That adds up to $45 million, a half a percent of this billionaire's assets. The average 44-55 year old has about $100,000 in savings. A half a percent is about $500. Would you spend $10 a week to drastically increase your ability to make money and avoid taxes? But even that question is not comparable, since most people don't have extra assets, like the billionaires have. So that half percent bite would be even felt even less.
We know about the machinations of a handful of the most trollish, oafish, most obnoxious billionaires-- perhaps they are just arrogant and believe that they can flaunt their excesses because they can get away with it. After all, the worthless Obamabot Attorney General Eric Holder has said he stays away from too big to fail banks. Why should we think he'd go after billionaires either?
It's time for the 99.9% of the people to take back what's left of Democracy and salvage it. We need to literally end the existence of billionaires. Legislate so it is illegal to be a billionaire. Legislate so it is impossible to inherit billions. Legislate so it is illegal to become a billionaire by taking a company public-- and if that discourages creation of giant companies-- good.
The problem with billionaires is that they have too much power. Centralization of power is unhealthy for humanity. We need to stop a malignant recent pattern that has gotten out of control.
Legislation can't affect international billionaires. But it can make things more inconvenient for them. The legislation could make it illegal for them to own stock in companies, make it illegal for companies they own to operate in the US or do business with US companies, in or out of the US.
Let's be clear, the goal of eliminating billionaires is a declaration of war. When the no-billionaires campaign begins to develop traction, the billionaires will respond. It will get ugly.
And there are hundreds of Billionaires in the US-- and hundreds more outside, who have the resources to funnel their money into US politics and media.
But we are not alone in this fight. . I've written a series of articles on De-billionairizing America. Here's my last article: Building the No Billionaires/ Debillionairize Campaign
And the campaign I started writing about in 2011-- to debillionairize America-- is picking up supporters and speed. Thom Hartmann is writing about it.
Greg Palast is identifying the worst billionaires. There's a great book, Plutocracy, by Chrystia Freeland, that looks at how we got to the point where there are two different castes of people-- the economic elite and the rest of us. Roots Action has joined the fray and has already sent out to close to 200,000 emails with Thom Hartmann's full article and links to an article by me and one by Sam Pizzigati. Thom Hartmann: The No Billionaires CampaignRob Kall: De-billionairize the PlanetSam Pizzigati: The Rich Don't Always Win
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