits people and pays off the government to keep the exploitation going. We're not the richest country in the world, we're the country with the richest oligarchs
You should talk about Rutger Bergman who can brilliantly talk to you about balancing the world with taxes, taxes, taxes!!!
I like Rutger, but taxes are not enough. We have a system imbalance that will shake the economy apart soon if not remedied. Even in open systems, there cannot be infinite growth, so we must cap wealth accumulation at some level, not just tax it.
My sister discovered after purchasing an item from Amazon, and paying off the item, that her Visa card continued to be charged monthly by Amazon due to a box she hadn't checked off. It took over a year to have what was now hundreds of dollars returned.[ Her bank backtracked the charges which weren't listed as Amazon, and told her these were Amazon charges..]..... Check your Visa bill charges, people.
The Amazon Prime thing - I think we all know about that. If you just click the 'confirm' order button then you automatically sign up to the payments. The only way to not sign up is to look for the 'order without prime' button which is deliberately made hard to spot and in tiny font size.
Power to them. They are positioned to do so.
Like how he dodged the question of whether you can make a billion dollars or if you have to take it.
Well, I don't know that I completely agree with that statement, but there is some truth to it. Amazon would not exist if the rest of us (including myself) did not have an account with them. It is so much easier to buy on line. Twenty years ago that would have been laughable. Same for Microsoft. I am using their products right now. Some people come up with ideas the rest of us can't live with out. The rest of us just need to turn off the TV and start thinking of creative ways to make money.
I take issue with one of the themes presented on this video concerning taxes. True, wealthy people pay less taxes than their secretary, but Congress writes the tax laws, and the rest of us just follow the tax code. That was not mentioned. The idea of not paying their fair share of taxes is incorrect. They have accountants that follow the tax law right down to the last cent. The middle class always pay more in taxes. Why? Congress writes the tax code!
Well, they got rich and filthy rich because we fork our money over to them in one way or another. At some point that becomes less relevant, but ultimately we consumers are (also) to blame for their shameless wealth... pointing at myself as much as at them. 🤷🏻♂️
No, the wealthy got/get more wealthy, because they buy lobbyists, our politicians, our judges, and even our military leaders to make sure our laws and regulations favor the wealthy, so they continue to grow their profit margins!
Consumers are not to blame at all. Through politics, our society has been rigged to grow wealth at a rate three times faster than our economy grows. In a rigged game, you cannot blame the rubes for losing when they must participate to live.
Issues - I lean right
1) Blue Collar / hourly paid workers wages from c1977 to 2020 has largely stagnated (14% over 33 years is derisory). Productivity from these workers has soared. These savings have flown to the senior management and shareholders of the Company.
This needs to stop - Big fan of unions getting back into the game to place pressure on the senior management to counter act the pressure coming from the board / shareholders. Prefer this route as opposed to minimum wage which could end up destroying small businesses.
2) M&A activity - it is almost at the point where this should be stopped for 5 years (this is too extreme but there is a point here). M&A activity has seen sector after sector after sector turn into outright monopolies / cartels
3) Building on point 2 above - Anti-trust laws need to be dusted and used, actively used to go look at breaking up the cosy cartels upsetting the apple cart of the monopolies etc.
4) I am old enough to remember the talk of "exporting jobs to developing nations will see a middle class appear in those countries" - this was a lie and it never happened. The jobs go exported the new workforce was abused from here to kingdom come. Using the "supply chain crisis" as the rationale certain industries deemed critical to US national interests are brought back into the US.
5) Stakeholder Capitalism & Virtue Signalling ... these are nothing more than smoke screens to keep the left leaning media off them (the right wing media are still stuck worshipping at the door of corporates, though this is changing) ... whilst the public & media who traditionally went after the big corporates and billionaires are not paying attention these corporates are running rampant with the same old practices of lining their pockets (point 1 above) at the expense of everyone else.
6) Some (not all!) of the funding through NGOs / Not for profits are again nothing more than smoke screens to mask / advance their own objectives which does not always lead to real good ...
There are lots of other things I can think of ... but I'll stop here ... Yes I know a lot of these thoughts are some on the "old" left advocated for back in the day ... happy to say they were right and those of us on the right were wrong ...
I refuse to order any product on AMAZON. I buy direct or locally.
Why on earth are governments so afraid of taxing these bloody billionaires!
$22,000,000.00/day buys a lot of slaves.
Ceo's forget where their money comes from. The workers who they are so reluctant to give a living wage to are their customers as well.
Those that have the gold, make the rules.
While it's all very interesting, the trouble is they only deal with the SYMPTOMS, but NEVER the ORIGINAL CAUSE of an "ancient curse" that has bedeviled our species for countless millennia -
According to psychologist KURT LEWIN's Boy Scout summer camp experiment in 1945, on 3 different leader ship ( which I equate to parenting ) styles
# 1 - Laissez Faire- French for "Do nothing" - Which kids don't like it
# 2 - Autocratic/ Over controlling - Kids HATE IT - As would any healthy person!
# 3 - DEMOCRATIC - KIDS LOVE IT !
From that & closely observing my own two young kids I carried out a few micro experiments to see how they reacted ( & given the choices were numerically likely to fail, was prepared to back off, as necessary ) - It didn't take me long to obtain clear results from the change in my kids behaviour for me to conclude that not only was Lewin right but that it seems very probable that we are born "hard wired" to be both DEMOCRATIC & SOCIABLE! The problem with that is if we have abusive parents/relatives/teachers/etc then this is likely to bring the child into conflict with them as the child eventually feels forced to stand up for itself & express it's unhappiness as best they can. I don't know about elsewhere but in the UK this unnecessary conflict is labelled as the "terrible 2s" where most unaware parents will escalate a minor disagreement into a battle of wills that results in the over controlling parent escalating an often quite unnecessary situation to a level where they eventually end up crushing the child's spirit & probably setting them up with repressed anger for the rest of their lives. Another contributing factor to such problems is that as the parent has lived longer in their dysfunctional society they are likely to be more screwed up than the child who not having lived that long is more healthy than their parent ! - But I doubt many adult-children are capable of controlling their negative emotions long enough to engage their cortex to consider if they are over reacting let alone consider the consequences of the long term damage they are likely to cause including labelling the kid as a "problem child"( which is the parent "hitting the easy button" ), trotting them off to the local "trick cyclist" who instantly buys into the mother's labelling ( as it fits too easily with their own dubious THEORY / false ideology ) & thus they gang up to show the kid the "error of their ways" & if they ( not realising the gravity of what is @ stake ) make the mistake of standing up to this more refined but more dangerous form of over control they are likely to be prescribed RITALIN, prolonged excessive use of which causes the brain to swell up against the inside of their skull & cause PERMANENT brain damage ! - Hardly progress beyond the middle ages when they only bled the kid to keep them quiet ! Thankfully not all psychiatrists/ psychologists operate @ such a low level. In contrast ,THE child psychologist ALICE MILLER stated that 90% of our species are dysfunctional because of authoritarian - abusive- toxic parenting The symptoms that result from that cause @ one end of the continuum, people who take nicotine-alcohol-drugs to medicate their emotional pain to @ the other end the "great" dictators of the 20th century Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot ( It is no random coincidence that they were all abused children who's pathological defence mechanism was to become psychopaths e.g. shut down emotionally & seek power to protect themselves) Unfortunately these dictators obtained such power as to allow them to re-enact their child hood traumas-dramas on the world stage leading to World War / Holocaust - Genocide / deliberate famine / etc
While I feel sorry for what happened to them as kids clearly, @ the VERY least psychopaths should NEVER EVER be given power - & clearly we have yet to learn that lesson ! BTW - ALICE MILLER has written over a dozen books on this topic & a good starting point is "For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing "
As for capitalists profiting from disasters etc, we learned about that from
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Paperback - 1 May 2008
by Naomi Klein
RUclips gave us a Kohls ad in the middle of this just fyi
The tax system is the real problem.
One notices how the billionaires never mention the dirty word money...it's growth, flow and resources.
god bless u mehdi
My hereos are Grady Judd, Cee Cee Moore and Uta Wall... the people working for the little people.
Giving to charity is hardly giving. It's sort of generous but gives them huge tax deduction.
Billionaires like to create added value. It’s very important that the end product or services represent massive value at a discount.
Organize communities, unionize workers.
"A certifiable genius"...created a bookstore, but online.
You lost me there, champ
Bill Gates is actually one of the very wealthy people who cares about people on his planet ...
Spends huge amounts of money and all his time combatting diseases across the globe. Finding viable solutions for so many things ...
Much respect to him ..
Capitalism has failed. Socialism is NOT a dirty word.