As Handful of Billionaire Families Grab Nation's Wealth for Themselves, New Report Details How Dynasties Rig US Economy
All I gotta say is “You think?????”
Here are just a few startling facts that tell you nearly all you need to know about who the American economy has worked for—and against—over the past several decades:
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and financier Warren Buffett own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. combined;
• As median household wealth has declined since 1982, the Walton, Koch, and Mars families have seen their wealth grow 6,000 percent;
• A full-time Amazon employee making $15 an hour would have to work for 2.5 million years to earn $78.5 billion, the amount Bezos's fortune has expanded in the past year alone.
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Pointing out that the federal estate tax has been "significantly weakened"—most recently by President Donald Trump and the GOP's $1.5 trillion tax bill—IPS argues that "[t]axing inherited wealth as income would help break up current and future wealth dynasties."
"Because of changes in tax law and aggressive use of trusts and tax dodges, we are now witnessing a resurgence of dynastic inherited wealth," Collins of IPS observed in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Tuesday. "To protect our democracy, we need to strengthen and expand taxes that reduce this concentration of wealth and power."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/30/handful-billionaire-familie...
How much of that inherited wealth was originally earned by illegal or unethical means in the first place? How much is maintained on dodging taxes, owning offshore accounts, or forcing the ‘little guy’ completely out of the marketplace?
Comments
Boy, if only we could get that much of a ROI
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Compounding
This is “only” 12% when you account for compound growth. That’s still a serious rate of return but Picketty showed that the more you have, the better your return.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
True. It's not out of
the range of extraordinary.
Lots of ROIs are in the neighborhood of 12%
over a given number of years. If in the neighborhood of doubling every 7-8 years that's a pretty good ROI, and those numbers are in that range. Good, but not crazy.
What is remarkable, though, is that ROI is over 36 years! The Stock Market in much of 1982 was spent in the 850 neighborhood, bouncing between 800 and 900 mostly. It surged from below 800 to over 1,000 in the last 2 or 3 weeks of Dec. 1982 (reaction to Repubs winning midterms, apparently). But, if we use 850 as an avg. (which is pretty close), then the Stock Market would be at 49,300 today, given the same rate of growth of those three families' ROI. So... so the three families did 88% better than the Stock Market over the same period, nearly twice as good as The Market!
Not bad! Maybe lucky is the word. Or money begets money.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Income taxes weren't instituted until 1913,
same year as the Federal Reserve system and same period as a lot of dynastic wealth instigated changes and actions against real democracy. Tax rates were raised during WWI and WWII with the highest rate being 94% in 1944. Tax rates for the rich remained high throughout the 50's, 60's and 70's and didn't start coming down til the 80's.
So there's a clear correlation between the astronomical wealth being accumulated at the top with the lowering in the highest tax rates.
The goal of the revolution has to be to end rule by the rich and it better be done soon.
Yep. Agreed. So what's the plan?
Estate taxes are currently 40% from what I understand. 80%? 100%?
And, whatever the case, close the mfing loopholes. I know, the rich can legislate loopholes in their sleep. A brother in law owns an estate on an island near seattle, gated community, no property taxes from what i understand...WTF?
It's a perversity of mine perhaps, but I prefer that the rich fucks that share our planet actually know what bootstraps *are*. And, natural selection is our heritage! It is, um, kinda built into the planet. Skipping a generation or two because your daddy was a criminal doesn't work for me.
Come to think of it, maybe if your parents are worth in excess of say $50,000,000...maybe you should start at owing the planet that amount. Clearly, your genes will allow you to bootstrap your way out of such a minor debt.
See what you've done Al? I'm maybe going off the deep end here, but it's all still reasonable requests I think...
"All I know is first you've got to get mad"
There's a new study out on the super rich. Might do an essay on it later, but it talks about how evidence shows they're primarily conservative sociopaths who don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves and work hard behind the scenes to rig the systems in their favor.
Of course we know that, this just further proves it.