No More Billionaires

Bezos, Musk, and the others innovated the way we live; they deserve to be wealthy. The thing is, they are wealthy because of a symbiotic relationship with their consumers. I love Amazon, it is very convienent….but without customers like myself Bezos would not be one of the world’s wealthiest indivuals. We owe him thanks for his brilliant ideas...and he owes us, the society he lives in. How much money does anyone need? How is the existence of billionaires fair when we’re denying impovrished school children free lunches and allowing old people to freeze every winter because they can’t pay their gas bill? How is it fair for someone to have a hundred billion dollars while denying people health care and an subsidized education? This is the most wealthy country in the world, we can afford compassion.

What if we outlawed billionaires? Anything a Bezos or a Musk makes over a billion is taxed one hundred percent. Liquid, assets—nothing over a billion.

You are a dirty Commie! They deserve every penny they made!

This is not at all about Communism; they still have a billion dollars in liquid and assets. The difference is that all that extra money (over a billion) goes to treat addiction/mental illness, ensure everyone has health care, and so on.

Look at it this way, they still have a billion dollars. If they used a half a billion dollars to buy houses, boats, whatever, and invest the other half, they could easily live off the interest. Basing things on a five percent return annually that’s $25 million interest (on half a billion) or a bit over $2 million a month.

Could you live on two million a month? Can you imagine having two million a month to live on?

You’re an idiot and a dirty Commie; do you know what the property taxes are on a mega mansion? The cost of insurance and servants and so on? The way a Bezos lives they can easily burn through two million a month!

Two thoughts:

Okay, what if you limited spending to a quarter billion and invested 750 million giving you $37.5 million interest in a year or a bit over three million a month—

Wait, how is this even a problem? How excessive is your lifestyle if you can’t manage on two million a month?

Eighty eight percent of the people in this country live on $200000 a year or less. Two hundred thousand—not taking away taxes—is roughly $16,500 a month or eight tenths of one percent of two million—

And that’s the top end…for eighty-eight percent of the people in this country.

Do you even make $200,000 a year? I don’t: That would be four Izaaks and an Izaak sliver.

I am not holding up a sign saying “Inequality is unfair!” Life is unfair, that’s why there are pedeatric cancer wards and so many other cruel things in our lives. More important than inequality being unfair, it’s toxic, it is detrimental to a society. How are we supposed to compete with the rest of the world uneducated and unhealthy so someone can own more islands than they can ever explore? 

These people who voted for Trump are fucking idiots! I hate all of them!

No, no, no! Yeah, some people who voted for Trump are ignorant bigots, but most are just other desperate working people. Believe me, I see this shitshow unfolding—the plastic clown act in the White House---and I find myself resenting those people who voted for Illiterate Mussolini—

And I force myself to stop because we need them…and they need us.

Other working people are not the enemy, the rest of the eighty-eight percent of us making less than $200000 a year.

The world has gotten too fast paced for true reflection. Our culture rewards cunning but is suspicious of intelligence. We think we’re being a good citizen and watching “the news” but we’re just allowing ourselves to injest one channel of slop, of sensationalism and distortions. Playing to our fear, playing to our ego and our desires, the latent xenophobia in all of us.

Yeah, Trump sucks, but so did Biden. You think Biden or Harris was going to change the way things work? Do you think they would have changed this system that is set up to serve the wealthy? No. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is way way worse, there’s a reason I nicknamed him Illiterate Mussolini, but we don’t just need to get rid of him and MAGA—

We need to turn the whole fucking thing over.

We need to stop focusing on distortions, stop focusing on the few differences we have when us working people—the eighty-eight percent of us making less than $200,000 a year—have so much in common.

Progressives: You helped create this divide by ramming personal pronouns and cancel culture down everyone’s throat!

RIght Wing folks: “Wokeness” can be a very positive thing, stop hating on wokeness in its entireity! Get back compassion for those in need!

We need each other to fix things because, honestly, they’re a complete fucking mess.

Maybe a good first step would be No More Billionaires...